Media Day Odds and Ends

Tip:
If you’ve been itching for six months for this day to arrive, Media Day (Weekend) is not the best time to attend an out-of-the-country wedding.

–Great start to the season Part 1:
DWill on FB being back: “It’s not that awkward yet.” (H/T desnews)

–Great start to the season Part 2:
AK (strained left quadriceps muscle), CJ (strained left hip flexor) and KK (inflamed left knee) sat out the second session of two-a-days.

–No Matty, obviously. But no Fes in any of the pictures either. Maybe he was taking an extended smoking break during the photo shoot.

–Lots of talk about AK’s new guns. See much of a difference?

I see that he has grown-up hair now and DWill appears to have shrunk…I will say, though, that the difference is probably more noticeable between April ‘09 and September ‘09 than September ‘08 and September ‘09.

–Does this look like a happy camper to you?

He looks just slightly happier than me to have Carlos back.

–Time for Jerry to put his money where his mouth is:
“Take guys out of the game,” he said. “If they’re not going to run the floor and get involved on the defensive end, I’m going to have to take them out of the game.” (H/T sltrib)

…and…

“Actually, ‘four’ from an offensive standpoint is probably Andrei’s better position,” Sloan said. “So maybe we take a look at that.” (H/T sltrib)

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–FB can’t even keep his lies/stories straight for one day. Remember how he spent all summer adamantly declaring that the Jazz and he mutually agreed for him to be traded? On Media Day, he changes his story:

That message [from management that he was not part of the Jazz's future plans], Boozer suggested, was delivered when the team declined to offer him a contract extension after he decided June 30 [to opt in]. (H/T sltrib)

But then, he also says: “Coach wants me to be here. My teammates want me to be here. Management brought me back and I’m happy to be here in a Jazz uniform and not going somewhere else.” (H/T Dime)

So just to recap, first he and the Jazz agreed for him to be traded. Then, he and the Jazz never had any agreement, and he was merely drawing his own conclusions when the Jazz failed to throw more money at him even though the return on their initial investment was so freaking high. Then, management “brought me back.” You’re the one that opted in; the final year on your contract was not a team option. What the hell are you talking about?

As if that’s not enough prickery dickery dock for one day, he once again declares himself the starter:

“I feel like I’m the starter. I think I’ve earned that. That’s the only role I’ve been in my whole career.”

…declares himself far superior to Sap (even if he is, what kind of self-purported team guy does that? Do you hear DWill talking about how he’s leagues ahead of Price, or KK talking about how he’s a FT shooter than CJ?)

“You know, I think Paul is very good. I guess if we are competing, then we’re competing for it. But I feel like I am the starter.”

…and then tops it all off by claiming that winning is all that matters to him and that he’s magnanimously willing to sacrifice seconds from his playing time for the sake of the team:

“I mean, if we win that’s all that matters. Not to try to make people happy. But to win basketball games. So if we focus on that, and I have to take two less minutes a game, or whatever the case may be, I think I can make that sacrifice for the betterment of the group.” (H/T desnews)

Which is it, Carlos? Are you the starter, or is winning all that matters? His sense of entitlement is incredible, astounding, unreal. Mind-boggling! Unbelievable, incomprehensible, etc. He’s earned starterhood? How? By sitting on the bench for 50 games? By putting himself ahead of team, time and time again? By destroying the locker room? By decimating the Jazz’s chances of winning? By shooting his mouth off and talking out of his ass at every available opportunity? By being a snake (apologies to snakes)?

Like many others, I am sick of reading and writing about FB, but he just won’t go away or shut his mouth. Even the sound of his voice offends me. Even the way his yappy jaw moves when he snaps at his gum annoys me. It’s unbelievable how disconnected from reality he is. He never once admitted any wrongdoing or offered an apology (not for what he said, not for lying, not for speaking out of turn, not for conduct detrimental to the team), and instead kept giving explanations as to why he didn’t do anything wrong. You could have not opted in. Simple as that.

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Haven’t had a chance to listen to all the Media Day interviews yet, will get around to that hopefully tomorrow…

Video for the weekend and cleaning out the attic

These videos stoke the fires of my love affair with (for) AK.

