Get back to some college football with Spencer Hall on the show today, one of my favorites, talk college football with I'm gonna bring in Andy Larson today from the salt Lake Tribune to talk little jazz back on the ground in salt Lake after Thanksgiving weekend in Fairfield County. Our next guest a proud Fairfield County boy, Tom Haverstraw on a Monday, Tom, Happy Monday.
How are you.
How was the two oh three? Uh?
You know the deal?
You know, it's intense, brought back a lot of PTSD when you're a rose risen from concrete and you're raised in such a dangerous part of the country.
Tom, it's just, you know, you do what you can to get by.
Yeah, it's all we can really do. The hard scrabble of wasn't there a WWE group the main streets of Greenwich or something like that?
Yes, yes, indeed, good, good memory. Did you You didn't get home to the Motherland for the holiday, did you?
I didn't know, so unfortunately I didn't make it back, but I'm glad you did so you could represent the NBA and all the smart basketball folks quite well back home.
Yes, indeed, yes, indeed, it was fun.
Always good to take some time off to sharpen the sword, as they say. But now back on the ground, there is a report Tom. There's not a lot of interesting jazz stuff, but there's a report already that trade discussions are being had involving Jordan Clarkson, Colin Sexton, John Collins as well. I still don't believe anybody wants to pay John Collins twenty six million.
But are you expecting?
And look, this is different than years past, because they might be in a perfect spot.
They're horrible.
They do not need to break it down like they have over the past couple of years when they've kind of surprised some people. But are you expecting and potentially an active Danny Ainge justin Zanik with his jazz roster prior to the trade deadline.
I suspect. So, I mean, the fact that they're still on the roster is surprising to me, given that, you know, over the past year or two or three when I've been on this show, it seems like the direction of the franchise from the top on down. It seems like they're going for a rebuild, or that they should be in position for a rebuild, and those players don't exactly fit that timeline very well. Now keep in mind, John Collins is not like an old veteran. He's still twenty seven.
He's in his prime, and so for anyone acquiring him, it's not just that you know, this is a guy over the hill. He's not Jordan Clarkson's age. Clarkson is almost, you know, turning thirty three this summer, So they are a little bit different points in their career. Colin Sexton and John Collins I think would be more appealing to a contender. But certainly Jordan Clarkson has been in that kind of that kind of playoff atmosphere with Lebron and trying to do that at a high level. So I
suspect that there will be interest come the deadline. Maybe not right now, but you know, I even say, think that team in LA that they just lost to in horrible fashion, just a horrible circumstance there at the end.
I do think that those are the types of teams that will come knocking, because when you have a superstar like Kevin Durant or Lebron James or Stephen Curry, the colck is ticket and they will need a veteran bodies that they can trust down the stretch, and a lot of those teams have young players in the rotation that maybe they could get some veterans like Colin Saxon and John Collins who have been around the block a few times.
So Cody Williams, who is the highest pick the Jazz made in the draft a year ago, it hasn't looked good at all. I mean, he's still so young, he has to gain weight, you know, he just gets pushed off the ball both sides of the floor, and he's going to spend some time in the G League. So for me, I'll just say, Tom, I have no issue
with any of this at all. But there are two sides to the equation, Like, if you're gonna if you're gonna have a top ten pick on your roster, you want some signs that show that you made the right pick, and there haven't been those signs. But on the other side of it, the G League is there for this very thing. Go Bear spent a ton of time in the G League his rookie year. So the dynamic of having a top ten pick that just hasn't looked good
at all, spending time in the G league. What what's the Tom habersher What would you say to the fan base about that that dynamic that they're dealing with here in Salt Lake.
