The Downbeat - 14 September 2009 - #56 - The DB Edition
by Basketball John on Sep 14, 2009 9:16 AM MDT
in Features - Downbeats
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So, how about Michael Jordan? To steal a line from SportsCenter, "The replay confirms what we already suspected, he's a prick." Russell is ready.
Was it the weekend of the d-bag?
The original estimate was $10,000, but it turns out Deron Williams and Kyle Korver will be donating at least $15,000 and possibly as much as $20,000 to The Christmas Box House shelters for children from the charity dodge ball tournament they hosted Saturday.
A list of pics from around the blogosphere of the event (I didn't link straight to the blogs because they're almost all family-type blogs that probably don't want the attention), here, DWill, Ronnie P, Korver, Deron, Korver, and Korver.
The Jazz close out the season with 6 games in April. I don't think it's as brutal as last year's finish, but any games on the road are brutal for the Jazz. They're home against OKC and PHX and travel to LA, Houston, NOLA, and GS. I say we'll take the two at home and get at least one on the road. They've seemed to play well at NOLA and Houston for some reason. They should be able to take GS, but finishing out the season 3-3 might be seen as a plus.
So if you've been keeping track at home, that's a 52-30 prediction for the season. That's 4 games better than last year and would have put us 6th in the west. Were the injuries only worth about 4 games? 52 wins will put us right in the thick of things again where we could finish anywhere from 2nd to 7th again.
I've been trying to avoid the topic because it's about to become all you hear about in a week or so. That's right, Boozer is going to be back soon. Even mentioning it here is overkill. I don't think there's some magic deadline that you can look at before Boozer gets traded, if he does at all. We saw Iverson get traded a couple of games into the season.
The only real deadline will be the trade deadline. That's when the Jazz would have to trade him by in order to save any money under the salary cap. It wouldn't be the worst thing for the Jazz for his money to just come off the books.
Besides the obvious reasons of wanting to trade Boozer, my biggest reason that they do something now is so that we don't waste a year of Deron just sitting at the status quo. He's going to have a lot of years ahead of him. But without a shooter (maker) at the two and/or some defensive help in the middle, I don't see how we're getting past the second round.
That's why I hope that O'Connor can pull something off and acquire somebody early for Boozer. It would be nice to have that someone play with the team all season instead of trying to have to pick up things in the middle.
So while the opening weekends of college and NFL football cooled my thirst a bit for sports, it only whetted my appetite for the NBA. So as the Jazz season starts to get underway (thank goodness the Jazz start camp earlier than usual), I want to hit on what the biggest Jazz stories of the season will be.
So what will be the biggest stories for the Jazz?
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#2
The dodgeball tournament was a riot. I still have a sweet bruise on my arm from trying to catch a ball that D-Will threw. In hindsight, that might have been a bad idea. :)
I can’t believe how tired and sore I am from playing. Maybe I’m just getting old, or maybe dodgeball is a little harder than I anticipated.
1.
I have a strong distaste of the Lakers and Kobe. And I never stick up for Kobe, but after listening to what MJ said during his induction speech, I don’t even think Kobe would have been so petty and childish! Think about that for a minute.
In that article talking about Russell being ready to play Jordan, MJ says something like “remember back in 1994…”. It made me think of that scene in Napoleon Dynamite when Uncle Rico says “Back in ’82 I could throw a pig skin a quarter mile.” Neither of those guys can let go of their glory days!
i agree with what you said about kobe
i hate kobe just as much as the next guy, but i can’t see him doing what mj did. i can see shaq doing it though.
Jordan was definitely class-less. It started out sensibly enough, thanking all those who presented competition for him, but by the end he was just talking smack and making fun of people. I was very put off. If I were Barkley, I’d be miffed that he didn’t get a mention either. No grace at all. What a shame for the best ever to be so graceless in real life.
I'll make it coach.
1) Yep, watch Stock’s, Sloan’s, Robinson’s, and Stringer’s speeches to see what class acts are. I was especially impressed with how Stringer didn’t sound at all like, “women don’t get the breaks men do”. I watched Lynnette Woodard play while we were both students at Kansas (she was the first female athlete at Kansas to have her number retired), so it was great to see her up there on the stage with Coach Stringer. Robinson even started out his speech in the right order (for purposes of domestic bliss) by thanking his wife and challenging his kids. Did Jordan ever even mention his wife or kids? They call him the GOAT, but I didn’t think it meant he would act like one.
2) Two more class acts are Deron and Kyle. With so many players not wanting to even come to SLC for one or two games a year, it’s great to see these men actively participating in our community and contributing to it.
4-5) Is this too obvious to mention? Boozer’s trade or non-trade will continue to be one of the top Jazz stories of the year. Another will be watching which of the young studs turns into a solid center for us (if any)—Fesenko and Koufos being the obvious dueling duo to become Okur’s backup.
Unfortunately, unless Boozer is traded....
… there will be no playing time for either the Koof or Fess (barring injury of course). It will be a three man rotation of Boozer, Okur and Milsap at the 4 & 5. This my big fear: Boozer is not in the future, but we will play him this year at the expense of team unity and development of our young bigs, just so we don’t get the “bad end” of a trade.
boozer needs to be traded asap
not because i hate him, but because having him on the roster will stunt the development of sap, who is obviously our pf of the future. sap needs to get playing time against starters and work up his stamina, and he does that by playing more minutes. how is supposed to get more minutes when boozer’s there? while it makes sense for the team financially to wait for a good trade offer or even to just let his contract expire, it does not make sense for the team trying to make and go far in the playoffs.
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