In general, I agree with the way Jerry runs the team and the moves that KOC makes and doesn’t make. However, it really makes me sad to see what AK once was. Right now, I want to demand immediate changes to put AK in that situation again. I don’t think I’m crazy to believe that the Jazz would be unstoppable if that AK was playing for us right now.

I honestly don’t think that he’s checked out, so to speak, because he got the big contract that his next eight generations of descendants can comfortably live off of. I think his passion for the game has been checked by the situation he’s been put in. Imagine that you have a job you love and are great at, and that your boss decides to transfer you to a different department. You can do your new job well enough, but you don’t have that same passion for your new job, and the spark you used to have slowly goes out. Or, imagine that KOC signs some hotshot PG and Jerry moves DWill to the 2. Would DWill happily accept that situation, and continue to play with the same fire? And not that it makes a great deal of difference, but DWill hasn’t even gotten All-Star recognition yet like AK had before FB came along.

Other stuff:
–Stephen Jackson gets fined for making a trade request, but nothing happens to Boozer for lying about the Jazz saying they want to trade him and going on a radio tour of cities he wants to be traded to. You can’t tell me he was smart enough to figure out this fine-free strategy all on his own. His agent was in on this.

–Jarron Collins is headed to Portland’s training camp. On his time in Utah, he said, “It was an honor and a privilege to play for the organization and to play with all my teammates throughout the years and be around all the people in the organization.” Classy (and very well-spoken) guy, knew his role, did what was asked of him. No complaints from me.

–Fess left the Ukranian national team because the coach had an issue with him taking smoking breaks during games? “I watched game Ukraine — Hungary. It was moment when Fesenko leave bench and was out of game couple minutes. Some rumours that he smoke. After that was serious conversation between him and coach and after that Fesenko leave team.”

–FB makes the NBA All-Volatile Team: “Who else can guarantee to become quickly frustrated with his position within the roster, and basically mail in each game? Perhaps this nickname is the only similarity this guy has to Utah’s Mailman of yore – the “Mail-it-in-man”. With the competitive natures present on this team, his increasing lethargy as the season wears on is guaranteed to spark a furor or ten.” Shouldn’t he actually be on the All-Apathy Team?

–Draft Remix: AK gets taken 9th in 1999.

–Thank the Good Lord above Media Day and Training Camp are just hours away. I’ve started to do fantasy mock drafts…for fun. Not for the experience or practice, but just to get my kicks.

This Ain’t Your Daddy’s Jazz…

…like the Jazz’s D-League affiliate, this team is Flashy.

Well, we all thought the officiating couldn’t get any worse…

…and maybe we were wrong, or maybe we were right.

It looks increasingly like previously fired dudes and D-League refs will be officiating next season’s games, and fans are pining away for Tim Donaghy in disguise. Now, I don’t know what kind of quality of officiating these new guys will bring to the table and I suspect that their call accuracy rate will be lower than the original crew…BUT at least the new guys won’t be such arrogant, pompous, self-important asses. I hope.

Update: The NBA’s president of basketball operations, Joel Litvin, claims this:

“We’re confident that we will pretty quickly be able to identify any referees who we don’t think can perform this job, and likewise we’ll pretty quickly identify those that are the stronger ones and we will schedule those referees the most.”

Typical NBA. The full extent of action it is willing to take to maintain credible officiating is internally “identifying” referees that suck more than others. Sub-par referees must never be removed from games or have their jobs taken away or anything like that. Unless they ask for more money of course.

How was my day? Well, since you asked…

2 a.m. Part I of rare night out ends; head out for late-night snack (mostly delicious fried stuff)

3 a.m. Get home with the intention of going to bed, but discover new Stock/Jerry videos on nba.com and have to watch them immediately

4 a.m. Go to bed

6 a.m. Ignore alarm

6:10 a.m. Ignore alarm

6:15 a.m. Drag self out of bed and start looking for online feed of induction ceremony; fortunately find one

7:00 a.m. Stock speaks; I bawl

7:15 a.m. Breen talks about LHM; I bawl

8:00 a.m. Jerry speaks; I bawl

8:30 a.m. Regret all the bawling due to pounding headache

9:30 a.m. Have breakfast, start downloading uploaded videos of the ceremony

11:30 a.m. Get ready for work

3 p.m. Get home and rewatch Jerry and Stock’s speeches while fighting to stay awake and occasionally randomly wondering why I’m doing this instead of napping

So. The presenters stand there…period? They don’t say a word? What the what?! What’s the point of having presenters at all?

