Quote Originally Posted by SoCalPat View Post
This isn't football, where very little can be gained by putting a young/weak team against Alabama. Scheduling is just as much a part of player development as scrimmaging, film session and individual workouts. Part of the reason we are where we're at in terms of lousy scheduling is our coach thinks the same way you do. It's short-term thinking that's highly detrimental. And we don't get better as a result.

We saw how Kuzma's game got better leading up to the draft playing against better competition on a regular basis. Why is weak scheduling even defended any more?
I never said weak scheduling is good. I don't believe that. I said I don't think we need to worry about strength of schedule because we have a team that will be lucky to get above .500 and does not need to worry about the strength of schedule in terms of the post season.

As far as Kuzma goes, I have a lot of questions about his improvement. First, I am happy for him. Playing against better competition might be part of it, but it is also possible that he worked harder to get drafted than he did in the previous 6 months. Maybe there was simply nobody on the roster to challenge him in practice and he knew it. I don't know what the answer is, but it is clear that he greatly outperformed his season in his combine and pre-draft workouts. None of the so-called experts had him as a first round selection and many had him as a borderline draft pick. Something changed for him and if I were the Utah coaches I would be trying to figure out what that was, because I don't think he played like a first round NBA draft pick most last season when he obviously had the talent and ability to do so.