No doubt you've noticed this guy Alec Lam tearing it up at SLC Dunk. Some people may have slept on him but he's our own Alec Burks -- just with somehow less playing time if that's possible. The quality of his work is outstanding and we're just happy to have him posting his stuff whenever he can. If there was a guy on twitter who has Swagg it's this guy. And Alec Lam has joined the party here.

So everyone give it up for Alec, because he's been working his butt off so far and deserves more burn / shine. My bad for not doing this post earlier . . . I'm just stuffed from the great meal I had today with SLC Dunker Dyl. (Yes, Amar will wine and dine the readers of this blog, ha ha) Please follow Alec on twitter @AlecLam14 !

SLC Dunk - Big things coming . . .

Also I forgot to add this . . .

Hey everyone,

I think we're a kick butt community. Not only do we love our Utah Jazz, but we're also way smarter than other fans. Right? Well, let's prove it. We're doing a new contest which is a bit more involving than the Guess The Game Score deal. In this WEEKLY contest we're going to pose a question on Monday. You need to answer the question in a FanPost by Friday night. Put a link to your FanPost in this thread for it to count . . . and we pick a winner on Saturday. And at the end of the off-Season we'll draw prizes for winners just like we're doing for the Guess The Game Score contest.

So let's get going!

FanPost about . . .

. . . who should have been the back-up point guard for the Utah Jazz last season: Earl Watson or Jamaal Tinsley? You can use stats, make a video, a poem, or just rant away. Minimum is at least 300 words or 5 minutes of media. Entries MUST be linked to in this post in the comments. Entries MUST be in by Friday 11:59 PM MST. Winner is picked by us, grand prize winner is picked by a vote. Grand prize is yet to be determined. We'll be doing this all off-season long.

Edit: Duh, FanPost that wins each week will be put up on the front page on Saturday.

Jerry Sloan and the Bobcats? Trading the 27% of the Warriors pick back to them? Andre Iguodala? All of this and more in a Syncopation -- yes, I still do those, thank you very much!

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Hey everyone, I really like all the communication we're having here at the site. It's the off-season and we're in-between events (season ended, but it's not quite NBA draft time yet). No time like now to have a party! Other SBN blogs have been 'calling out the lurkers' : Bright Side of the Sun (Suns); Celtics Blog (Celtics); Fear the Sword (Cavaliers); Liberty Ballers (76ers); Mavs Moneyball (Mavericks); Welcome To Loud City (Thunder)... to name a few. I think we can do those blogs one better. Instead of calling out the lurkers -- let's just have a party where everyone is invited!

Because we're a family friendly site let's have a pot luck. (I guess this is Internet stake? Did I use that right?) Let's get to re-introduce ourselves to each other and say something about who you are and why you are a Jazz fan.

Let me start:

Hi everyone, my name is Amar. You can find me here, and on twitter (@AllthatAmar , @AllthatAmar2). I live in Detroit, Michigan and love the Jazz. I brought Grilled Tandoori spiced chicken, and a healthy all veg chili. Help yourselves! I think Karl Malone and Andrei Kirilenko would have been awesome together in an alternate universe. Woo! I am excited!

I have the notion that The Downbeat section of this website is one of the most popular features. They are fun to read, informative, and something we all look forward to every business day. We have some of our most spirited debates in their comments sections, and during the doldrums of the off-season you know that they’ll be there for you. The Downbeats were started by Basketball John, and I believe, named by The Shums. So it is filled with the DNA of two of our SLC Dunk heroes. Since the shift towards a more team authored blog, I think we’ve made a number of changes. Instead of having either Clark or I doing all the DBs we share it amongst our group of talented scribes. This is, after all, a fan run blog for a team that champions team based play. We grew up watching a team win the most when they worked with each other. And I think that by working with each other here we can achieve similar success – while having fun.

There are necessary conversations that we need to have this off season about where this blog is, where it came from, and where do we want it to go. This was Basketball John’s baby, and I do not consider it my own baby. Of course not. This baby belongs to ALL of us now – doesn’t matter if you are a manager here or a lurker.

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Remember last night when we looked at the team, and their regular season PER? We found out that we had really good showings from Al Jefferson and Paul Millsap, while another group of players had solid, positive, above average PER values (Gordon Hayward, Derrick Favors, and Devin Harris). Not everyone kicked butt. How did things change in the playoffs? Did they change?

