I tried to make a concerted effort to watch the game against the Kings and just see where we were losing the rebound battle? Was it boxing out? Hustle (lack of)?
While there's no one thing that's the problem, one thing I noticed was just how many offensive rebounds came for the Kings not on an initial rebound, but because the ball gets tipped up and back out to someone that might not necessarily have position.
Is the size of the front-court to blame? Would a couple extra inches allow them to come down with the ball instead of having each rebound be a jump ball of sorts?
I'll have to watch again tonight and see how many times it happens.
I realize that this isn't the point of the story (Memo's practicing in 5 on 5 drills), but Sloan pointed out something that always bugged me about players saying they're at 50%, 75%, etc.:
Sloan wasn't about to predict, either, when Okur might return - or guess how close to full strength he really is.
"I hear people say, well, he's 60 percent, he's 70 percent, 85 percent," Sloan said. "I don't know how in the heck a guy knows that."
Is 100% mean that you have no aches, pains, soreness, etc? If everyone is playing through something, then does that become the new 100%?
There's no way to measure percentage in this case. The doctors aren't saying, "Once he gets to 87.5%, he's good to go." To me you're either a go or your're not.
All we know is that Memo is closer than he was before and sounds like he's progressing nicely. If he's playing 5 on 5, I would assume he's just about ready to go health-wise and it sounds like he's just trying to get his conditioning up. Training camp is four weeks, so maybe that's about when Memo would be back to ready-strength?
Rajon Rondo thinks he can average 20 assists a game, which would of course break Stockton's record of 14.5. Rondo currently sits at 14.3 and has a total of 171 assists on the year.
He's played in 12 games so far this season and has been out the past couple and isn't expected back until Friday night. So that would give him 79 games on the year should he not miss any more.
To average 20 assists, he would have to put up 1,580 dimes over those 79 games. That leaves him with 67 games left in the season where he would have to put up 21.02 a game to get to 20 on the final game.
He's having a heck of a season, but given that he's only hit 20 assists once this season, the possibility of him hitting it this year is next to 0. I will get an assist playing for the Jazz against the Lakers before he even approaches 20.
As foolish as it is to try to extrapolate a final record based off the first 15 games of the season, I have to think that most Jazz fans are pleasantly surprised at the 10-5 record so far. The .667 winning percentage would equate to 54 or 55 wins.
The Jazz of course could easily have been 5-10 save for those tremendous comebacks. What would the state of Jazz Nation be if that were the case?
The part that's most troubling about the 10-5 record though is that Utah is only 4-5 against Western Conference teams and 2-2 in the division. Given the tight race in the west, that doesn't bode well for tiebreakers.
The Jazz can get that above .500 by taking 2 of the 3 coming up.
Open ended poll... give me Deron's line tonight (Pts/Assists/Rebounds/TOs)