The Downbeat #1141: The Late Night Edition

I don't know where My_Lo is today but I just couldn't see us not having a downbeat on a weekday! So here we go a quicky at night!

Enes has been all the topic of twitter. Moni as always is on top of it. Go read her posts to see all the tweets that Enes tweeted to get into this situation.

Enes has been tweeting things maybe he shouldn't about the Turkish National team after they lost recently. Many Turkey fans and citizens have been upset with Enes for his tweets and attitude towards their national team. I understand the frustration of fans, it seems like their national teams mean a lot more to them than our Olympic team does to us. TBH I don't even know if we have a national team beside the olympic teams. But from what I have seen from our internal fans they know just as much or more about their national teams than they do their NBA teams.

Memo tweeted to Enes as summarized by Illasova- user on Jazzfanz:

Okur mentioned Muhammed Ali's sentence for Kanter that "Talent makes sportman famous but character makes legend.

Another succinct summary from Jazzfanz user jjscap

I've been watching this all since the beginning.. Geez.. I'd not wanto to be Enes now. Millions of Turks are frustrated. Thousands directly shared their unpleasant words with him either on Twitter, on various online platforms and probably his phone too.

To understand why you gotta understand the difference between Turks and Americans. Turks are emotional people who overreact very often. And for them, national team is a matter of honor of some kind, serious business.. So.. Turkish NT lost all three games playing hideous basketball all the way. This was not a surprise for most because NT is terribly managed and coached lately. Turkoglu who got 20-game suspension from the NBA for using PEDs is the captain!!

So.. After Turkey loses their last game Kanter suddenly tweets "Hahhahahahaha". This is something unheard of! In people's minds a Turk is never supposed to be hahaing when Turks lose. So just after minutes 1000s learn about this infamous tweet and attack Kanter violently. He then deletes it and writes a new tweet: "I wrote it to my brother, calm down haha" This even fuels the fire more as people don't believe it.

He is on national newspapers, almost officially disliked by basically everyone. Today Memo tweets "You should not have done it no matter what".
Kanter's problems with the NT started last year when he decided to stay in the US in summer instead of joining and playing some games with the NT. I think he made the right decision then! His conditioning was great thanks to his summer program. But people don't understand. Now I am not sure if he will ever play for Turkish NT....

Enes is young and I am sure he will grow and learn from this experience. I don't know all the details behind why Enes feels the way he does about his national team, I don't need to know. Maybe Enes is justified in his feelings, maybe he isn't. I do know that athletes are in the public eye so of course his reaction would go viral so maybe even if he is justified in his feelings he should have texted a friend or talked to his brother or whoever instead of going public with it. Then again maybe there are changes to be made with the Turkish national team and maybe this will get the ball rolling with the changes that possibly need to be made.

Jeff Caplan of NBA.com Hang Time Blog wrote a piece entitled

Its a great piece. He looks at who could possibly lead the league in blocks and possibly average 3.0 bpg. Here are a few tidbits from it including a Mark Eaton mention!

Still, today’s drooping block numbers are eye-popping when compared to prior decades. Blocks weren’t recorded as an official statistic until the 1973-74 season. That season, five players averaged at least 3.0 bpg, led by Elmore Smith (4.8 bpg), Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (3.5), Bob McAdoo (3.3), Bob Lanier (3.0) andElvin Hayes (3.0). In the seven officially recorded seasons in the 1970s, two players averaged at least 3.0 bpg in a season five times.

In the ’80s, it was seven of 10 seasons, and at least three players averaged at least 3.0 bpg four times. Utah’s 7-foot-4 center Mark Eaton still holds the single-season record of 5.56 bpg in 1984-85. The ’90s — with shot-swatters such as David Robinson, Patrick Ewing, Hakeem Olajuwon, Dikembe Mutombo,Shawn Bradley, Theo Ratliff, Shaquille O’Neal and Mourning – marked the salad days of shot-blocking.

Favors is listed first in his list of 5 possible candidates for players who will lead the league in blocks.

Here is what he says about Favors:

1. Derrick Favors, Jazz: The 6-foot-10 power forward is going to see his minutes jump as he moves into the starting lineup with Al Jefferson and Paul Millsap gone. Favors averaged 1.7 bpg in 23.2 mpg off the bench last season. He'll go up against more elite front-line players this season, but it’s not a reach to suggest he could average 2.5 bpg.

Love the attention Derrick is getting!

Andy who used to write for us and now is editor of Salt City Hoops wrote an article looking at how each Jazz player could improve this coming season. It is interesting.

I was interested to see what Andy had to say about Marvin Williams. I like Marvin a lot and I really thought he could have had a better year last year. I hope he is used better this year (when he returns) so I wanted to see if Andy thought Marvin was used correctly. Andy and I often look at things differently but there is always mutual respect and even though he is analytical and I am emotional we often come to the same conclusion haha. Anyways going back to Marvin. Andy didn't mention if he thought if Marvin was used correctly or not last year but he did mention this about his playing time:

Marvin’s most interesting weakness is his poor shooting when he gets small amounts of playing time in an individual game.

... The more playing time Marvin gets, the better he shoots. It doesn’t appear to be an effort issue, as his rebounding numbers don’t show this pattern, and the relatively effort-unaffected 3-point shooting numbers drop precipitously when he gets less playing time. This isn’t a career stat influenced by outlier seasons, either: Marvin shot worse with 10-19 MPG of playing time in literally every season of his 8 year NBA career. It would be nice to fix this, especially this season as he figures to be coming off the bench for starter and large minute-user Gordon Hayward for the majority of the year. But, honestly, his incentive to improve on his shooting in low minute situations is pretty low; everyone wants more playing time. Still, in the Jazz’s ideal world in which everyone acts only in the team’s self-interest, Marvin may want to break his shooting practice sessions into shorter time blocks.

I bolded the last part because its not something I would think of that I thought was a fabulous advice. Go read Andy's article and comment on what you think of Andy's suggestions or if you have other suggestions for our players.

Basketball John tweeted this out with regards to an insider article on ESPN

We know the Jazz have been in talks with both Favors and Hayward. Lets hope they don't let the market set Hayward and Favors values like they have done with previous RFAs.

I've been on a Jerry Sloan kick today. I found this old but awesome video of Han (then of 1280 now of ESPN 700) giving Jerry a gift.

Also here is Jerry commenting on when Ricky Davis tried to get a triple double by purposely missing a shot and grabbing his own rebound.

Gosh, I love and miss Jerry!