Yes, they totally did for the most part.

Full sized image here

Big Al was the only dude to remain in the 20s. Derrick Favors stepped up. The rest of our core really went down (Paul, Devin, Gordon). Bench time/garbage time was significant and Jeremy Evans and Blake Ahearn looked great in super limited play.

We're going all over the place but I don't want to put a long post out during yet daylight hours (for fears of Downbeat reprisals) -- so just a quick poll. You can only keep one, Josh Howard or DeMarre Carroll. We know one is a vet, and we know the other one hustles. We know one is more expensive than the other (Jazz hold an option on DeMarre for under $1m per). And the other could be locked up for longer. I don't care. Just tell me --

Hmm, it looks like Paul Millsap, Devin Harris, and Tyrone Corbin were all on the same team before. This is the team photo from the USA Select Team in 2009, back in their Vegas Salad days. This is a good group of guys -- some of them have gone on to dominate the league since they were on the Select Team. This off-season in Vegas two more of our players will be there: Derrick Favors and Gordon Hayward. Who knows which other players, potential future Utah Jazz players, will they be playing with?

Who is crazy? Amar is crazy. Here's a chart that shows the individual PERs by playing time for our team this past year. PER isn't the perfect stat . . . but it's not like anyone is asking me to do one for Go Rating or anything . . . This is based upon most minutes (total for the regular season) till least, from the Left to the Right.

Full Sized image here

The Utah Jazz were at the top of the Western Conference for quite a while, they went to the Western Conference finals 5 times in 7 seasons. A lot of people outside of Utah seem to not remember that -- the Jazz were more than just a team that broke through to the NBA Finals twice. The Jazz were right there on a number of occasions. There was a five year peak (1995-1996 till 1999-2000) where the Jazz were always 'right there'. I crunched the numbers for those five Jazz teams, got the average, and compare them to what we managed this past season.

This Jazz core is at the bottom of the playoff mountain, but in order to climb to the top we need to fix a few things. Luckily, we've been to the summit before. We know how to get there. And by looking at the type of team we were during that stretch of excessive success we can better understand what, specifically, we need to change. We can climb back up to the top. But we have to be honest with what we have, and not afraid to make the changes we need.

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Once upon a time there was a wizened old Master, Master Hornacek. He was patient and skilled master who had moved from the hard desert lands where he gained a lot of notoriety towards the eastern lands. He moved back west in the year 1993-1994 -- and from there joined a powerful mountain monastery of the Jazz Clan. There he trained hard, and alongside other great Masters he reached the highest peaks of individual and collective success . . . before moving again to travel the world.

He would return, and has returned. Now he works to train at that same Mountain Monastery. Master Hornacek trains younger players today . . . but today he may have finally found that perfect set of students. He has found the Fourteenth Wing of Hornacek...

If you like old Kung-Fu movies, creative writing, and a long succession of stats . . . click on

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Sports Illustrated Sam Amick interviewed Jerry Sloan and their talk is up on the SI site -- you can see it all here. There are a number of interesting points made in it. Our cousins over at Rufus on Fire, the SBN Charlotte Bobcats site, already put their take on the interview here. We're all praying for Cardboard Gerald, and I think the points he focuses on are things I honestly did not think of. As a Bobcats fan they are concerned with Jerry Sloan, not from the point that he's super oldschool and does not tolerate tanking -- but because they fear he has no experience with coaching a rebuilding team. (Yes, it was a pleasant surprise to know that concerns of Bobcat fans aren't the same concerns as Jazz fans)

In the interview with Amick, Jerry dispels that concern succinctly:

SI.com: You spent most of your coaching life going to the arena expecting to win almost every single night. Do you think it would be quite an adjustment to take on a job like Charlotte (which finished with a record-low .106 winning percentage)?

Sloan: You've got to realize that I played on an expansion team in my second year [the 1966-67 Chicago Bulls]. We were supposed to win 10 games. And you deal with a bunch of guys who are willing to work and put in a lot of effort, you never know what can happen. We won 33 games, and I think we were the only expansion team to make the playoffs.

