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Consistency and the Utah Jazz

Consistency has always been a part of the Utah Jazz legacy. As Jazz fans, we have come to expect great basketball from our team and to see a quality product on the court every night. The legacies of Larry Miller, John Stockton, Karl Malone and Jerry Sloan are all testaments to that fact. Since consistency is what I know as a fan, I was intrigued to see Nylon Calculus introduce a new stat on the topic.

The two Jazz players on here were Gordon Hayward and Trey Burke. Below are their numbers:

PPG TS% APG RPG PPG Consistency TS% Consistency APG Consistency RPG Consistency
Hayward 16.2 0.52 5.2 5.1 2.15 2.23 2.04 2.25
Burke 12.8 0.47 5.7 3 2.06 1.96 2.21 2.56

It should be noted that a high consistency isn't necesarily a good thing. Here's this excerpt from Nylon Calculus:

Something to keep in mind, too, before you see the chart, is that consistency is not necessarily a "good" or "bad" measure. Often, great scorers will have low-ish consistencies if they’re at all prone to the occasional scoring binge. Scoring far more than average, after all, will contribute to a lower consistency, as a massive scoring game means that the player had a performance that was very removed from his average.

Nevertheless, it is possible to set some baselines: for the pure production measures (points, assists, and rebounds), a consistency of 1.85 or below can be considered "damagingly inconsistent" for all players. Similarly, a consistency above 2.4 is "astoundingly consistent," which could actually be a problem for some star-level players, since it means they’re unlikely to be going on a scoring binge on any given night.

For True Shooting Percentage, a consistency of 1.91 and 2.55 are more safe low and high baselines.

Taking this into account we can see that both Hayward and Burke were pretty consistent players last season. I would like to see Burke have a much higher TS% consistency, and I think we will see that coming into his second year in the league. I also like that we can depend on them both to score 12-16 points per night on a regular basis. It would be interesting to see where Stockton and Malone would fall under these new stats and compare them to the rest of the all time greats.

The question now is whether that is what we want from the main guys on our squad? Do we want them to be consistent like this every night with a small chance of a scoring a lot, or do we want a star that has a lower consistency that we can see a breakout night every few games?

All I know, is that this season will be a very interesting one with all the new pieces we have on the team.

All comments are the opinion of the commenter and not necessarily that of SLC Dunk or SB Nation.