Yeah, it's not fun to have to deal with this and the growing pains of a twenty year old trying to play in a man's league. And you know, I cover on a nightly basis the Portland Trailblazers doing their broadcast as their analytics insider. And one thing that I've had to remind myself is that Scoot Henderson is twenty years old. It is really hard to remind yourself that when you're watching this league. It's not like these guys have a number on their back that says how old
they are. But we do have to remember that at his first year. It was rough for Kevin Durant. His first year is rough for Russell Westbrook. You know, Chris Middleton wasn't even in the NBA as a twenty year old. You know, he was trying to make it in the G League and trying to come up through there, and
he was a nobody. You look at Grady dick over in in Toronto, who's looked excellent this year, who looked one of the worst NBA players last year statistically and just with the eye test, he was pretty bad last year. And what he's done this year has been a totally different player. And you know, you look at the numbers, Cody Williams is not, you know, performing at a high level. But remember, you know, his older brother was a bit of a project too, wasn't necessarily putting up these kind
of numbers. Similarly, at Colorado, it wasn't like Cody Williams was you know, All Pac twelve or whatever at that at that level, so he was all freshman team, but it wasn't necessarily he was a no, no doubt number ten picks. So it was a bit of a project to begin with. And this is what it looks like when you're a twenty year old. Not everybody's Lebron Not ever,
everybody is Victor Wemanyata. And so unfortunately, when you do have Cody Williams, you're gonna have to press the pause button on your expectations and wait until he's about twenty two to twenty three before you can make some real evaluations on whether he's gonna be worth the prospect investment.
At that point, when last we spoke Tom, the Jazz had actually, even though they weren't winning games, the offense really took a big jump and improved quite a bit over about a ten game sample size. Again, they weren't winning, but they started making shots. Marketing came back well. Since you and I last spoke, the offense has come really crashing back down over the past three games. One oh three against Denver, one oh six against the MAVs, one
oh five last night against the Lakers. What do you attribute? And maybe it's just youth, Maybe it's just inconsistency, inconsistency. Maybe Tom, they're just supposed to be really, really bad. But what have they stopped doing according to the analytics or the numbers that they were doing so well when their offense actually look pretty decent.
Well, I think the NBA it's it is unfortunately a make or miss league, and that goes for the downtown. You know, when that that's an offense that if they're shooting well from downtown, they're going to look a whole lot better. And when against Dallas they're shooting twenty three percent from downtown, that's going to be a problem. And so when the offense is just they can't buy a bucket. Uh,
that's it's tough. It's tough sletting. And when you're playing the Lakers, right, even when you shoot well from beyond the arc and from the floor, you still have to stop turning the ball over and you still have to get stops in order to win those games. And they just didn't get enough of both, you know, like like the idea that the Jazz, with their injuries in and out of the lineup, are going to be consistent from
night tonight, it's really tough. But when their best player, Larry Markinen has had a couple of scuffles there in terms of his shooting, you're not going to get great performances offensively because there's so much that is dependent on him. And you know, he didn't shoot well against San Antonio and certainly not against Dallas, and that when you're the head of the snake is not shooting well, it's a lot harder for the rest of the guys to play
off of them. And so look, it really is. I did this story for Yahoo Sports about the lack of dunks in the NBA and whether that's attributable to the three point you know, obsession these days, and it's still true that this year Jordan Clarkson and Colin Sexon have not had a single dunk in any game this season. Last year, Colin Sexton had twenty three dunks and Jordan Clarkson had thirteen. So they've had thirty six donks last year and we're a quarter the way through the season
and they have zero. Why is that, Well, the best way to get dunks on the other end is to get stops defensively, get out in transition, get out in fast breaks, have the ability to have numbers in transition. And so how much of this is on the offense or some sort of x's and o's that aren't being run, or whether it's you know, guys in and out of the lineup, and how much of it is just defensively? We like to think that offensive defense are in silos, but the fact of the matter is the defense. Utah's
defense is really really tough this year. Right now, they're bottom three defensively at one hundred and eighteen points allowed every one hundred possessions. And so much of the offense in the NBA is about getting out in transition, getting stops,
and they just haven't been able to do that. And so I think part of the reason why you aren't seeing those dunks, and part of the reason why you haven't seen those easy buckets on the offensive end is because a lot of times they're making it hard for themselves to get out in transition without getting stops.
All right, last thing about the Jazz then we'll move on, because you know, Tom and I try not to be super redundant in our interviews, but I do believe they like Keyante a lot, and I do believe you know whenever, like I did this podcast, this Knicks podcast prior to the Jazz Knicks game a couple of weeks ago, and their lead question was who's going to be around when they're actually good?
