Davide Thorpe has his first re-draft of the season up on ESPN (Insider). There are movements based on how well the rookies have played this season. There's quite a bit of movement. As you might expect, he doesn't have the Jazz drafting Hayward at #9. G-Time isn't getting a lot of P-Time, so you can't really judge. However, he does put Wesley Johnson to the Jazz:
For an offense that loves to invert its players, wings who can post up thrive (point guards, too). Johnson has a penchant for jacking up jumpers, which is not good, but in Utah he would have been forced to spend lots of time in the paint, which would be good. Given his athleticism, think Ronnie Brewer with a better jumper.
Johnson's maturity would have helped him blend in well with the atmosphere in Utah, and his temperament would have helped him deal with Jerry Sloan's rough side. This is perhaps my favorite fit of the top 10.
Of course Johnson went to the Timberwolves with the number 4 pick. The Jazz would have jumped on Johnson if he was still there.
Give it another season or two and we can look at it then if/when Gordon has more PT.
AK shares some details about his annual freebie,
Whether he gets asked about his wife allowing him to sleep with another woman once a year:
"Yeah they asked me, ‘Did you use it?' That question you can't answer it because if you said, ‘Yes', everybody thinks you're a jerk. If you said, ‘No', everybody says you're lying. So you can't comment it."
How he and his wife's agreement got out in the press and whether his wife told people about it:
"No, we never had a secret but somehow it just jumped out."
How the negotiations went with his wife:
"We didn't have a negotiation. It was just like we talked about a lot of stuff at home and just some of the topic of the night was the people cheating and my wife just bring it up like, ‘It doesn't matter, you know? I don't care about that. If it is an issue between man and woman I would rather have you love kids. If you cheat it is OK with me.' I am not planning to cheat but she said it's just like a point. It is not an actual guy to give and go ahead and cheat. It was just the topic of the conversation and she said, ‘Well I don't have a problem with that.'"
Poor AK. This is all he's going to be known for for his career. It doesn't sound like it's an annual pass though, just that it wouldn't bother Masha if he did.
I don't think I can jinx Deron any more by saying this, but I think he goes off tonight on threes. He's been ice, ice cold over the past 4 games from deep, making just 3 of 21 (14%).
He's had a couple of similar cold streaks this season and then proceeded to go 4 of 7 and and 4 of 5. Let's go in the middle and say he makes 4 of 6 tonight.
The Jazz have started out with their best road record since the 2001 season. Before that you have to go back to 1998 when they started out 7-2 on the road as well. So how did they far each of those seasons on the road? In 1998, they finished with 26 wins away from the Delta Center and in 2001 they ended up with 25. I would take that this season. Here's how the Jazz have fared in their first 9 road games of the season and their eventual winning percentage (click for bigger):
There aren't too many years where the two percentages have been close. In order for the Jazz to get to 25 wins, they'd have to finish out the season 18-14 on the road, something that's very doable.
Now we just have to wait for that home record to get better.
Your guess for the most one-sided defensive player of all time? None other than our own Mark Eaton. According to basketball-reference.com, he actually had a negative offensive win share while having the highest defensive win share with 48.
Those were the days when his offensive assignment was to stand outside the three-point line to draw his man away from the basket.
On the other end, he was a force.