The Downbeat #1267: Let's be excellent.

How are you doing there, Jazz fan?  Take a seat.  You feeling okay?  I know this season is a lot to take in -- Tanking, veterans vs youth, expiring contracts, salary dumps, coach on the last year of his contract, an exciting draft coming up, likable veterans, Jerry Sloan's number retired, Derrick Favors' hip, Gordon Hayward's hip, Trey Burke's finger -- are you surviving okay?

I see that you've taken to twitter and other forms of social media to vent your frustrations and to cheer your team on amidst the chaos.  I know you've been negative.  We all get negative.  There has been in-fighting.  Fan against fan.  Mother against daughter.  Father against son.  Front office protecting its good name.  Fans playing armchair GM and coach.  Blogs in uproar.

I get it.  This season is terrible.  We watch and we support because we're Jazz fans.  We cry and complain and bitch and moan because -- well -- we're Jazz fans.  We made the Delta Center the Decibel Center in the 90s.  We made Utah more feared than the 12th man in Seattle.  We are known for being loud, erratic, but, most importantly, loyal.  Which puts us in this awkward situation.

This season has turned us all in the role of children in a bitter divorce.  Part of us mourns the rich history of the past brought on us during the Sloan years.  It looks at the current state of the Jazz like a child fears the new dad.  They're cool, but they're not my dad.

Dennis Lindsey is promising, but that doesn't replace 20 years of stability.

Tyrone Corbin has overachieved in some aspects and failed our expectations in others.  Some Jazz fans weren't ready to turn the page on the Sloan era so fast.  Too soon, too fast.

Others were more trusting and could accept the changes faster than others.  They missed the past and embraced the future.

Then the future changed again at the beginning of this season.  Any familiar face was gone leaving youth to develop and and veterans to get one more shot at that one last contract of their careers.

It leaves any fan in a limbo between the past and the future.  Tanking and developing is very much a one step forward, two steps back process.  It's painful.  Those used to the winning ways of Utah are thrust into a game that is inherently unfamiliar.  The Utah Jazz are tanking virgins.  Back in 2003-2004, the Utah Jazz tried their hand at getting lucky at the Draft party only to be so accustomed to their lottery abstinent ways that they left the party empty handed undone by Jerry Sloan's opus of a season.

Tanking sucks.  It hurts.  Being bad sucks.  Watching your team lose over and over again in terrible ways is torture.  So with all of this out of the way I have some advice.

Allow Jazz fans to be Jazz fans.

If they complain, let them complain.

If they are happy with the result, let them live in blissful ignorance.

This doesn't undo great debates on who should play, who should be drafted, who should start, who should sit, how the Jazz develop, how they conduct their business.  This has to do with being a Jazz fan.  Because as Jazz fans we support other Jazz fans.

The other night on social media I got in a great debate with Dan Clayton -- follow him -- it got heated.  Then afterward we did something unheard of.  We communicated directly to make sure how each other was doing.  Asked how each other was doing in their personal lives.  How's the family, etc.  And moved on.  I didn't go to bed cursing the guy.  Why?  Because he's a Jazz fan.  My brother and compatriot in this mess of a season.

When crap happens we turn on the people that mean most to us.  We have twitter personalities fighting twitter personalities.  We have fan against fan.  #TeamTy and #FireTy like this is Twilight for god's sake.  I've had a lot of introspection of late and tried to figure out how to reconcile this whole thing.  I hear about it on social media, in the comments section of this site, on other jazz blogs, and national media.  We've become a caricature of an overreactive fan base in one way or another.  Whether it's being apprehensive toward a rebuild or being way too in the tanking boat -- guilty.

I was going to have a great 5 piece downbeat about how the Bucks are distributing their minutes to their young guys' vs the Jazz.  How the Cleveland locker room debacle should serve as a cautionary tale of going young.  How Pete Carroll's new teaching methods in the NFL could be used in the NBA and most importantly in the aspect of Kanter.  A funny gif.  And everyone's thoughts on Andrew Wiggins and some stats about him.

But what's the use right now?  I ask that as an honest question.  Without constructive criticism instead of snide remarks from one side to the other this information, research, and slave labor work that I did -- I promise I do enjoy it -- goes to waste as it gets manipulated into something that was not meant so it works to the advantage of whatever side it goes with.

So this is our halfway reset.

Let's all take a chill pill.

The season is almost over.

The trade season is almost here.

Let's enjoy it all.

Yes, we can still critique.  We can still be critical.  But let's be critical of the product on the floor that we invest our money in.  Let's not be critical of each other.  We're all suffering in this together.  Let's join together in our sufferings.  Let's be better Jazz fans.  Let's be better people.  Better commenters.  Better social network users.  Better writers.  Let's be better.

I will leave these 5 things as blank for today.  Love you guys.  In the words of someone important:

Be

Excellent

To

Each

Other