SALT LAKE CITY — The last week has been one of the worst of the year for the Utah Jazz, as they lost four straight games before breaking the skid on Saturday night against the Washington Wizards.
Now they head out on a four-game trip in which they’re favored in three of the games so hopefully the next time we meet here — mailbag depot — things will be a little more cheery.
For now, let’s dive in to this week’s mailbag and get some of your questions answered.
I wish things were black and white and easy to answer one way or the other, but in the NBA, there is often so much grey area, and this is one of those times.
First of all, as far as free-agent Joakim Noah is concerned, it would probably be a hard sell because the LA Clippers are rumored to have been in talks with Noah for a while. The draw of Los Angeles and playing with one of the favorites in the West with the reigning Finals MVP is a hard package to pass up.
It might not be a completely lost cause, though, considering his last stint in the NBA came with the Memphis Grizzlies and Mike Conley. That kind of familiarity and a likely near guarantee of some backup playoff minutes would be appealing.
But...and I want to really draw out the pause here...the Jazz would have to get rid of someone on the roster to make room for any kind of buyout market signing, and while there are young guys and non-rotational players who could be waived to make room, I’m not sure that the Jazz are looking too far beyond what they already have.
Tony Bradley is truly making strides every time he plays. They may not be huge strides and it might just be incremental progress, but it is very clear that he is a player who will continue to get better.
With all that in mind, I think that the bigger and more important question here, for everyone, is do you really think that the Jazz are a championship contender this year?
They’re still trying to figure stuff out, and it is March. It might just be smarter to truly invest in the growth and continued chemistry building of the current team than to start making more moves, disrupt things further and bring in a rental in an attempt at something less than a Finals appearance.
Speaking of which...
Depends on what direction you’re looking at things from. From where I’m sitting right now, a Western Conference Finals appearance would be an improbable success, so no, I don’t think that a second round exit would be a failure.
If you’re going based off preseason expectations, then maybe, yeah. But that’s the problem with preseason expectations. They come before you’ve been able to see the team and before new players have been integrated into the system.
I think that if this team makes it to the second round but falls short, it might feel like a failure to the players in the moment, but that feels like a pretty good outcome to build on considering the up-and-down nature of this season.
I’ve seen it go both ways. There are plenty of teams in which there are players who don’t get along well with their teammates, or they don’t spend outside time with them, but they just work well on the court together. Then there are teams in which great friends play well together or they don’t. I don’t think that there’s a simple equation when it comes to making personalities gel in a way that works in a basketball sense. That’s a huge part of a coach’s job.
I think what’s more important is that players feel like they have on-court understanding of each other and that they can play freely and play with joy. That’s a much more difficult thing to come by.
Win more games, score more points, do it all more efficiently.
I really think that if Jordan Clarkson balls out the rest of the season, he’ll have a good case for the Sixth Man of the Year award. But it’ll take getting past Lou Williams and Dennis Schroder, who I think are the current frontrunners for the end-of-season honor.
Williams is going to be in the running every year because he is as reliable as Clorox bleach, or Kleenex, or Duct Tape, and he continues to be so for the Clippers with 19.1 points and 5.8 assists in 29.6 minutes per game while shooting 36 percent from deep.
Schroder is making a strong case as for himself with the Thunder, having one of his best seasons scoring 18.8 points, dishing out 4.0 assists and grabbing 3.8 rebounds in 31 minutes per game with Oklahoma City.
Clarkson is at 16.2 points and 3.1 rebounds per 25.5 minutes for the Jazz. If he could get his points up a little bit and add in a little more playmaking, his case would be better. He is already more efficient from the field that both Schroder and Williams and is just a tad behind Schroder in 3-point percentage at 37.6 percent.
Playing fewer minutes doesn’t help Clarkson’s case because it gives the illusion of the Jazz not relying on him as much as the Clippers or Thunder rely on their sixth man, so Clarkson’s production would have to speak for those missing minutes.
I feel like I’m about to alienate myself and lose some of my readers with this answer, but I have to speak my truth.
I don’t drink coffee because it tastes bad (smells great, tastes awful), and I’ve never liked Oreos. I don’t even really like milk. Milk is just an ingredient to get to something else. I don’t even use milk on my cereal. I use orange juice. I was recently told by a friend that my behavior in this matter is insane, and I’m willing to accept my role as the insane person if it means I don’t have to drink milk.
All of the given options sound bad, so I’ll take a donut and a glass of fresh squeezed orange juice, thank you very much.
If you would like to have your question answered you can send it to me at stodd@deseretnews.com with ‘mailbag’ in the subject line or you can send it to me via Twitter @NBASarah with the hashtag #SundayJazzMailBag.
Every Sunday morning a mailbag article will be published at deseret.com answering many of the submitted questions and I save some special ones specifically for the Jazz Insiders newsletter subscribers.