Breakfast discussion

George Hill is playing at an extraordinary clip right now with a 26.4 PER, .630 EFG%, 130 ORTG, and 104 DRTG. Hill’s prior 8 year career averages are a 15 PER, .518 EFG%, 114 ORTG, amd 105 DRTG. Part of me thinks we are seeing contract year Hill, part of me thinks Hill is benefiting from a new system and the absence of Gordon Hayward from the line-up, and part of me thinks we might be seeing peak George Hill. Because of this, I am starting to wonder what the Jazz do if he keeps this up for the entire year. Albeit a small sample size (5 games), and there’s no doubt in my mind that teams will start to adjust to what Hill does on the court, these are All-Star level stats Hill is putting up.

Keep in mind, Hill has never played at the level he currently is for an entire year. Additionally, he’s historically played in 84% of the total games for the teams he’s played for (555 of 661); and started 50% of those total games (330 of 661). Hill at 30 is also one of the elder statesmen of the team.

So if you were Dennis Lindsey, what do you do knowing you just “maxed” Rudy, Hayward will most-likely command another “max” deal at the end of the year, you will will most-likely need to give Favors a raise, and you’ve got about $74 million committed to 10 players for the 2017-18 year (this assumes Hayward opts out of the $17M final year of his contract and Favors’ contract stays at $12M for the 2017-18 year.)

Here’s a look at what the cap will be like for 2017-18:

So based on the projected cap, you are going to have about $29M to spend on Gordon Hayward, George Hill, and whoever else you decide to bring back (the other free agents at the end of the year are Shelvin Mack, Joe Ingles, and Jeff Withey.) I can imagine Hill is going to want a pretty good pay increase (he’s currently at $8M a year). So what does Dennis do? It’s a good problem to have.

Worst Analogy

For this week’s worst analogy, I’m bringing some good old fashioned British humor with Mr. Bean. By old fashioned, I mean when I lived in England over 20 years ago, Mr. Bean was supposedly popular. There are three parts to the clip; part one lasts close to 9 minutes, part two lasts about 7 minutes, and the final part lasts another 9 minutes. So choose your spot or watch it all; it’s up to you.

And on to the winner of week three’s WACB (worst analogy championship belt). VegasPete took the week off, thereby relinquishing his title; but several other Dunkers took to the comment section and competed. Parelkid spun a well thought-out analogy of how the elite skills and lesser skills of Jazz players mix to create beauty, in addition, parelkid mentions:

Also of note, 15,806 assists was mesmerized by the video and banned the Oracle from future competitions, gubihero saw everything coming together to bring us a championship, and its_computers compares the video to the grating announcing you are subject to when watching a Jazz game.

Well done everyone! Parelkid walks away with the belt this week.

Cap Space

Is it time to let bygones be bygones?

Deron Williams had this to say in his visit this week:

I’ve moved on. We’ve got a great team that is heading in the right direction (see wins at San Antonio and at home against the Mavs this week.) What’s the saying? Time heals the broken heart? Once a Jazz-man always a Jazz-man?