Utah Jazz Break Teams - The Downbeat #1545

As long as I'm spending a few hours a week writing this DB, I'm going to use it as my platform. For today? The season is too damn long. Each year, the voice for this sentiment grows, and right now we're seeing the reason why. As we head into the All-Star break, how many injured players are there? Let's just look at the All-Star roster: 2 All-Stars drop off the list (Kobe, Blake Griffin). We have one that's playing with a broken hand (LaMarcus Aldridge), and one who's missed half the games to date (Kevin Durant). Even "healthy" players like LeBron and Melo have missed 8 games and 12 games (respectively) due to nagging injuries.

The owners want the 82 games because of the added revenue, but when does it reach the point of diminishing returns? When you are poised for a deep playoff run and lose a player to injury mid - to late in the season? Look at what has happened to OKC in each of the last two playoffs.

I, for one, would rather have more meaningful basketball. I'd rather lose 20 games of regular season dullness (I'm looking at you late January / early February), and have something to play for late in the season. A tournament, concurrent with the playoffs, to decide the top picks in the lottery, or a play-in tournament for the last two seeds in the playoffs.

Ah, the NBA trade deadline, the primetime season for random bloggers looking to make a name for themselves. The time of year when you set Adrian Wojnarowski tweet notifications to "on". The trade deadline is 10 days away.

Here are my predictions:

• There will be hundreds of slideshows and listicles produced
• I will see 300 retweets from such highly esteemed and trusted Twitter accounts as @TopNBABreakingNews @NBATradeInfo @basketballtweets (these come within minutes of a tweet from a legitimate source like Marc Stein, but 20 minutes faster than Chris Broussard confirms the news with his "sources", and I wonder "Who are the people that follow these accounts?)
• We will get all spun up into a frenzy by the biggest trade that goes down that day: Wilson Chandler to a low seed playoff team.
• The Jazz will do nothing.

The Jazz let Christapher Johnson's 10-day contract expire yesterday, likely due to the All-Star break. I like that the Jazz are trying out so many guys. It's a great way to find a diamond in the rough and it is great for the guys that get the shot. It helped Elliot Williams land with the Hornets, and little Sap made the team, but it is getting REALLY hard to keep track of them all. Johnson was call-up number 4 for the Jazz, and I expect we'll see another after the break.

The Jazz might have broke the Clippers. The Clipps started their 8 game road trip in SLC with a win, but since then, the wheels have come off. The hard-fought win against the Jazz brought a loss to the Pelicans two days later, and since then, they're 1-5 and the trip has been full of disappointing comments, lots of technicals, and now they've lost Blake Griffin.

I like when the Jazz break teams.

Breaking teams could be the role of the Jazz this season. As they continue to improve, look what damage they could do in late March, through the end of the season:

The Jazz could have serious impact on the playoff race in the west.