That, to me, was an interesting thing to be involved with. I don't mean to say that [the Bobcats] are an expansion team, but they've struggled some and you never know. Maybe the minds work together and something comes out of it. Maybe they don't. I don't know.

There's more to it than just the challenge, or going to a place bereft of expectations. Jerry talks about his health and how he's feeling great. He talks about the other teams that may or may not be interested in him (the Orlando Magic and possibly Portland Trail Blazers). But most of all, he does talk about being interested in coaching again. Period.

Check out the full interview here. And check out the Bobcats coverage of it here.

This last season we got to see, straight up, that this team is rebuilding a contender. The Utah jazz played 66 games in the regular season, and made the playoffs. We played in playoffs games, guys! There were a lot of doubters, myself included. But the Jazz proved me wrong. That said, the Jazz weren't really in all of the games they played in. Part of this was based upon HOW we played -- the Jazz had a good offense, but our defense was a bad as it's every been. While the playoffs games were not really hard to predict -- the Jazz did win enough to get there. I respect that. But the Jazz have a number of things to work on.

Our "deal" was scoring. We were the #4 team in the league in points per game (PPG). Even though we we finished the season with a -0.4 margin (for all 70 games). No doubt, the playoffs were a big reason for that.

How did the Jazz score from quarter to quarter? Were we slow starters? If so, was this an issue of who we were starting games with? Or just the fact that the other team had better starters than we did?

Was there a difference in how we fared against the entire league (29 teams, 70 total games), vs. how we fared against just the Western Conference playoff teams (7 teams, 29 games)? If there was, which set of values is more important?

Numbers, graphs, and accusations after the jump!

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The NBA's best players perform the best when it counts. They also get the most media time, have the most fans, sell the most merch, have the most twitter followers, and get the benefit of the doubt when it comes to getting calls from the refs in close games. They also, usually, are also the players who perform the best when it counts. I could care less about awards and hardware for individuals. What I do care about is team success. And it's easier to reach team goals when your team is led on the court by one of the best NBA players. Things go your way.

Without one of these de facto Top 15 NBA players your club either has to rely upon extreme cohesion, luck, or the other team pooping the bed in order to get by. The teams that advance in the playoffs seem to have at least one (if not more) of these guys on their team. This is not a new phenomina either, when WE had Karl Malone and John Stockton on our team we got far, and they were put on these All-NBA teams yearly. We know the best players perform the best. And they make life easier for your team -- which leads to win. Which is why I seem to harp about this a lot.

If the guys leading your team are not Top 15 players, and we have guys sitting behind them who have the potential to be Top 15 dudes, you are only hurting your teams' PRESENT and hurting your teams' FUTURE by being stubborn about things.

Anyway, here's the first team.

The All-NBA Second, Third, and "others getting vote" lists after the jump.

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The Utah Jazz are a lucky franchise. Why? Because they have the best fans in the entire league. I know they like to pass off "Thank you" videos from the previous season as 'recent we love the 2011-2012 Jazz fans" material. (Really, check out Moni/Andy's work at that link) That's how they treat us. That's fine. Jazz fans still show up to the games. Period.

Even after lockout years. But hey, the media likes to tell us that our Utah Jazz team is costing too much and it's the fans fault. Or something to that effect. Win or lose the Jazz fans show up. If you did a graph showing the Jazz home game attendance rank vs. the metro area population rank of SLC you'll see that the Jazz fans are way ahead of the curve.

We may not have an All-Star or All-NBA player leading the team. But the fans are All-NBA fans every year. Maybe next year we'll get a "thank you" video with new material in it? : )

Utah Jazz forward Gordon Hayward is a gamer. He's also allowed to talk about it and not be vilified like Andrei Kirilenko was. Check out this interview he did while previewing some new game modes and maps for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 for the XBOX 360.

So for those counting at home . . . . he talks about MW3, Halo, Starcraft II, *and* admits that he's already logged in hours and hours in Diablo III (which just came out). He's not really missing that girlfriend of his, he's super busy. Hope he's busy on the court too this off-season. Every year Andrei was trashed by Jazz fans for not working on his shot or developing a stronger body. Gordon did manage to shoot 18.2 fg% and 8.3 3pt% in the playoffs a few weeks ago. We know the media is giving Hayward a pass for all the stuff he's admitting to (playing video games till 3 am). I'm sure they'll give him a pass if Hayward also doesn't improve.

