Big Al. The Utah Jazz blogoshpere has never known such a lightning rod. Big Al sparked debate from the moment it was announced the Jazz traded for him. The debate raged through his several years with the team, though the Utah Jazz will move on without Big Al, center Al Jefferson, next season.
Jefferson has reportedly agreed to a three-year, $41 million free-agent deal with the Charlotte Bobcats.
Al Jefferson has been a consistent scorer and rebounder throughout his career. (Photo Credit/Saltcityhoops/Flickr.com)
This should be good news for all Utah Jazz fans. Don’t get me wrong, I actually like Big Al. Al is one of the best low-post scorers in the game. His moves are dizzying. He consistently beats good defenders and makes young, inexperienced NBA bigs look terribly incompetent. I remember several occasions watching with a grin as Big Al went to work on youngster after youngster and almost feeling sorry for them. The man just knows how to score. Off the court the man is even more impressive. He is a genuinely good person. It is hard not to smile when hearing him chat with the media on most occasions, especially after a win. By all accounts he was a positive influence in the locker room and we have all heard the stories of how he took Utah’s young bigs (who were in line to take his job from him) under his wing and helped them develop their game. I believe it’s impossible to interview Enes Kanter without him referring to Big Al as his brother and praising him for the work he has done with the young Turk. Having mentioned many positive things about Al (and leaving out much more), it’s also important to recognize there are reasons to believe the Utah Jazz will be better off without him.
Now I’m not going to go into detail about Al’s deficiencies, but it’s obvious there are some. Defensively, there isn’t much (or anything) he does better than average. Take this for example: Of the Jazz’s top five most used five-man lineups last season, Al was in each of the top four. Each of these four had a negative plus-minus. The only group of the top five that was positive was the fifth-most used lineup, the first to not include Big Al.
As bad as the defense was last year with Al in the game, there was an even more negative effect that Al had on the team. It’s not something that can be easily measured by stats or numbers and it’s not really Al’s fault either. It’s a system issue. How, specifically, do the Utah Jazz want to play basketball? With Al Jefferson, the answer for coach Ty Corbin and the Jazz was a stagnant, low-block, Al-based offense (“Al-fense.” as I have heard it called, notably at SLC Dunk).
If you recall, last preseason was full of talk about how this team was going to be changing focus to a more transition-based team. The addition of Mo Williams, Marvin Williams and Randy Foye was supposed to bring a more up-tempo feel to the group with some good transition shooters. If nothing happened in transition, the Jazz hoped to run through some more complex offensive sets and revert to the Al-fense as more of a last resort. This was tremendous, maybe Al could work with the Jazz after all! The Utah Jazz seemed to be built as a very capable transition team with the exception of Al, but Al should be able to blend into this style after a while right? Wrong. If you watched the Jazz last year, you know that this did not happen. Al-fense was in full effect last season.
The worst thing about the team’s reliance on this style of play? The effect on Derrick Favors. Favors has the pure athletic ability and enough basketball skills to immediately be an above-average offensive player if used correctly. His long-term potential is unreal. He has shown the ability to blow by defenders when he is able to face up. He can be truly terrifying for defenders in a pick-and-roll.
Yet, Ty Corbin continually ran Favors through the Al-fense, feeding him the ball in the low post with the results often being cringe-worthy. Whether this is a coaching failure centered on Ty is a topic for another day, but I would say Al probably formed his low-post finesse game because he had great touch and a bigger body than most, but no athletic ability or explosiveness to go around or over defenders. Favors seems to be the opposite right now, with iffy touch but incredible athleticism. Therefore it would seem to make sense that Favors could perform better offensively in a system that fit his strengths better. Without Al, it seems very unlikely the Jazz stick with the Al-fense of the last few seasons and instead may move toward a system that puts a primary focus on developing the game of the young quintet of potential stars the Jazz have in their possession. This is exciting for Jazz fans, whether it produces wins immediately or not.
With all of the talk from the front office of the Utah Jazz being “lean and flexible” this season, it seems to be the consensus that the Jazz will take quite a big step backwards without Al Jefferson next season. This may be the case, but I would argue that a change of offensive system and having much better defenders on the floor would mean that the most used five-man lineups of next season will not be much worse, if at all, than those of last season. The decline will come from the bench not being nearly as deep. But that’s exciting too because, you know, Andrew Wiggins.