clock menu more-arrow no yes mobile

Filed under:

The Downbeat #1483: The Day After Thanksgiving Edition

Rudy Gobert and Dante Exum building chemistry. Should the Jazz play faster? Realigning the NBA.

By dianaallen
Mark D. Smith-USA TODAY Sports

Happy day after Thanksgiving, everyone! I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday with their family and friends. We had a great Thanksgiving. I made a delicious meal for my sweet family. We spent the day at home, playing games, watching movies and just enjoying each other's company.

ICYMI Basketball John had you covered with a Downbeat yesterday. Go and read it if you missed it yesterday.

Now that you know about my Thanksgiving lets take a social media walk and see what our Jazz players were up to yesterday.

First off Enes Kanter:

Very cool of Enes to use our very own Moni's image!!

Second Rodney Hood was a little more active on social media than usual:

Ian Clark:

Gordon Hayward:

Rudy Gobert and Jeremy Evans:

And lastly the Utah Jazz:

Today is Black Friday and the Utah Jazz are in on the deals. Check out their door busters that start at 9:00 a.m. today!

Deals include 50% off VIP row 1 tickets, deals on suites, $5 tickets and more!!

Everyone knows that Rudy Gobert is like my most favorite Jazz player right now.  I love his personality, I love his game, and I love his toughness. I also love his accent (he he).

Aaron Falk wrote an article about the chemistry developing between Dante Exum and Rudy Gobert.  It has great quotes from both Exum and Gobert. Read it!

Gobert says his confidence is growing.

"I feel way more comfortable than last year," he said.

And part of that is his budding chemistry with his point guard.

"Most of the time, the lob is there," he said. "We’ve got a very good connection. I think we start to understand each other. "

And to think Rudy used to block Dante :)

Do the Jazz play too slow?  A blogger named D'Joumbarey A Moreau who writes for Hoops Habits suggests that the Jazz are playing too slow and that it hurts their play.

From the article:

The Jazz have the second-youngest team in the NBA with an average age of 24.1 years, but yet they have one of the slowest teams in the league. According to basketball-reference the Jazz have the 26th-slowest team in the NBA. Coach Quin Snyder should use his youth to his advantage and let his team push the tempo more and get even easier scores.

The article goes on to talk about how well the Jazz play when they speed it up.

What do they Jazz have to do to play faster? Will it help?

The Jazz don't play again till tomorrow. They'll take on the Los Angeles Clippers. It seems like its been a long time since the Jazz played. I know, I know they played on Wednesday but still. I hope this mini-break is doing them well.

Speaking of the Los Angeles Clippers.  Tom Ziller of SB Nation wrote an article proposing a change to fix the inequality in the conferences.  In his scenario the Jazz would be in the same region as the Los Angeles Clippers and the Los Angeles Lakers.

His map

map

And how the basics of the schedule works.

How the schedule would work:

1. You would play the two teams in your hub five times each. These hubs are denoted by the vertical lines in the

map above. Most are extremely tight geographically, with a couple unavoidable exceptions. This is 10 games.

2. You would play the other three teams in your region four times each. This is 12 games, for a running total of 22.

3. You would play teams from two other regions three times each. This is 36 games, for a running total of 58.

4. You would play teams from the remaining two regions twice each. This is 24 games, for a running total of 82.

What two regions would you face thrice a year? That would rotate annually, much as the NFL handles interconference play. In Year 1, the teams of the Pacific would theoretically face the teams of the Lakes and Big West regions three times each and the teams of the Atlantic and Southeast regions twice each. In Year 2, the Pacific teams would face the Big West and Southeast thrice each and the Lakes and Atlantic twice each. In Year 3, they'd face the Southeast and Atlantic thrice each and the Lakes and Big West twice each. In Year 4, they'd face the Atlantic and Lakes thrice each and the Southeast and Big West twice each. And the cycle repeats.

There is a lot more to it so go read it and then come share your opinion here!

I personally am not a fan of his proposal. I know some Jazz fans like it. I don't think it does much to promote parity. I personally don't want the Jazz playing the Lakers and Clippers a combined 10 times a year. Can you imagine how fair that is when the Lakers are their usual powerhouse? That just doesn't seem fair.  Compare that to say the Bulls who get to play the Wolves and the Bucks a combined 10 times? That's not parity.

Anyways you can tell he put a lot of thought into his proposal so go read it but yeah I'm not a fan.

More From SLC Dunk