SALT LAKE CITY — Storylines ahead of the Jazz’s preseason matchup in Salt Lake City, from Utah and Oklahoma City’s shootarounds.
Enes Kanter out for Jazz’s game vs. OKC
Oklahoma City Thunder coach Billy Donovan announced in his meeting with the media that Enes Kanter will not play tonight against the Utah Jazz in Salt Lake City.
Kanter is not sitting out the Jazz game due to an injury. “Enes is fine,” Donovan stated. “It gave us a chance to let him play against Denver, and also rest him a little bit more.” But Kanter’s absence today due to rest means that he doesn’t have to appear in front of media during shootaround, pregame or postgame.
This is, well, awfully convenient. You’ll remember that last time Kanter came to Utah, he set the world on fire with his comments pregame, about how the Jazz’s organization paled to Oklahoma City’s, about how he hadn’t tried his hardest in a Jazz uniform, and about how the only thing he’d miss about Utah were the mountains.
He then went on the court, solicited boos (literally, he asked the crowd to boo him), none of the Jazz players talked to him pregame, and played a fairly poor game as his team lost.
Now, the Thunder have the right to hold Kanter out. And, as Ben Anderson, KSL.com contributor, noted on Twitter, it may be smart of them to do so:
The Thunder don’t have another preseason game, this is their last game until the regular season starts next week. So, they’re resting him for a game 8 days from now. I am skeptical, essentially, that this rest would have happened if this game was anywhere else besides Utah.
Jazz looking for defensive discipline
Quin Snyder hasn’t been happy with his team’s defense over the last three games against Portland and Phoenix. So for tonight, defense is the number one priority for the Jazz, especially against OKC’s offensively talented roster.
“I want to see where we are in terms of our defensive discipline,” Snyder said. “I think in Hawaii, we played really hard, which can be misinterpreted as being good.”
Now, there’s a need to show that the Jazz can do well defensively even when they are tired, against disciplined competition that will be difficult to be aggressive against.
Snyder also used a brilliant analogy to describe what his team is going through:
“If you speak a foreign language, and you spend a couple years in another country and go back, it takes you some time. How quickly you assimilate depends on how deeply those habits are ingrained. When you have a team that’s done them for about a third of a season, logic would tell you that’s like a semester abroad.”
Jazz make appearance in NBA GM survey
Every year, the NBA asks the league’s general managers to answer a survey about the state of their sport. This year was no exception, and the Utah Jazz appeared in a few of the responses.
- Rudy Gobert received a vote for the player “most likely to have a breakout season” in 2015-16.
- Gobert also received a vote for “best defensive player in the NBA.”
- Gobert received 10% of votes on best interior defensive player in the NBA, good for 4th in the league.
- The Jazz received the 3rd most votes for “best home court advantage.”
- The Jazz received a vote for “team likely to improve the most” in 2015-16.
Source: http://www.ksl.com
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