Watching the first pre-season game the other night, one thing was clear to me:\u00a0 the Jazz need to get rid of some players, the first of which is C.J. Miles.\u00a0 I don\u2019t know what Jazz management sees in him, but he\u2019s been in the league seven years now and hasn\u2019t seemed to progress much at all.\u00a0 Despite his length and speed, he doesn\u2019t play good defense.\u00a0 Despite his size and athleticism, he doesn\u2019t rebound.\u00a0 Most of the time, he isn\u2019t a good shooter.\u00a0 While he\u2019s a decent ball-handler, he doesn\u2019t get to the basket and score much, doesn\u2019t create open shots for his teammates, and doesn\u2019t shoot many free throws.\u00a0 Newcomer Alec Burkes played his first NBA game on Monday and already looks like a more effective player.\u00a0 Basically, he\u2019s a waste (except for the few occasions where it gets hot and hits a bunch of three-pointers, which is about 1 in every 8 games).<\/p>\n
From what I understand, the Jazz have had opportunities to trade him in the past and declined because they think he has amazing potential.\u00a0 I think we\u2019ve given him enough time to blossom.\u00a0 If it hasn\u2019t happened yet, it\u2019s not going to happen.\u00a0 Matching a contract offer a few years ago to keep him was a mistake because it kept them from keeping other players who have gone on to do great things (see Wes Matthews, now tearing it up in Portland).\u00a0<\/p>\n
Al Jefferson needs to go too, and loosing Millsap wouldn\u2019t be a bad idea, either.\u00a0 Derek Favors is the future power forward of the Utah Jazz franchise, and he needs to be starting and playing 35 minutes a game.\u00a0 He needs to be happy and treated fairly so he wants to stay here when his contract expires.\u00a0 He needs minutes to grow and develop as a player.\u00a0 Millsap is a good player, but he demands minutes and he\u2019s not taking the Jazz anywhere if he\u2019s the best big man on the team.\u00a0 They can\u2019t both play together because they\u2019re undersized at their position.<\/p>\n
Jefferson is weak on offense, and even weaker of defense.\u00a0 He scored a lot of points last year because the Jazz ran a lot of plays for him.\u00a0 But if you watch him play you\u2019ll see that he\u2019s soft and doesn\u2019t have any moves on the low post.\u00a0 He has no outside jumper, and if he\u2019s double teamed he is a terrible passer.\u00a0 He\u2019s too small to play center, and doesn\u2019t have the skills to be an effective power forward on a winning basketball team.\u00a0 All he\u2019s doing is taking minutes away from Favors, who is younger, less experienced, and already a more effective player on both ends of the floor than Jefferson.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Enus Kanter looked bad on Monday against Portland, but they drafted him so they might as well see what he\u2019s got.\u00a0 If Okur continues to play the way he did Monday, they should look to give Kanter more playing time.\u00a0 He can at least rebound the basketball and if he focuses on defense, could give the Jazz a much needed interior presence.\u00a0 Memo has an expiring contract, so he might be good trade-bait in a few months.\u00a0 The Jazz should seriously look at moving him.<\/p>\n
The Jazz are in desperate need of a young, talented point guard, and better interior defense.\u00a0 The way I see it, C.J., Millsap, Memo, and Jefferson are all up-for-grabs.\u00a0 Let\u2019s get something done.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Watching the first pre-season game the other night, one thing was clear to me:\u00a0 the Jazz need to get rid of some players, the first of which is C.J. Miles.\u00a0 I don\u2019t know what Jazz management sees in him, but he\u2019s been in the league seven years now and hasn\u2019t seemed to progress much at […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-266","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bagleyinsurance.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/266","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bagleyinsurance.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bagleyinsurance.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bagleyinsurance.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bagleyinsurance.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=266"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bagleyinsurance.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/266\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bagleyinsurance.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=266"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bagleyinsurance.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=266"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bagleyinsurance.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=266"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}