I've confirmed with sources on twitter that assistant coach Scott Layden has taken the assistant GM position with the San Antonio Spurs. I don't want to talk about what this means or why it happened, or if it's a good move or not. We have or will cover that in the future on this site. But I do wonder what sort of replacement the Jazz will be able to find. It's a difficult time of the year with less than 30 days until training camp to find and implement a new assistant coach. I would guess that all of the current head coaches will just be promoted and the team can find an assistant to fill the last role on the coaching team. From what I gathered, the Jazz will need a strong guy to hold the players on the bench during altercations, a PR guy to explain what the Jazz need to do better at half time, and a guy who can really motivate the team to be better. I think the best man that meets all of this criteria would be...
Former College Football player and current motivational speaker Dr Phil McGraw. That's my prediction.
I promised not to belabor the Scott Layden issue, but you can probably connect the dots to see what he would have to do with Dennis Lindsey's hire as "General Manager." I do love the Lindsey hire and think that he will turn out to be the best acquisition the Jazz have made this summer, more important than Mo Williams, Randy Foye or Marvin Williams. Deseret News' Doug Robinson wrote a great piece on Lindsey that you should read if you haven't already. One of my favorite excerpts from the article:
"He (Lindsey) was already handling those duties long before he got the official titles," says (Carol) Dawson. "I just trusted him. He was one of the first guys to start using the computer (for evaluating players). He was doing that 'Moneyball' stuff — looking at tendencies. He knew how often a guy went to the baseline and where on the floor his scores came from."
My second favorite quote of the article:
"Dennis' name kept popping up," he (Randy Rigby) says. "I did some Googling and learned a lot about him."
Originally I believe Rigby asked Jeeves, but didn't find out much. Here are some other searches I suspect the front office of making on google.
I spent this last weekend in New York City attending the US Open and doing some sight-seeing. I have a sister in NYC, so I have visited a dozen times or so. There's lots to see, but I always make a point to drop by Madison Square Garden and the NY NBA store.
I also played NBA 2K12 on the xbox 360 for the first time. Now I understand all the ratings and what not and am intrigued at how the video game makers perceive the Jazz players. Without losing my non gaming audience, it is interesting to note just how bad the game makers believed the Jazz would be last season. The Utah Jazz 2012 team is absolutely awful in the video game. Really bad. Paul Millsap and Al Jefferson are the two best players on the team, but the entire team lacks overall talent and skill.
It's just another reminder of how much better the Jazz were record wise than most of the league, and myself, suspected. A lot of credit is deserved for the Jazz organization and players.
I am a firm believer that winning basketball games should be a professional team's number one priority, but that putting an entertaining product out on the floor is a close close second and that many teams don't work hard enough to provide an entertaining product to their fans. I can't remember for sure, but I feel like I enjoyed the 42-40 Jazz team that featured Andrei Kirilenko more than some of the Deron Williams teams that finished with 48-50 wins and lost in the second round of the playoffs. That might just be revisionist history or more about expectations than entertainment value. Still, I am curious.