Jefferson's Not Enough To Revive Jazz
By John Hollinger
ESPN.com
SALT LAKE CITY -- Is time to mention words like "buyer's remorse" yet?
The
Utah Jazz were pretty happy when they were able to land
Al Jefferson from Minnesota in the offseason, filling the void created by the free-agent departure of All-Star
Carlos Boozer. But Utah's current malaise, which stretched to six games after Wednesday's 112-105 loss to San Antonio, has to be giving them second thoughts.
Let's cut right to the chase: Jefferson doesn't fit. Not with this motion offense, not with equally limited defensive big men like
Paul Millsap and
Mehmet Okur surrounding him, and not with a roster that is otherwise much more effective in transition.
Jefferson is a fine player, in a vacuum, and he's been decent enough in Utah -- Wednesday, for instance he scored 22 points and added nine rebounds. But the Jazz didn't agree to pay him $13 million and surrender multiple first-round picks to Minnesota so they could get "decent." They needed Jefferson to be a star, and in this program he's not.
Wednesday, for instance, was one of his better games. Yet the Jazz were outscored by nine when he was on the court, in a game they ended up losing by seven, and that's part of a larger pattern.
Utah has been outscored by more than ten points per 100 possessions with Jefferson on the court, a whopping figure that defies explanation when looking at his stats ... until one flips on the
TV and notes all the easy finishes at the basket every opponent gets against the Jazz. Despite adding several defensive-minded role players in the offseason, the Jazz were 20th in Defensive Efficiency entering this game and 27th in Defensive Rebound Rate.
"We did a poor job trying to help each other," said Jazz coach Jerry Sloan, and the result was a layup drill by San Antonio guards
Tony Parker and
Manu Ginobili (49 points combined).
"We showed too long or too flat [and] they got way too many easy baskets coming down the lane."
In other words, the big men couldn't stop anybody. With undersized Millsap playing next to the slow-moving Jefferson, the Jazz offer little resistance against opposing pick-and-rolls; this is particularly true early in games, when Sloan thinks his frontcourt tries too hard to avoid foul trouble.
"You really hamper your team [playing not to foul]," said Sloan. "It's hard to score, you try to play catch-up, and we don't get the kind of activity defensively you'd like to have."
Jefferson has the worst first quarter plus-minus of any player in
basketball, something that won't surprise Jazz fans who customarily see the team trail by double figures before trying to rally at the end. While the Jazz pulled off several shocking comebacks at the start of the season, the law of averages has caught up in a big way of late. At 27-19, Utah now stands seventh in the West and faces a near-certain first-round evisceration at the hands of the Lakers if they don't move up.
The misfit frontcourt could have larger implications, too, both in the short term and the long term. In the immediate future, one has to wonder if the Jazz will be willing to pay $15 million in luxury tax for a team that looks to be first-round cannon fodder in the Western Conference playoffs. Even Utah's current record greatly overstates its case -- the Jazz have outscored their opposition by a grand total of 16 points on the season, which normally would leave a team at or near .500.
As a result, one has to think the Jazz will be tempted to offload Andrei Kirilenko's expiring $17 million deal and take back a less onerous deal. The Jazz are more than capable of losing in the first round of the playoffs without his help, and whatever salary they can cut would be doubled. For one oft-mentioned example, sending Kirilenko to the Nyets for Troy Murphy's expiring deal, and including a couple of filler contracts on each side to make it kosher, could save the Jazz more than $6 million in salary and luxury tax.
In the longer term, of course, there's a much larger question looming over the franchise, which is Deron Williams' potential free agency in 2012. Williams was spectacular again, scoring 39 points despite hyperextending his right wrist late in the first quarter in a scramble with San Antonio's
George Hill, but the fact they still lost has to make it all the more frustrating. (Williams also has an MRI Thursday, with Utah fingers crossed that no further damage will be found).
One can't think Williams' willingness to stick around increased any when he sees his big men leave him hanging time after time in pick-and-roll coverage, or when he watches Jefferson trapped in the corner by a double team three times a game, or when
Kyrylo Fesenko takes more sick days than a European bureaucrat and shows up fifteen minutes before tipoff.
Perhaps the biggest statement about Utah's flagging fortunes, however, can be found in the simple fact that the Jazz played a home game against the NBA's best team ... and it was only the second biggest
basketball game in the state. Just down the highway, Provo was in a State of Jimmergency after BYU's Jimmer Fredette tore up previously undefeated San Diego State; the team that normally owns this city was a mere afterthought on this night.
Obviously, it's a stretch to put all this on Al Jefferson. He's the second-best player on a playoff team, and the Jazz would certainly be worse without him. Yet one can't avoid the whiff of disappointment about his performance. The Jazz were hoping they'd get the All-Star caliber big man that would both complement Williams and convince him to stick around.
Instead they got ... decent. And, it appears, descent.
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