And honestly, the answer is marketing.
And I don't know, But I do think there's room for Keyante because in spurts he does show some things, but he still is not making shots.
And over the past five games five.
Turnover, six turnovers, two turnovers, five turnovers, six turnovers. So he's not making shots, he makes horrible decisions with the ball, he doesn't guard point of attack. I don't know what to make of who he is now and what he can be. Is this a result of playing with a bunch of other you know, young players, a franchise that's unserious about winning this year, or is it time to really wonder whether or not the Jazz are long for Kiante George.
I think it's really tough. The NBA is incentive structure. It's tough for coaches, it's tough off front offices, and it's tough for guys like Kiante George to learn the right way to play basketball because losing is incentivized. The NBA sets up a situation in which the teams that are the worst get the best chances at the star players in the draft. Of course, it's really hard to pick which one is the star and which one turns
out to be, you know, a pumpkin. But the idea of hey man, this guy's twenty one years old, he's not really figuring things out. Maybe you just throw him into the wolves and say, hey, figure it out on the fly, and those that experience will give you enough repetitions to learn how to play at the NBA level. Because the fact of the matter is if the Utah Jazz had Chris Paul on the team, or Mike Conley on the team, or someone who is a really capable
point guard. I mean even just take like Tias Jones in Phoenix can't say George isn't playing thirty thirty five minutes tonight. He's not. And so a lot of this is just he is playing out of position, or at least he is playing a lot more minutes than he would otherwise. If the NBA was set up in a structure where you have to bide your time and you go to the G League and you go and you get those reps and it doesn't have to be at
the NBA level. But the problem is, you know, some of the incentives in this league are so perverse, where like you don't even know if this is part part of the plan. Is like because of the ping pong balls, do you let a guy like Kiance George play through these struggles and turn over the ball four or five times a game? And you know what, that's okay because you know and the last thing you want to be is in the middle, and he helps you get into the bottom of that in the name of player development.
And it just thinks I don't like the way that the NBA is set up like that. I personally think that the way that the draft lottery works, it creates a lot of intentional mediocrity. And for Kiance George, I don't even know right now if I've changed my opinion of him, because so much of the NBA right now is just making sure that you're on one path or the other, and so for me, it's like, I do think that the right path for the Jazz is to get another bite at the apple at the top of
the draft next year. But it makes things really difficult to evaluate a guy like Keyance George, who's still can hit a shot, and he it's not really the three point shooting that bothers me, it's the ability to finish in the paint. His two point percentage has fallen from forty six percent last season to forty two percent this year, and that's really the problem. Is a guy that, yes he's young, but he still hasn't been able to be a efficient score into the paint or a decision maker
into the paint. And that's you know, he's a he's a bigger guard at six ' four, but it doesn't feel like he's figured out the floater game or finishing around the rim enough to be, you know, show some promise where you can build around him confidently. So I've probably moved off Keyante George as a foundation member or a pillar for this organization until he can develop further. And I have to remind you and and I know
you know this. He's twenty one and it's really hard, but you hope that there's some glimmers of that potential coming.
Yeah, well said, I mean, the issue, Tom, and we'll move off the jazz because there's a lot of other things I want to talk to you about today. You know, the issue is even you know, I always use Donovan as an example that team wasn't supposed to be great. It was the post Heyward, Okay, let's see what we have here, And even though they weren't winning, there was, you know, at a really high level. I Quinn did
a hell of a job that year. There were so many Donovant moments where you're just like, this feels real. And I don't know that we've seen enough Keyante moments that feel real and sustainable. But to your point, you know, it could change when he has better playmates than the sandbox.
So we'll have to see. But I want to move over to the rockets.
I mean, you know, emy Udoka after everything got loose in Boston.
You knew that he was going to land on his feed because he's.
So highly thought of, And I don't know how real it is, but at this point they have to be talked about as a team that is a very pleasant early season surprise after beating OKC and they sit second in the West, only half a game behind the Thunder. I don't know how many people saw this coming. What's your take on the Rockets so far?
