The Jazz just lost to the LA Lakers and Sacramento Kings. This wouldn’t be bad or shameful if it was 2001, but it’s not. The Lakers continue to be a power, but the Kings simply just ran the Jazz out of town. Anyway, time to syncopate yourself!
- Gordon Hayward, thank you for showing up. Congrats on your career high in points, you looked good out there, throwing it down, trying hard on defense, making good passes . . . and most importantly not passing up shots that the offense works for you to get. Early on, back in the Summer League, Preseason, and first few months of your career, whenever you’d get the ball in scoring position you’d do some dumb fake, dribble in one direction (not always towards the basket), make some more fakes, and then pass the ball to a teammate who wasn’t in as good scoring position as you were when you got the ball, but now had 5 less seconds to do something with the ball. I don’t miss the good old days. I’m happy that you are getting more comfortable. In fact, you actually are playing about as good and with as much confidence as C.J. Miles did at the end of his rookie season. Well, we all knew how that carried forth…
- Also thank you Kyle Weaver for being part of the team. Naturally, when I heard that the Jazz signed you I had to make fun of the move. Can you blame me, we just had a few dates with Marcus Cousin, and that went so well. You are an intriguing ‘prospect’ to say the least – someone I’m going to have to investigate more deeply in the next few weeks. Right now your lack of gun-shyness is endearing on a team of guys who don’t seem to know what they are doing. Part of it is because you’re also looking for other guys with a chance to score – but we’ve had shoot only guards on the team before. They don’t really last that long and the fans can really get on them quickly. Jason Hart (a point guard, if you believe what was written about him) used to shoot it whenever he got in the game. Another guy, Morris Almond – I don’t even need to finish that point. Continue passing the ball, and finding your spots – and we fans will love you.
- For a little bit on Weaver at the end of his 1st NBA season we have this fluff piece, but it shows some of the stuff this kid is capable of.
- It becomes difficult to find solace in the boxscore for this last game though. CJ went 3-13, Big Al went 4-13, and Derrick Favors went 2-7. Those are three of our ‘core guys’ right now. To stay afloat we had to have Earl Watson pull out some crazy shots and prayers – including the best missed three point attempt in the history of misses. Watson did finish with 9 points and 8 assists. Of course, his +/- was -16 for the game.
- I don’t know what to think of +/- as a statistic though . . . according to 82games.com Fesenko is 3rd best on the team in +/-, but if you listen to some guys you'd know by now that there are no statistics that matter that even begin to suggest that Fesenko is worth the nucleic acids that make up his DNA, let alone worthwhile on the court. So either we agree that +/- is dumb, or agree that Fesenko somehow (perhaps through bumbling?) happens to be on the court when they aren’t getting killed. Is that a talent? I don’t know.
- I do know that the Kings had 52 points in the paint in this game. I do know that Fesenko played 5 minutes in this game. And if you re-watch the game, or read the play by play, Fes’ man didn’t score any points in the paint … but that’s cherry picking information. The Kings did score a bit in the paint when he was on the floor though, but that was because their fast break attack was in full force. They did a great job in running.
- The remaining games on the schedule are @ LAL, vs Por, @ SAS, @ NOR, and vs DEN. Games like this game against the Kings could be the norm and not the exception to the rule pretty soon. It’s hard to remain 100% ‘rah-rah’ for a team that may not be trying as hard. As a player I am sure it’s hard to motivate yourself. Al Jefferson, who is used to losing by no fault of his own, played very poorly on both sides of the ball tonight. Paul Millsap continues to battle every night, but I really think that it’s time to throw the young guys out there on the floor and see which guys rise to the top and which guys do not. In a way, I find it insulting to Big Al to keep playing him 30+ mpg only for him to lose. He has nothing to prove to the team or the fans. His heart is there, and in return we should show we have a heart by letting him rest.
- Derrick Favors played 18 minutes tonight. Jeremy Evans played 16. There are only so many minutes to go around – but I think they both could be playing closer to a cumulative 40 minutes a game at this part of the year. Especially because we are only courting injury by keeping our prime pieces out there to play at 70% (and as any person knows, you don’t get injured when your body is going 100%, you get injured when your body is not, but you go up against someone else who is going 100%).
- With nothing left to play for, and lots of youth I think it only makes sense to start summer school a little early this year. What do you think?