Our problem wasn't that we don't have a closer last night. Our problem was CJ Miles had THE GAME OF HIS LIFE. And for some reason they kept letting him shoot. How many teams DO have closers? There's only about 10 of them in the league. There are several good teams, including Utah, that don't have a "Go-To-Guy" to close out games.
Deron and Jefferson are both guys that I would call go-to. Jefferson in particular was double-teamed all night by the Blazers and still put up 20-14 on 8/13 shooting with only 1 turnover.
Not buying that. Jefferson and his 16 ppg is not a closer. An effective post player? Sure. Not a closer. In the same way Lamarcus gets double-teamed quite a bit and still has nights where he puts up decent numbers - we can agree LA is no closer either. And D-Will is a fantastic PG, but not a guy you clear out and say "Get us a bucket". I'm assuming by "Closer" we're talking about a guy who ices games by scoring the basketball.
I was replying to the notion that Utah doesn't have a 'go-to' player ... slightly different than a closer.
Utah does have a closer. Deron Williams. When a game is close, the ball is in his hands, and he's either going to run a pick-and-roll and score himself, or run a pick-and-roll and get the ball to the big, or he'll run the pick-and-roll and find the open shooter. We are talking about Utah, after all, so you know pick-and-roll is what's going to happen. And D-Will happens to be quite good at it.
People can define "closer" however they like, but this is more what I had in mind when starting the thread. Really, just who we give the rock to to get the job done in the 4th. Be that by scoring, or creating easy buckets for others; both ideally.
