The Downbeat - 20 October 2009 - #82 - The Crane Edition

In the final year of his max deal, should he exercise his player option, Deron Williams would still be getting paid less than AK will next year.  No fault of AK's of course.

  With tonight's game against the Blazers, we should start to see a few things.  First, we should see some semblance of a regular season rotation along with regular season minutes.  It's still pre-season of course, but we only have two games left until we open at Denver.  Second, we'll see if the KOOF and Fesenko can build on their semi-successful game against Charlotte.  Granted, it was Charlotte, but it's something.  Finally, this will probably be the last time we see Johnson, Nelson, and probably Suton.  I imagine the team will keep Dupree and Matthews around until the last game before making a decision which of them, if any, they're going to sign.

Caption contest,

via Yahoo! Sports

  I'll re-hash this question from an older Downbeat.  But with the CJ Miles injury and with Boozer staying, how does that impact the record for the Jazz for the first month of the season (through Nov)?  There are 17 games with 10 at home and 7 on the road.

I originally prognosticated a 10-7 record with only 1 win coming on the road.  I'm going to go nuts and bump that to two wins on the road.  So I'll go with an 11-6 record.  If you want to know whether the Jazz will be able to win on the road or not, look at the NY game for an indicator.  First game of a 4-game swing.  The bright lights of NY.  We haven't won there since Feb of 2004 despite playing against Knick teams that we should have beat.