You won't find a better recap and summary of Jazz media day from around the net than at Living & Dying. It does me no good to even try.
My favorite quote of the entire thing is Fesenko's, "Deep, deep in my heart I'm a Jazzman. All this summer, I knew I was going to come back. I couldn't imagine my career without Jerry."
Every press guy should all chip in and buy Fess a new car. It's small payback for all of his money quotes.
Raja Bell and Al Jefferson seem to be having a contest as to who can endear themselves to the fan base more. Here's Raja up first,
"It's a fabulous place to live. I think it's what you put stock in," said Bell, who spent the past few days unloading boxes and settling back in. "If you want to be out until 4 in the morning, 5 in the morning - if you want to be doing those kinds of things, then probably Salt Lake's not for you.
"But if you want to win, there are very few franchises that have a winning record like the Jazz do. If you want a community to support you, I challenge you to go somewhere and find people that support you more than the Jazz fans do. So, money is money. If there's no difference there, it's what's personally important to you."
An Big Al continues to have rainbows and kittens fly out of his mouth,
"I'm still young, man," Jefferson said. "With this opportunity I got with the Jazz, that's one of the reasons I was happy that I didn't get traded to Dallas. I got traded here. Because we're all young here. We're all around the same age, and we can grow old together.
There's likely going to be a dramatic shift in the new CBA, whenever that happens. It's amazing though to look back at just how much Stockton and Malone got paig when with their "big" deals 20 years ago,
Although exact terms of the contracts were not disclosed, Malone's contract is an eight-year deal worth an estimated $24 million, while Stockton's is a six-year contract believed to be worth as much as $14 million.
$14 million for Stockton? $24 million for Malone? Stockton said that the contract was far beyond his wildest dreams. Even more mind-boggling is looking back on it and thinking just how tiny that deal was. Granted, it was 20 years ago, time value of money, inflation, yadda, yadda, yadda, and that's still dirt cheap.
Malone at $3M a year? Stockton at a little over $2M? Baffling.
This pic just looks weird.
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