I know he will, but just wanted to put those facts out there. I went easy on Gordon when I talked about our playoff struggles. He was a major factor in those struggles. He is a competitor and will try hard to get better this off-season. If he doesn't develop Carpal-Tunnel syndrome first.

The sad thing about using Karl Malone as a measuring stick for your current players is that, well, he makes your current players look really bad. The Mailman is in the Hall of Fame, and was selected to play on THREE Olympic Teams (dropped out of the last one, 2000, because of his mother's illness). That means not only was he great at his peak, but he was also one of the 12 best players in the world, over 12 years in a row. None of our dudes are even All-Stars. And the numbers gives us a way to see how far ahead the Mailman was compared to our current batch of mail room boys

For his entire career, you know, 62,759 total minutes over 1,660 total games, Karl Malone averaged 25.0 ppg, and went to the free throw line 8.9 times a game. Effectively, "Half-a-Karl" would be 12.5 PTS/gm and 4.5 FTA/gm. How long do you think it would take our current group of bigmen to get "Half-a-Karl"?

Well. Here you go:

First of all, it takes Big Al an entire game + an entire overtime to get to the free throw line 4.5 times. Of course, Favors can get that done in almost 30 mins. It also takes Favors about 30 to reach half a Karl in points. Both Sap and Big Al score at a much faster rate -- but as we went over in the LAST post, Favors scores at a much more efficient rate. So, those two things are kind of a wash.

It's getting a little too touchy-feely around here, so let's look at some cold hard numbers. If we are going to continue to structure our offense around an inside-out philosophy we must be getting what we want on the inside at a "good enough" rate. Teams that had one amazing inside player >>> teams that had three good inside players. That's usually how things went. We know this. We beat a lot of good front courts with Karl Malone paired up with Greg Ostertag and Adam Keefe. Right now we have a really good front court with Al Jefferson teamed up with Paul Millsap and Derrick Favors. Alone, none of them scare you. And together they get you zero playoff wins. What we saw in their 4 games together was excessive inefficiency. Al shot 52.9 fg%, but went to the line 1 time a game and only managed 18.3 ppg -- despite shooting great. Paul shot 37.0 fg% and got to the line 4 times a game, but shot only 50 ft%. Derrick shot 41.7 fg%, got to the line 7.3 times a game, and shot only 58.6 ft%. Together they added up to three guys playing inefficiently, but also at a high volume.

One amazing dude >>> three good guys playing poorly. Let's throw out the 2012 playoff data and look at Karl Malone's career (regular season + playoffs) against the scoring efficiency of our trio from just this 2011-2012 regular season. We'll look at the raw numbers, and go a little advanced. Why? Because I haven't written any stats posts in a while. That's why.

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I think that it would be unfair to force someone who has trained and worked for such a long time at only one thing to adapt to a whole new life. When I first moved to Detroit years ago the grounds keeper for the apartment complex I lived within was a nice old man. He was engaged mentally, and a pleasure to talk to. While some of his opinions weren't always the same ones I held, he was a principled man who had always performed his duty to his family, to his children, to his country (a number of tours of duty). Yet he was working at this job in his 70s. I never asked him why he was doing it. But it was obvious. He was a veteran autoworker who was at his job for decades, and became too expensive to keep -- so his job was terminated. And he was thrust into another line of work, another type of life -- and he was less good at this. And he was way less happy in life.

This guy, Dennis, was always friendly to me. However, the rest of his co-workers didn't love him the way I did. I respected him for what he went through and what he had done. The people he worked with felt like he was just another guy who was finding it hard to adapt in their world. Dennis is no longer around. But from what I knew of him, he wasn't a guy who could remain idle.

Some people just need to be busy, even if it isn't financially necessary. Some people can't NOT do work, especially after WORKING for decades. Jerry Sloan clearly is one of those people. He and Dennis come from that same conservative, hard working, midwestern, WWII pre-baby boom generation. Based upon my experiences with Dennis -- a guy who didn't need to spend all day at home or taking care of grand children or great grand children -- I have come to the conclusion that Jerry Sloan will one day coach another team.

