Looks like I finally made it to "half time" in my 2010-2011 Season Reviews . . . there is much more to come, but first, let’s look at some of the runoff.
- First of all, it feels good to have some actual posts up on the board, instead of just syncopations. I used to average (and this is a guess) 3 or so posts each week. Lately it seems to have been zero. Hope I can keep up this blistering pace of being super late for everything well into the off-season and impending lockout.
- As for the lockout, I think we can reverse jinx it by mentioning it as often as possible.
- Last week I started things off with an investigation of how the Jazz had previously fared on their own homecourt. From this we learned a few things that surprised me. The first was that by cherry picking the data, it seems like we were unstoppable in the old Salt Palace. The Jazz played there for more than just 5 seasons, but in the last 5 seasons they managed to win 34 games there in 41 tries. That’s pretty awesome.
- Of course, that’s not how well they did over-all. It was the home to the Utah Stars of the ABA, but from 1979 till 1991 it was the home to the Utah Jazz. Those early Tom Nissalke years were not winning years for the Jazz. Let’s just say that it’s amazing and awesome that the Salt Palace saw a team that averaged 34 home wins a season play there.
- The playoffs information from this first post was also interesting to me. It should come as no surprise that our best years in the playoffs were the seasons where we were actually able to go out there and get wins on the road. That’s not to say that losing at home is a good thing. It rarely is, and in our non-finals years’ losing at home was usually a death sentence.
- That one glorious playoff run back in 2006-2007 saw the Jazz in the Western Conference Finals for the first time since Clinton was president. (you can tweet at him @Clintonite33 )That season the Jazz relied heavily on the home court and went 7-1. Of course, that glorious run wouldn’t have existed at all if the Jazz didn’t win game 7 on the road in Houston.
You may remember it *All* on someone…
- The next post actually kinda also dropped on time, and it was right after the Hornets lost so I wanted to give those fans something. It’s easier to laud praise upon Chris Paul now that Deron Williams is no longer on the team – but the head to head stats, and the head to head W/L record show who was superior out of the two within that type of comparison.
- This was a post that discussed our problems with dribble penetration. It’s a problem that plagued our team all season long and was something we weren’t able to fix. The coaches have to do something, because the players the GM got weren’t able to figure things out for themselves.
- This was probably my favorite post, as I worked really hard on it, and I think the photoshop came out well. It would be awesome if someone on the Jazz side of things actually looked at it. But it would be horrible if it was the first time they looked at the numbers and recognized how crappy we were at stopping dribble penetration.
- Obviously I am super sensitive about my developing photoshop skills (I even made it a poll option on a post about Memo!) that I had to replace the original image to post #3 with a new one. I think this came out better, mostly because of the high res picture I found of Francisco Elson. Kyrylo Fesenko’s hair was goofier than Balkie’s hair in the first place so I just ended up keeping it how it was.
- Goofing around aside, I really was surprised to confirm that these two guys were very average – and not horrible players. I hope the front office also recognizes this. Another good thing I learned was a new way to display data. Finding out if you were average or not meant putting in the standard deviation range. If a player was in the ‘green zone’ they were average. I think this worked out well for me, but is this something you’d like to see in the future?
- Post 4, about Greg Miller (GSM) was a bug-a-boo for me. I had been critical of him before and the first two drafts of this piece had a completely different tone. One of them harped on all the calamities that happened under his watch. Another one implored him to go against his nature and develop more risk taking behavior. After spending Friday and Saturday actually researching all the info I came to the conclusion that, unlike his dad, I really didn’t know this guy.
- And I think we all have to admit that. We gotta give him a chance. He’s not like a coach who can retire, or a player we can give up on. He’s the guy who our team is either gone to sink or swim with, because he’s not going anywhere. So in a way, who he is, who he becomes, and how he rules is partly dependent upon how we help him shape this organization. This means fans have to be, above everything, respectful. We love this team. We need to respect the fact that he loves this team too.
- The last one posted today, the Memo post, was something I kept worrying about all season long. I wish he was out there on the floor – but I knew that he wouldn’t be ready. Just because I really wanted him to be a medical miracle my expectations were too high, and as a result, I was disappointed with the results.
- Still, I think it is fair to say that a healthier Memo makes us a way better team. Especially if it’s only just with bench scoring . . .
- A two-season injury is something to looking forward to, now that we’re going into season 2. Elton Brand got injured, missed the majority of a season, and came back, played in few games during his first year back and stunk it up compared to his career averages. But in the season year he got back on track and ended up scoring only a 5 less points and 3 less rebounds than his best years. Mind you, Elton played less minutes per game as well (30.2 from a career average of 36.9). Memo is also going to play less and if we see the same type of results, getting 10 and 5 from a backup center in 75+ games is going to be awesome compared to what we got this year.
- Oh, and Elton Brand has gotten increasingly better every year after his injury. Last year he averaged 15 and 8 – which is exactly what we’d want from Memo in the best of times. And this year, Memo’s Nadir, he still averaged 14 / 6 per 36 mpg. That’s not bad at all for a bench guy.
- Halftime review of my recent posts aside, there are some interesting things happening in the league still. I can’t get over the fact that the Vancouver Grizzlies and the Seattle Supersonics are playing in the 2nd round of the playoffs right now.
- Of course, if David Stern has his way, every team would be in LA, Chicago, NY, Boston (for the history), Miami, and London. Maybe with an expansion team in Paris. Of course, that’s just me being bad. David Stern isn’t a horrible guy. He’s just not a very nice guy.
- Just a programming notice … there are 6 more posts in the season review to come; after that are the regular season player stats post (still working on that); and then some miscellaneous posts about things not covered elsewhere. All of this should be done before the Draft Lotto – and by then there will be a bunch of stuff to worry about that I’ve been avoiding my entire life.
- And by that, of course, I mean NCAA players and their stats . . .
- Big things coming from Sunday Syncopation #30 . . . but now that I think about it, maybe I should hold off till #32?