No mention of AK in Jerry’s very extensive list of great players he’s coached…hmmm…and from the way he was walking he’s obviously not fully recovered from his knee surgery yet.

For me the best line of the night was Jerry’s “Because I occasionally offer the officials a little advice, Phil’s been on the bench for the end of many more games than I have.”

This was such an emotionally draining day, and I miss Stock more than ever. But enough about me. Congratulations, Stock and Jerry. It could not be more deserved, and you earned every bit of the honor.

On Stock and Jerry

In the event that my emotional jumble can be turned into coherent words and sentences:

I never saw Stock play when he looked like this, all young and fresh-faced. By the time I discovered the Jazz and the NBA (Jazz fan from Day 1 and proud of it), Stock was in his ninth season and 30 years old–an age when most players, and small guys in particular, have started rapidly depreciating. By the time I became a Jazz fanatic, Stock was already a grizzled veteran with those deepset lines around his mouth. Even so, I got to watch him play at what still felt like his peak for 11–eleven!!–amazing, wonderful seasons.

Deaths and illnesses in the family aside, John Stockton announcing his retirement was the most devastating thing that had ever happened to me in my then-young life. Whether that makes me a fortunate person, extremely shallow, or too obsessed with basketball is up for debate. But I couldn’t keep the tears from falling, my heart felt like it was breaking, and I couldn’t imagine the future without him.

A lot of the Stockton videos posted on nba.com in the past few weeks brought new tears, but this one got the uncontrollable-hiccupy-sob-stamp-of-approval, six years after the fact (and will always be something I’ll appreciate Kings fans for):

Every John Stockton article talks about his stats and unbreakable records, but what’s most impressive to me is the 22 total missed games in 19 seasons–4 in ‘89-’90 and 18 in ‘97-’98 after undergoing surgery. In the other 17 seasons, he had a 100% attendance rate. If you take a look at the all-time games played list, Stock is the only guard on the list. The rest are all big men. And what did he do during all those games?

When players are past their prime, you can tell. But this was not the case with John Stockton. Sure, in his late thirties and into his forties, he had more difficulty staying in front of his [much younger] man than before, and Jerry monitored his minutes carefully. However, his court vision and his basketball acumen were as sharp as ever. His passes never became sloppy. His shot stayed just as accurate. His turnovers never went up. His efficiency never declined. Per 36 and across the board, he was as good as ever at the age of 40. And I don’t think I’m off base to say that this player and this stability is something that only Jazz fans have experienced, and can understand and fully appreciate.

To steal the words of UtonganKidInCali over on slcdunk:

…when [Stockton] was on the court, there was a calmness I think every Jazz fan had. That we could trust him to lead the team to a win. I remember when we would be down by ten to fifteen points in the 4th with 5 minutes to go and watching this man go to work and we would win the game. Those were good memories that I thank him for.

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“I had to walk a mile in the snow to get to school.” In Jerry Sloan’s case, this was actually true, except it was 16 miles. And before the youngest of ten children in a single parent home hitchhiked those 16 miles to school every day, he got up at 4:30 a.m. to do farm chores. Basketball practice started at 7 a.m., and he never missed a single one, because he loved to play and to compete that much.

He’s never had anything handed to him. Everything he has, he’s earned through hard work (even in high school; his future wife Bobbye wouldn’t go out with him because he was shorter than she was, but he eventually won her over). After his playing days ended (two-time All-Star, six-time All-Defense), his number became the first to ever be retired by the Bulls. The Bulls were also responsible for the first time he was fired, which happened a few years later. When Frank Layden resigned mid-season in 1988, Jerry went around the locker room shaking everyone’s hands and bawling because he’d truly believed that he’d never get the chance to coach again.