Subscribers to the Finder would tell you I saw coming Spence. I had great preseason. I thought that they were a title contender. I thought that this team with Alprin shanegun who I thought was the best player coming out in that class, I thought you should have been the number one pick. The way that he dominated the Adriatic League on the Turkish team where he's eighteen years old and dominating a grown men in that league. You gotta take
him at least in the top five. And he fell all the way to sixteen, and I thought, okay, see for sure would have picked him, and they didn't. They moved off the pick. The Houston Rockets are monsters. Defensively, Tarry eathen Amen Thompson, Dylan Brooks. These guys are vicious on the perimeter. And so when you have a guy like Alpera and Shangun who isn't a classic rim protector, you surround him with Fred van Vliet and then just
dogs Doberman's defensively that are going to be vicious. And I thought, this is a team that's going on my title tiers right away. You know they're young, They're still young. These guys are twenty twenty one, twenty two years old. But I'm a huge believer in Alpera and Shangoon. I also think at the second level of this. One reason why I was a believer and put them on my title tiers before the season even started is because of their ability to upgrade and swing for the fences in
a trade. So this team has picks the Phoenix picks that they traded for. They're basically shorting the Phoenix Suns. Ironically, they want to get Kevin Durant or a type of player like Kevin Durant, and I think they have the amo to do that. It's just whether the contenders are going to play ball. Giannis ended a coop of Damian Lillard, Kevin Durant. They are ready to go pouncing on a talent like that. The question is whether they do it. And for me, the Houston Rockets with Fred van Vliet,
Albera and Shangun. I'm not a huge fan of Jalen Green, but those's defenders are so fun to watch. The Terror twins on Men Thompson and Tari Easton, They're perfect and they're great fits next to Alburn, Shangun and Fred Van Vliet. I love the way that they play. I still think they need another star to make the Elite, but that might happen this offseason when Jalen Green's contract becomes a little bit more palatable and the poison pill provision is
pulled away. I think the Houston Rockets are going to go big game hunting this summer, and it may even be at the deadline if the Western Conference is there
for the taking, and I think it is. I think the Western Conference at the top, you know, the Dallas Mavericks, Minnesota Timberwolves, Denver Nuggets, they haven't gotten off to a great start this year, and the Houston Rockets, they can absolutely win the win the West and come out of the West if they do upgrade and I think they got the assets to do it too.
Want to get your thoughts on the San Antonio Spurs now who didn't have a three game winning streak until March of last year. Chris Paul, Harrison Barnes obviously veterans that have won at a very high level in this league, and you know they've won four straight. I believe they're seven and three in their last ten. Wemban Yama gets
another triple double. And this is a franchise that I think is going to be fascinating to watch as far as how they handle this next generation Special player progress report from Tom habershow on Victor Wembayama and the San Antonio Spurs.
I love it. I love it, Chris Paul coming to this team, Stephen Castle, I love that. Rookie from Yukon Donovan Klingen and Stephen Castle have been outstanding so far this season. Really nice draft. Victor Webbin Yama is the real deal again. I'm gonna plug at tomdfinder dot com.
I put the San Antonio Spurs as a title contender before the season, one of my fifteen teams to watch, and I feel vindicated on that front because they've made strides this season, not just offensively, but I think with Harrison Barnes and Chris Paul, there's an organization and a professionalism to their offense that they didn't have last year. And I think the Sohn Jeremy Sohen point guard experiment, I think was a real problem last year and really
set them back in their development. And as soon as they handed the keys to Wemby at center and unleashed him, and now he's shooting you know, nine to threes a game at thirty five percent, but much higher as of late, where he's shooting you know, fourteen thirteen threes in a game. He just looks like, you know, he's just scratching the surface, which is super scary because he's already leading the league
in block shots. He's already getting you know, in uh these triple double categories doing things that we would expect, you know, someone at twenty five years old. He's twenty one. Chris Paul is who he is at this point. We know that he's a guy who's gonna be an organizer. Offensively, he's as as smart of a point guard as anybody, and you pair him with the IQ the basketball que Vic Victor Webbinyama. It's gonna be really, really good. I just wish they had, you know, another guy there, Devin
vessel Uh. He's he's trying to make his way back after having a really nice start at his career, getting that extension with the team. I love the San Antonio Spurs, and I think if Damian Lillard, if Trey Young, if Kevin Durant, if these types of names become available at some point, I would absolutely try to make a move. If you're Greg Popovich and that organization trying to figure out a way to maximize Victor Webbin Yama, I think
he's surrounding himself with veterans. I think they'll be pleasantly surprised to learn that he's ready to go now. He's ready to win right now, and I would love to see them upgrade as well. Question is you know, same thing with Houston, same thing with Utah, Same thing with San Antonio. Like who is that star, who is that disgruntled star that will become available at the trade deadline? I don't know who that is right now. Maybe it's in Minnesota. I don't know who it's going to be.