Though, just which team he coaches may come as a surprise to you . . .

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We exist as a part of an increasingly connected world. I don't need to get into it, because you probably know what I mean. Right now you can be connected to a global network on an Air Craft Carrier, in your car, in your bathroom, on a plane, walking down the street -- or even on the International Space Station. The sooner people adopt to this fact the sooner you can adapt and evolve with the newer technologies. I looked at the NBA teams and how 'connected' they are -- as seen by the factors of market size and twitter followers. The information from that investigation can be found here in full, or here in chart form with no analysis.

Well, I was recently introduced to something else that is very cool. Social media and connectivity goes both ways in the sports world. It's not just the mothership (the sports franchise) doing all the work -- it's also the fans sending information back as well. Tariq Ahmad (@tariq_ahmad ) and his brother Nabeel ( @nabeeloo ) developed SportsShadow.com -- a site that tracks, ranks, and presents data for ALL the major leagues around. How? I don't understand all of it, but they collect the info from Foursquare and Facebook "check ins" and API.

I don't know what API is, but whenever I'm in twitter jail tweetdeck gives me some jibber jabber about API calls or some tech stuff that's beyond my current abilities. (And since I'm in self-disclosure mode here -- the maximum proficiency of technology I've mastered is the ability to be headshot'd by my nephews and their friends online in Modern Warfare. I'm the fun uncle. Also known as "easy mode".)

Anyway, check out their site, it has some interesting data. The New York Knicks average the highest number of check-ins per home game. Second worst? Our Utah Jazz. The full NBA rankings are here. (And the playoff rankings here.)

My impression of Jazz fans are that they are a very tech savvy people -- but the raw data suggests that the fans who go to home games are falling behind other teams in check ins. I don't know how many fan check ins you need to get us some star calls in the playoffs -- but it looks like we'll need a lot more than what we're currently getting.

On the All-Rookie teams only 6 lottery picks made it. There are 14 lottery spots. Guess which team had two lottery picks and no All-Rookie team members?

First Team:

Second and "Nope" team after the jump!

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This is a super quick poll. One of the LONG posts I'm doing needs this vital piece of information. By your estimation based upon any of the data (be it stats, what you saw this year, or your gut feeling), how good can Utah Jazz bigman Enes Kanter be? On a playoff team will he one day be good enough, and legit enough, to be a starter? Will he be a career bench guy? Or will he be stuck playing limited minutes?

This season he was the 4th big out of 5 bigs: Al Jefferson and Paul Millsap Started; Derrick Favors was the #3 big in the rotation; and only Jeremy Evans played less minutes inside than Enes did. I think it's only natural and fair to the universe that Enes as the #4 guy this year. Kevin O'Connor didn't draft him at the #3 spot so he could be a career bench guy though (right?). Hypothetically how far can Enes jump up the depth charts? Can he make the jump to #3 big (in terms of talent and production)? Can he do better? Or is he destined to be where he is as a rookie moving forward?

N.B. The aspect of "time" is not in this equation -- this isn't "Can we has Enes as startings please lineups next year super good times yet;" this is down the road at his best. That may come in two years or five years. This is just an evaluation upon his career arc and potential. Dude is only 19 years old, after all.

I love the Utah Jazz.

Sadly, this is a statement that so many people contest. You know, like there’s such a huge bandwagon of South Asian origin, Canadian born, immigrant Jazz fans who live in Detroit. That are Hindu. And loyally followed the Jazz since 1987-1988, aka, before the internet. Still, I find it necessary to write about this point in this, my "I love the Utah Jazz post," post. I was jealous about the other, better, more creative writers who share blogging responsibilities with me at this site. While I started out going hard with the numbers they got a chance to really find their voice. Moni’s posts bring the house down. Clark’s posts generate the most discussion. Yucca’s posts stir the passions of the readers. Prodigal Punk’s posts explain things so that hardcore fans and casual fans alike can enjoy. And everyone loves Diana’s stuff. Shut up, Diana, don’t get a big head or anything. I don’t even need to mention Sujal’s rants, Taz’ Xs and Os, or even the ‘new kids’ Andy and Alec hitting home runs.

