SB Nation Podcast: Utah Jazz Preview with MyLo and AllThatAmar

The Utah Jazz are supposed to be good this year. Real good. In fact, we don’t know how good they are going to be because the season is still 42 days away. But so far on paper they are making a lot of fans from people who only previously had an industry reason to watch our guys play. SB Nation NBA is doing a podcast (you may have heard a few of them already, the Limited Upside pod is great) with each of their team sites. And last night My_Lo and I got to talk about the Jazz with Mike Prada and Ben Epstein.

I haven’t listened to it yet because a) I hate the sound of my own voice (like all normal human beings), and b) I worry about my sound quality because I don’t think my dbx 286s was working last night when we recorded it. Anyway, the post at the mothership goes into much better detail on what we talked about:

The Utah Jazz are loaded. They’re two-deep at every position, with a young core featuring multiple players with All-Star potential. One through 10, they may have the deepest team in the league.

Which leads to an obvious question: how did they miss the playoffs last year? Injuries played a major role, but there were other issues, too. Could some of those problems derail the Jazz again this year? Or will they actually be as good as so many expect?

To answer that question and more, Amar and Mychal Lowman from SB Nation Jazz blog SLC Dunk joined the show. Among the topics discussed:

Why did they fall short last year? How much was youth a factor? (Check out those ugly crunch-time stats from last year).

Who will start? George Hill, or Dante Exum? Is there a chance Joe Johnson wedges his way into major minutes despite the depth on the wing?

More importantly: who will find themselves out of the rotation? Alec Burks may be in trouble.

Who is the team’s best player today? Who will be the team’s best player tomorrow? Are the Jazz doomed (doomed!) to being very good, but not great because none of their young players look like future superstars?

How good a coach is Quin Snyder? Can he manage the playing time and chemistry dilemmas that could result from having such a deep team?

Plus, predictions for the season and why Joe Ingles is the NBA’s newest breakout social media stars.

Mike Prada and Ben Epstein, SB Nation, 2016

I had a lot of fun being a guest and please do not play the drinking game where you take a sip every time I talk about Trey Burke. You will get a little drunk.

Thanks again to Mike and Ben for having Mychal and I on. And sadly, our schedules couldn’t work out with Diana Allen’s busy, fantastic, California lifestyle. She would have added a sensible voice to our over-abundance of crutch phrases.

Also, yeah, the Jazz are going to be pretty good this year. I believe in Dante Exum. So should you!