With the Downbeat today reviewing Gordon Hayward's season and me currently being suspended by Google+, here's a bunch of links from around the web on the Jazz.
"Dnepr" close to signing a contract with Kirill Fesenko - Men - News - "Basketball club Dnipro"
Basketball Club "Dnipro" negotiating a contract with the pupil SDYUSSHOR number 5 pivot of the national team of Ukraine Kirill Fesenko.
FIBA – France, Russia overcome lockout insurance jam | FIBA.COM
Russia coach David Blatt has also confirmed to FIBA.com that NBA forward and EuroBasket 2007 MVP Andrei Kirilenko will be in Lithuania competing for the national team. "He'll be with us 100% when we go to our first training camp outside Russia," Blatt said, with Kirilenko having not featured for Russia since the 2008 Olympics in Beijing. "In less than a week he'll be joining us. "The insurance issue is something that I do not handle but our federation is completely on top of it and has taken care of that. "In Andrei's case, I believe it's already done."
Ready to 'refurbish, refresh' playground " Homepage " McLeansboro Times-Leader
The fire May 30 destroyed the east portion of Kids Kingdom, the playground which hundreds of community volunteers came together to build in June 2006 after receiving a $100,000 donation from McLeansboro native Jerry Sloan. A 13-year-old Franklin County boy was charged with setting the fire. Phase I of the rebuild project — which will include repainting all existing structures, fencing and the newly reconstructed portions of the "Tot Lot" destroyed in the recent fire — will begin Monday, Aug. 1, the committee announced Friday.
Terry Cummings talks trash about Karl Malone after the jump
Terry Cummings doesn't think Karl Malone was that strong.
SLAM: Malone, on the other hand, seemed so strong. TC: I thought Karl’s strength was OK. He was strong enough to take a lot of contact; in fact, he created most of it, then demanded the calls and got them. At the end of the day it boils down to your supporting cast and how smart you are. Karl had John Stockton delivering him the ball in exactly the right places, and he had good ability. When he first came in, all he did was go right and post everything over his left shoulder. He had no jump shot, but he was able to expand his game.
Jazz's Bell won't play for Virgin Islands in Caribbean Championship | Utah Jazz Notes | The Salt Lake Tribune
Jazz guard Raja Bell is listed on the Virgin Islands' roster for the 2011 Caribbean Championship. Bell said Saturday that he won't play in the tournament, though, and Virgin Islands Basketball Federation President Usie Richards confirmed Bell's decision not to participate
Jazz's Hayward discusses Indy workouts, improved ballhandling, lockout plans | Utah Jazz Notes | The Salt Lake Tribune
Upcoming schedule: I'm going to be in Indianapolis. I've worked out here since predraft and everything. It works out well for me because it's 20 minutes from my home. I get to work both basketball and lifting. It's something that I have a routine, it's a good schedule, there's great talent here. The Indy Pro Am is actually talking about doing another [round]. I can always go up to Butler and play there. It's a great — you know when people are coming from all over that it's a great place to work out, and it's just a benefit for me that I live here. … I'm blessed that they have all these huge facilities here and the fact that I live here is just another bonus. I can stop by and then my mom is making dinner for me, so it works out well.
NBA Revenue News, Presented Through A Funhouse Mirror - From Our Editors - SBNation.com
By the NBA's own numbers, revenues over this CBA grew faster than the average salary did. That bullet point is, unfortunately, missing from the NBA's release. Understandable, of course, as it hurts the NBA's case that player salaries and not self-imposed other expenses are to blame for the league's claimed losess.
NBA Lockout Is Going To Hurt Training Camp Rosters This Fall - Ridiculous Upside
Training camp rosters are typically filled with the team's guaranteed contract and then six or seven other guys vying to be the fourteenth man on an NBA roster. By the time a new Collective Bargaining Agreement is put together, however, the pickings will be slim for end of the roster fodder. At the conclusion of the 2011 NBA Draft, I put out a brief list of the players I thought were worthy of being drafted, but failed to hear their name called while the likes of Chukwudibiere Maduabum and Targuy Ngombo were chosen (I spelled both of those without looking so I apologize if I was wrong and expect props if I was right).
NBA Salary Cap Works Perfectly ... For One Of Its Goals - SBNation.com
So the salary cap worked, at least this season, in capping salaries. We continue to talk about giant salaries -- my "This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things" series is all about these bad contracts. But that's not actually the real problem with the league. If the owners took the players' proposal right now and lowered the split to 54.3 percent, that'd erase the league's losses and let the owners turn a combined profit. As such, most teams would fly out of the red -- the salary savings are real, coming out to about $500 million annually. But the owners aren't going to do that, not by a longshot. The owners' Holy Grail of the NBA lockout, folks around the discussions believe, is to decouple salary from revenue. You've already seen it in some of the owners' proposal, most notably the one in which Stern suggested the players' salary be capped at $2 billion over the life of the 10-year collective bargaining agreement. Two billion dollars is a lot of money ... but it's roughly what the players take home now, which means that for the life of the new CBA, any growth the NBA saw would be pocketed by the owners. The owners know that so long as revenues grow, player salaries must grow. They want to end that. They certainly understand how difficult that will be to accomplish -- Billy Hunter is no fool -- but that's the aim.