As Amar posted earlier, the Jazz are going to sign Earl Watson to a guaranteed deal. That's the death blow (why hasn't anyone made all of the Seinfeld fictional films into real movies?) for Sundiata Gaines.
The season of turnover continues. If that is indeed it for Gaines, that's 7 players from last year's club that won't be donning the Jazz uni this season. Watson will be the 6th new face for the team.
That's a guaranteed 11 players under contract with the Jazz with Gaines, Fesenko, Jeremy Evans, and Othyus Jeffers the only ones without guaranteed deals.
Now Fesenko's return looks anything but likely. Something could still get done, but Brian T. Smith's latest report doesn't look promising at all. Should Fess not return, that would seem to open the door for Evans to gets signed plus one more needed to get the minimum 13.
If all of this plays out, the Jazz will have turned over over half the roster from the previous season; that's just something that doesn't happen in Utah.
It feels like the Fesenko situation will be coming to a head shortly. The Jazz have played this game the last few seasons by telling their restricted free agents to go out and shop themselves around and see what they can get. CJ, Millsap, and Matthews have all received huge pay raises via this route (though two of those were courtesy of the Blazers).
It's a financial risk for the Jazz because they're hoping that they can get the players on the cheap. They seem to deal with these things in a strict financial sense. CJ has grown into his contract when some thought it was too much at the time. Millsap will be a bargain for the rest of his deal.
But it seems with Fesenko that the Jazz didn't think he would get a better deal than the one they had offered him. But now he's that girlfriend that you thought nobody else would like but once you dumped her, all of your friends start showing interest.
moni on why Jazz fans want to keep Fess.
Akis hit me up a couple of weeks ago for this article about doing an NBA expansion draft. We had to pick who we'd leave unprotected and why. Suffice to say, he didn't want any of our guys. It's still an interesting read and how he comes up with his team.
Elson was on KFAN last week and when asked about Deron, pronounced his name right the first time and then incorrected (I know that's not a word) himself to say Duhron. I'll give him a pass this time.
That got me to thinking about creating another website which I will post to periodically and then let die until the next season. This one won't have to be updated though as well. It will just have a simple sound file that pronounces Deron's name correctly. Thoughts for the URL?
ItsDeron.com
DerinNotDuhron.com
MyNameIsDeron.com
Others?
Simple poll,