Everyone here does such a great job, and their fandom is never in question. No one’s is except, I guess mine. That’s fine. I want all people to be able to express their opinions to me directly. I want to be available and accessible to everyone. Why? Because I like reading 12 angry e-mails a day? No. I want to hear what you have to say because you are fans of the Utah Jazz. And I am, above all, a fan of the Utah Jazz too. You love the team. And I love the team. And by communicating we get a chance to share our love.

I am in love with the Utah Jazz. Let me tell you about it.

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Who do you want the San Antonio Spurs to face in the Western Conference Finals: the Los Angeles Lakers or Oklahoma City Thunder?

Yes, it's a short list . . . there have been only 7 Points / Assists / Rebounds triple doubles in franchise history, and the most recent one happened in 2008. And the FIRST one happened in 1996. That's 12 years. I guess we like to specialize and spread the stats around. That's what I'm sticking with at least . . .

Andrei missed out on the Triple Double / 5x5 by 1 block. I remember that game vividly. It was against the Toronto Raptors and AK-47 dominated, while Matt Harpring kept missing layups to prevent Andrei from getting the triple double. Eventually AK just started passing it to Greg Ostertag who was only sincerely blowing layups. Not doing them on purpose.

Anyway . . . which of our players CURRENT on the team do you think will be the threat to give us our 8th franchise Points / Assists / Rebounds triple double?

Here SC and JR talk with Peter Novak on his great trade proposal post (which you can read here); they re-draft the 2003 NBA draft; and talk about how good it's going to be for the Jazz (an actual training camp! a summer with contact with your players!); and last but not least, how good it is to be a Jazz fan right now.

Well worth the visit. And please do -- I'm not embedding so you have to actually click over there to here it. (Opens in a new windows)

Hey folks, this is the first in a series of posts where we go talk about the best moments this season. I think that our Utah Jazz team overachieved. We made the playoffs when I honestly thought we would have missed out. The Jazz gave me a lot to cheer for this year. Let's try to brain storm a list of all the best ones. If we can end up getting a good number then we can make an NCAA style tournament for this. (Which I think will be really fun)

Check out the working list, after the jump.

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You may or may not know who Bomani Jones is. And you may or may not know that the SBN has their own YouTube channel now. Well, when you put them together to talk about the NBA Playoffs with the theory that some times certain events are 'fixed' by the L . . . well . . . then you get a short but sweet, entertaining video to watch during your lunch break.

He starts talking about the Utah Jazz at the 2:11 mark, and other small market teams like the Milwaukee Bucks. Well, it's not like he's really talking about small market teams, he's exclaiming what their reaction would be if the NBA really did come out and be more transparent with their desires. You can read the accompanying blog post here.

Interesting / fun stuff. Well edited. And yes, here at SLC Dunk we're always looking at new inspiration to bring you new and interesting content (esp Media) in the next few months.

The 2007 draft was epoch changing. It ushered in a new-era of ballers who would have huge impacts upon the league. Greg Oden had been a huge news story. Kevin Durant has become a super star. Al Horford has battled injured to be a second coming of Alonzo Mourning. Yi Jianlian was a terror against stationary chairs in a closed gym. Joakim Noah was the heart of his college team, and playing in a huge market. Even the latter 1st rounders all brought something special, like Marco Belinelli, Wilson Chandler, Rudy Fernandez, Arron Afflalo -- all guys who are legit wings in this league. The second round included Carl Landry, Glen Davis (Big Baby), Josh McRoberts, Kyrylo Fesenko, Marc Gasol, Aaron Gray, and Ramon Sessions. This was, in one way, a stacked draft.

Tom Ziller took a look at it and re-graded the performance of each team, based upon what more information we have now in 2012 -- nearly five years later.

UTAH JAZZ
Morris Almond (25), Kyrylo Fesenko (38)
Grade: C

We're in the no-fault zone of the draft now, but there shouldn't be any credit given for Almond, who has never made it. Fesenko, though hilarious, hasn't done much either.

Check the link here for the full story. And of course, the full 2007 draft can be found here.

And yes, this is like the inception of 'sports news' . . . except if everything was passive point and click based.

By far my fav part was Utah Jazz player Gordon Hayward getting to do all the stuff Andrei Kirilenko was chastised for doing -- and the media falling in love with it. That, and the awkward camera shot at the end . . .