Carlos Boozer on why he left Utah (from DIME),
Dime: Why was now the best time to leave Utah?
CB: Ah, I was a free agent number one (laughs). And number two, obviously I grew up (as a player) in Utah and had a great time out there with Coach (Jerry) Sloanand with my teammates. I definitely miss a lot of things about Utah - and I had great teammates and coaches, and the city embraced me - so it was great to be a part of it. But at this time, this was the best opportunity for me this summer and I look forward to it.
I'm not blaming him but cash was still the biggest factor. Of course I don't expect him to bring that up in an interview like this. How come it's my worst fear that he'll have a huge, huge season in Chicago? It's like the breaking up with a girlfriend analogy.
Of course he won't be able to claim the boos at the ESA this season will be calls of Booze. Is there something else that could be said instead of booing? Too bad you couldn't orchestrate a mass silence or something of that nature. Then you could have one Jazz fan scream a single insult.
I never knew Phil Johnson the head coach. He's filled in at times for Sloan due to illness, ejections, etc. He's likely to be handed the job when Jerry leaves, if he wants it. I'm not alone in assuming though that he'll step down when Sloan does, whenever that may be.
NBA.com has an interesting piece on the assistant coaches in the league that used to be head coaches. Maybe a little surprisingly, none of them has an overall winning percentage greater than .500 as a head coach. The reason they're not a head coach still is because of that very reason but you would have to assume that at least a few of them would have had an overall winning record.
Phil proceeded Jerry of course as the coach of the Bulls. Before that, his turnaround of the Kansas City Kings earned him a COY award.
I don't have a doubt that if Johnson was to become the head coach, he would do well with the team but maybe there's something to be an assistant coach. Like the article mentions, there's a lot less crap you have to deal with as an assistant compared to being the guy. Had Johnson wanted to be a head coach again, he probably could have landed a spot somewhere else by now.
We'll likely see dual retirements the day Sloan calls it a day.
We'll be tweaking the logo a bit for the SLC to stand out some more. I drew up these though. Not saying we're switching the site logo, but for t-shirts and the like they might work better. Any thoughts on them?
It looks like the Jazz are going to be doing some more mobile promotions for people at the game and at home. You'll have the typical polls/trivia stuff but they'll also be putting pictures and texts on the big screen. You can see some demos from txtstation's website.
Here's the Jazz's VP of Sales & Marketing, Jim Olson's take,
We chose Txtstation because they understand that interactivity is paramount to game-day entertainment. This is also a great way to build our database and activate our sponsors
That will be the biggest reason for this. It's another revenue stream for the team as they attach a sponsor to this. That's not a bad thing. More money=better players, hopefully. They have to pay for those renovations at the ESA somehow.
I imagine you'd still be able to text pics and text from home even though you're not at the game. Though things are sure to be carefully screened, there's one thing we've learned from the Internet, and that is that people like to see what they can slip by the screeners/censors.
Wednesday poll,