The Downbeat - 10 July 2009 - #55 - The SBNation.com Is Your New Homepage Edition

My post on Stockton is up.  I didn't get quite finished with Sloan so look for that tomorrow most likely.  Probably could have made it about 10 times longer if I had put some more effort into it.  I don't think we've heard the last from Stockton.  Wait until all of his kids are in college and I think he returns to the game in some capacity.  I hope.

In case you haven't heard the news, SBNation.com has been redesigned to be more than just a directory of SBN sites.  I really, really, like it.  And I'm not getting paid extra or anything to say that.  The new StoryStream feature really has the potential to be big.  You can read more about it here and here.

Basically what StoryStream does it put all of the relevant articles to one story in one place.  So when Boozer gets traded, you'll be able to follow everything that's going on in one place.  And the stories are from around the net and not just SBNation.  Each league has its own page, here's the NBA one for example.

The stories are all hand-picked, so it's not some bot looking for key words to link to.

  The Jazz won't be able to get through March fast enough.  17 games in 30 nights.  Yikes.  That includes only 7 home games.  Outside of New Orleans and Boston at home, the rest should be gimmees pretty much.  New Orleans should be a gimmee.

If it wasn't for the road play of the Jazz in recent years, I would look at the teams we're playing and say it's not that bad.  We're only playing two back-to-back games and a four-game stretch is the longest.  But still, 17 games that month is a lot. 

I'm going to say we go 4-6 on the road.  Sad when that sounds like an optimistic prediction.  I'll say we take out Boston at home and go 7-0. That's 11-6 on the month.  I'll take that.

  The KOOF has averaged almost 7 & 4 in the Euro League tourney in just about 14 minutes of play.  He also leads the team in blocked shots with 1.3 a game.  If you head to EuroBasket.org, there's a couple of highlights of him on the main page right now.  I hope his play in training camp and the pre-season moves him up the depth chart.

In my efforts to cover the Flash a bit more this season, I'm going to attend the open tryouts that are being held on the 26th.  I won't be trying out myself (I'd plan on going to Sloan's house for a personal tryout), but I'll be there covering it.

I would love to see if a current NBA guy could go incognito and see how they would fare.  Probably not worth the injury risk, but if someone were to show up Steve Nash style, that would be fantastic.