The Utah Jazz are certainly a rebuilding squad right now and they are now not fighting for a postseason spot as they are fighting for ping pong balls in the draft lottery. Gone are the Stockton and Malone championship contending teams, and the Boozer and Deron Williams competitive teams as well.

The Jazz have plenty of question marks heading into the season. They lost Jerry Sloan, one of the best head coaches in NBA history, to retirement. Right after, they dealt Deron Williams in a trade that gave him to New Jersey in essentially forcing his way out of Utah.

The team finished with a 39-43 mark, but they were never the same after Williams left. They went on a terrible 12-29 record in the final 41 games of their season in transit to a catastrophic finish. They rated 14th in scoring with 99.4 points while allowing 101.3 points good for 19th in the league in scoring defense. Though they passed the ball extremely well going for 23.4 dimes and ranking 4th in the NBA, they are a deplorable 26 th in rebounding with just 39.5 boards a game.

Utah drafted 3rd overall draft pick Enes Kanter and No. 12th pick Alec Burks. These are certainly NBA ready players and can step in and actually contribute right away.

Although letting go of back up PG Ronnie Price will hurt, they were able to re-sign Earl Watson to play the backup point guard role in Utah. They also signed Josh Howard away from the Washington Wizards. Though Howard is clearly on the fall, a good Howard can actually supply a welcome spark of the bench offensively. The small forward has averaged 15.1 points and 5.9 rebounds in his career.

Their starting backcourt will consist of PG Devin Harris and SG Raja Bell. Harris put up 15.2 points and 7.1 dimes between the Nets and the Jazz last year, but he is certainly a major downgrade over Williams. Bell has still to be a quality defender, but he has definitely become a spot up shooter offensively with age. Watson and Jamaal Tinsley, signed as a free agent, will back up Harris. Second-year man Gordon Hayward and Burks will fight for playing time behind Bell.

The starting post players is composed of C Al Jefferson who averaged 18.6 points, 9.7 rebounds and 1.9 blocks, PF Paul Millsap who averaged 17.3 points and 7.6 rebounds and SF C.J. Miles contributing 12.8 points a contest. Jefferson and Millsap are two of the more undervalued players in the league, but they’re both a little undersized. Derrick Favors will back up Millsap, Kanter and Mehmet Okur will look for playing time behind Jefferson, and Jeremy Evans will make attempts to take some minutes away from Miles.

Western Conference Pick: 5th Northwest Division – Our NBA predictions show with the loss of Deron Williams, look for Utah to struggle to win many games as they were a 12-29 team without him down the stretch. Williams ‘ impact to this team was huge, and they will have a hard time trying to duplicate his production going forward.

Though the Jazz did get some nice pieces in the trade and they have stockpiled a lot of young talent they’re going to need time to grow and gel together as a team. Kanter, Burks, Favors and Hayward will be good players along the line, but as of this season, Utah will have the excellence of being the worst team in the Northwest Division in 2012.

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