He doesn’t BS. He doesn’t try to be politically correct or sugarcoat things. He has a potty mouth and a famous doghouse. What you see is what you get. What he says is how it is. He takes no credit for the 1,100+ wins, and takes all the blame for the losses. The losses, rather than the wins or milestones, are the games that stick in his mind. Like Stock, he shuns attention and accolades, and truly believes that he was just at the right place at the right time, that he was lucky.

He didn’t quit on his team when his superstars retired (that ‘03-’04 team was incredibly fun to watch, by the way). He didn’t quit on his team when the team sucked. He didn’t quit on his team when he needed surgery, or use surgery as an excuse to quit on the team when the team sucked. And because of that, and because of Larry H. Miller: Longest tenured coach in North American sports. 1,000 wins with one franchise. 230+ coaching changes since he became Jazz head coach.

Jerry gets the best out of his players. Every single player that ever left the Jazz (with the exception of Mo Williams, but that was really a business decision and he was with the Jazz for only one year), career-wise, was never heard from again. And Mo Williams would be the first person to tell you that Jerry was the one that taught him how to be a point guard. I can’t imagine the day when someone else is stalking the ESA sidelines and cursing the refs. I hope that day never comes.

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They were their own men, and, in many ways, three of a kind: Stock with his short shorts and hair and hiding from the media in the trainer’s room, Karl with his trucks and hunting and wrestling, Jerry with his tractors and farming and country sayings. No nonsensical Chinese tattoos, no earrings, no Armani suits, no slicked back hair, no sideline thrones. Just three guys whose sole focus was winning, that came to play every night, and worked harder than anyone else on and off the court. And everything they achieved, they achieved through hard work and burning competitiveness. And everything they achieved, they achieved with humility and loyalty. What more can you ask for as a fan?

Bulls/Lakers fans (Spurs fans are a reflection of the Spurs, and by that I mean, they are quiet, mind their own business, and let the wins do the talking) have a ton of titles to write home about, but many of them, or at least the ones that use the Internet, seem to prefer spending their time trying to detract from other teams’/players’ success by gloating about their lack of rings–rather than being happy about the ones they have. Now, I don’t know what bred such sensitivity and insecurity in them (and yes, I know that Jazz fans have a reputation for being ultrasensitive blah blah blah), but at the end of the day, I know that Stock and Sloan (and Malone) gave it everything they could, and that means no regrets for me.

So do I lament and cry over the fact that they never won a championship? I do not. While I would have loved for these guys to have gotten one or some, because I know that it’s something they wanted and fought for, the lack of rings matters to me, the fan, not at all. What means the most to me is the type of players/coach they were/are, and that they fought tooth and nail for the win every single night.

And although I know that these two men will hate every single second they have to stand on stage listening to people say nice things about them, it will do my heart good to see them getting the recognition and honor that they so deeply, deeply deserve. There will never be another John Stockton, another Karl Malone, and especially not another Stockton-to-Malone. S2M+Sloan was a match made in Heaven. There are no two ways about it.

Two asides:
1) All the sportswriters that have written articles about Stock and Jerry in recent weeks weren’t able to do it, and neither can I. “It” being writing on this subject without mentioning Karl. In case my elderly person’s memory forgets this particular sentiment by this time next year, let me say it now. A lot of what I wrote above about Stock and Sloan apply to Karl as well. And every minute that I am forced to endure Carlos Boozer’s presence on my beloved Jazz, every minute that I am exposed to his existence, makes me appreciate Karl Malone that much more.

2) What the hell was up with Ernie Johnson’s introduction for Jerry into the HOF? In just 30 seconds, he (or whoever wrote his script) managed to butcher Jerry’s entire coaching history.

First he said that Jerry got his coaching start as an assistant for the Bulls in 1997 (WRONG–1978); then he said that Jerry has nearly 1,100 wins for his career (WRONG; it’s 1,136 to date); and then he said Jerry won the NBA COY award in 2004 (it was completely egregious that Jerry didn’t win the COY award in ‘04, but he didn’t win that year or any other year. So again, WRONG).

In today’s edition of ‘Who Dressed Him?!’

we have…Michael Jordan.

This is all wrong. That’s all I have to say.

C’s take: I thought he was supposed to be one of the better dressed players? Maybe he gained so much weight none of his suits fit him.

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