What has been hurting the Jazz lately? Too many foul shots for the opposing team? Yes. The lowest shooting percentage by the Jazz since any of us can remember? Sure. Defensive rebounding? Other teams getting offensive rebounds is killing us. I'll talk about fixing the first two problems later. But the Jazz can fix the 3rd problem by giving more minutes to Kyrylo Fesenko. It seems simple enough that the Jazz would be better at defensive rebounding when Fesenko is on the floor. He's huge. Logistically, opposing teams don't have as much space to get offensive rebounds when the big Ukranian is in. It's the truth. You can't go around him, or over him, to get offensive rebounds. Kyrylo fesenko has played 90 total minutes this season and the Jazz have given up 16 rebounds in those 90 minutes. That's 1 offensive rebound given up every 5.6 minutes. When Fesenko is not on the floor, the Jazz have given up 158 offensive rebounds in 549 minutes. For those scoring at home, that is 1 offensive rebound every 3.46 minutes. Which leads me to a statistical theorom:
Off. Rebound Allowed/5.6 mins > Off. Rebound Allowed/ 3.46 mins
This is one of the reasons that Kyrylo Fesenko remains an important part to the Jazz’s winning ways. Go take a look at who leads the Jazz in +/- differential for the season. Fesenko is in 2nd place with +31. That’s only in 90 minutes. So for every 3 minutes that Fesenko plays, the Jazz are 1 point better than their opponent. You know who lead the Jazz in +/- differential last year? Fesenko. By far. Just some food for thought. You can’t complain about not being able to extinguish the fire while not using the extinguisher that’s sitting in the toolshed.