But at this point, those two teams Houston and San Antonio. If they really want to make a big jump, they can. I've been believers from day one with these teams, and I think they're going about it the right way.
All right, before I say you loose, you just referenced the Tea Wolves, and this year the returns from the Gobart and Mitchell deal starts coming the Jazz way. My guess is the Cavs pick isn't going to be great. We don't have time to talk about them right now, but Minnesota as of now nine and ten, they're three and eight in their last eleven and you know we're getting greedy around here. Maybe we have a couple of lottery picks now, not just the Jazz pick, but the
te Wolves pick. Obviously there's so much time ahead, but we are at the twenty game mark, the Thanksgiving mark where front offices do look and kind of dive in to see what they have, what sort of hand they've been dealt. How concerned do you think Timberwolf stand should be about their team? And is there a chance the Jazz could have Lady Luck shot upon them and this could really be a lottery situation.
I think it's certainly possible. I wasn't a huge fan from the Minnesota standpoint the trade for Julius Randall and doctor Devincenzo. I wrote about it on my sub stack tomafinder dot com this morning about the returns on that trade have been abysmal for the Minnesota Timberwolves. You know,
you look at what Anthony Edwards is saying publicly. We just taped Basketball Illuminati that will be coming out on Wednesday breaking down the very cryptic but not so cryptic postgame press conference from last week after they lost to the Sacramento Kings. Anthony Edwards just all but calling out Julius Randall, a guy who has one block this season. Julius Randall, who's played in every game this season as the power starting power forward for a team that is
thought to be contending, has one block this year. You know, when you talk about Anthony Edwards, he says, we're soft. We're a bunch of babies who don't talk like it doesn't have to be. You know, we don't have to look too far to see who he's referring to. And Julius Randall is the least efficient ISO player in the NBA this season. He has one block to his name. Which is one of the lowest rates in NBA history,
NBA history for a big man. This is a team that had a defensive identity, as Aunt said, and now they've lost it in a big reason why is because they traded for Julius Randall. This guy's a he's in a contract year and you're wondering why not everyone's on the same page. Anthony Edwards says, Hey, there's guys with certain agendas on this team. They don't figure out the things quickly. There might be some changes here. And they've got Nasried, who I think is the better player than
Julius Randall. Not a fan of Julius you can probably tell it by this segment, but I think Minnesota they've got some problems here because we just saw Anthony Edwards over in Paris. He was around championship caliber players. He knows how to do it, he knows what kind of you know, work ethic kind of players you need to do that. And is really Julius at Randall that guy?
I don't think so, and so we'll see. But right now they're nine to ten and their defense is not elite right now, and I suspect that there's gonna be more smoke with it. There's gonna be more fire where that smoke that you're seeing the last couple of weeks. Anthony Edwards is not going to be quiet about this situation. We know that, all right? Tom?
Where can people go find all of your work? You are a busy, busy boy.
Yeah. The Blazers broadcasts we do every single night, The Blazer's Broadcast with Kevin collabor lamar heard Brooke Olton dam go check us out on the past. Also, Tom Definder dot com is my sub stack and I do Basketball Illuminati every week wherever you listen to podcasts as well as writing at Yahoo Sports The Kevin O'Connor show. You can catch me twice every week over at Yahoo Sports podcast with my show The Big Number, which comes out
every Thursday. So did I miss anything there? Oh? Every week on Mondays at around this time, you can catch me on your show.
Spence, Yes, sir, the most important one there.
At the end, Tom, thanks for your time, man, have a great week with chat soon.
Okay, thanks Bude, you too.