Causation or Luck?
Not writing this blog about Andrei Kirilenko is going to be really hard. I am a big fan of his, but I understand his need to move on. I think that AK is stuck in the wrong system and he has so much more potential if he did get traded to, say, Phoenix. Moving on, today I am going to talk about expectations for the Jazz. I expect them to do a lot this season. We made such huge leaps last year in terms of improvement and progress towards the ultimate goal of winning a championship.
With that being said, does anyone ever get a bad feeling in your stomach when you worry that the reason we made it to the Western Conference Finals was sort of a fluke? Had Dallas not been completely out-coached and out-played in the first round could we have beaten them? There are so many “What If” questions that lurk into my mind when I’m in reverie abut last season’s play-offs. Don’t get me wrong, I think the Jazz were awesome and could have done anything last year, but what percent of that was luck and just flat out good match-ups?
I don’t know the answer to those questions, but I can hope that luck had nothing to do with it and it was completely the Jazz’s ability, but that is a little naïve. So it makes me wonder, can we go further into the play-offs without adding anyone (and by anyone I mean someone Elton Brandish or another big name like that) and losing Derek Fisher and AK (at least mentally)? Our remaining players are only going to continue to improve, and no matter what our record turns out to be, I will remain as big of Jazz fan as ever, but do we have a guaranteed trip back to the Western Conference Finals? Defiantly not, but there is always hope.
4 Comments to “Causation or Luck?”
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I too tend to play “what if” about last year’s playoff run. I mean, a couple unlucky bounces and we might have been knocked out in the first round by the Rockets. That being said, the playoffs were a blast and it was great to advance all the way to the Conference Finals. I just hope that in doing so we didn’t set expectations too high.
I completely agree. We are a really good team, but it isn’t going to be an easy task duplicating what happened last year. And how many lucky bounces do we have left? I guess we will find out. I’m not saying it was all luck last year, but we definitely seemed to have things fall our way more often than not.
As I think about last years play-offs, I think we gained a lot of maturity, and our team gained valuable experience.
I’m a little disappointed that the Jazz weren’t able to seriously upgrade our 2-guard position, I think our team is still missing that Hornasek type shooter who wants to play for that 3rd option, and hit some open jumpers.
I’m ready to watch DW take over the leadership role, and lead our team both on and off the court.
I think the Jazz are looking at a 5-7 seed, unless we can fix AK, or get exceptional development and contributions from our young players Millsap, Almond, Brewer or find surprising contributions from Hart, Price, or CJ.
You’re right, Marion would be twice as good as AK and may even be able to get another run like last season.
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