In Today’s Edition of ‘Who Dressed Him?!’…

…we have CP3. Someone needs to tell him that just because you haven’t grown since high school doesn’t mean you shouldn’t get some new threads once in a while.

Game 16 vs. POR: That feeling of hope is starting to bubble again, dammit…

The good: Wins don’t get much better than this.

The bad: We continue to drop like flies, losing Sap and AK in the 2nd quarter. Even with a 20-point lead in the 4th, we still had to play two starters to close the game because we were simply out of players.

The pretty: Deron and Boozer combining for 50 points (21-32), 17 rebounds, and 22 assists.

The ugly (and lazy):
or, in other words:

(There are “better” pictures of Oden’s forehead and the back of Boozer’s neck to be found on the Internet and probably even on my computer, but this is the laziest holiday weekend of the year after all, and I am feeling pretty lazy indeed.)

The bored: Towards the end of the game, the camera cut to KK yawning on the bench. With the lead at a comfortable, sizeable number, the boredom was palpable in the air as the video feed cut out for the final time and Yahoo GameChannel lost its will to continue and gave up on accuracy:

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Game 15 vs. CHI: I am thankful for…

…the good, solid, efficient, play-all-four-quarters win. Of course I am.

But I am a complainer by nature, so here are three things I am NOT thankful for:

1) The ridiculously late start time. I thought I might die of old age waiting for the game to commence. I had to run off to work at halftime, which brings me to the next item on this list–

2) My ridiculous work computer. Unless you have “administrator” status (which I don’t), you can’t install software. Guess what isn’t installed on it? Adobe Flash. Which means that I can’t play NBA audio (radio) streams or use Gamecast or GameChannel, much less watch the video stream (which was sooooo smooth and unbuffery today thanks to the millions of Americans too deep in food comas to click in).

3) Me. That’s right–this complaint is about myself. My official apologies to AK-47 for jinxing your awesomeness with my last post. I shall heretofore do my best to keep my enthusiasm in check and most importantly of all, silent and invisible.

All this on a day that produced arguably the best win of the season, sigh.

Happy Thanksgiving y’all.

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Game 14 vs. OKC: Total Eclipse of the Heart

Question: Who looked like the young, inexperienced expansion team?

Answer: It wasn’t the young, inexperienced expansion team.

Did the “D” disappear when the Delta Center became EnergySolutions Arena??? There is no “D” in Utah, Salt Lake City, Jazz, Carlos, Boozer, getting embarrassed on your homecourt, pathetic, shameful, train wreck, leaving execution at the altar, why are you giving your opponents open shots on every possession?, this is as far as you can get from a Jerry Sloan team, what the frak is this crap.

Tellingly, Deron said after the game, “We used to think when people come in here it’s an automatic loss and we’ve got to get that back. Start having fun, too.” “Start having fun?” We don’t have any finger-pointing, teammates-under-the-bus-throwing players on this team (excluding that time last season when we lost to Dallas and Boozer blamed Memo). Front Office, are you listening to this? Your team is broken, and it’s on you to fix it. Only you have the power to fix it. Have you noticed how empty the arena–supposedly the NBA’s fiercest arena–is lately? No one’s going to pay money to watch this team flail.

My own little personal ray of light is AK. During one sequence in the game, he dunked on one end, blocked the shot at the other end, and dribbled the ball back down again, and I just felt happy watching him. He’s attacking the rim with a ferocity that we haven’t seen since there was a mountain on the front of his uniform and a mohawk on the top of his head*, and when he puts up a shot, I think it’s going in. Most importantly, he seems to be playing happy. If the theory that players take that leap in their third year holds, we can think of 2007-08 (i.e. the year after the meltdown, subsequent trade request, and new start with Jerry, if you will) as his rookie season, 2008-09 as his sophomore-wall-hitting, injury-plagued second season, and 2009-10 as the Great Leap Forward season. Anyway, it’s just good to have a bright spot in the midst of all this chaos.

*Seriously, watch this. Back in the day, AK used to fly–and fly hard–to the rim.

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Game 13 vs. DET: Where Memo doesn’t have to be in the house…

…for the Okurse to work.

That said, this was just as easily another “lucky” win for the Jazz, who came out sluggish and produced an interminable lay-up/lay-in futility stretch unlike any those outside the SLC had ever seen.

Although the Jazz eventually pulled out an OT win, these sobering facts remain:

–They have no idea that playing for a full 48 means you don’t have to play for 53.
–If Boozer would play every quarter like he has the 4th in the past two games, the starters could be sitting pretty on the bench and young guys that need playing time to develop can get it. Playing one quarter out of four ain’t gonna cut it.
–Deron needs to figure out how to suppress Frustrated DWill in favor of angry DWill.
–Fundamentals are still MIA.

I’ve said it once and I’ll say it a million times more: There’s no bigger X-factor than the AK factor.

If this were a young team, I could attribute all the mental lapses, bobbling, around-the-rim ineptitude, and WTF moments to inexperience and youth. However, the core of this team has been together for five years already and there is no excuse for the way they fail to bring it every night. It’s no wonder that the ESA is so empty this season. Although they’ve won three straight, these have not been feelgood wins and there’s something blocking me from getting fully behind my team. Something is still off, and something still needs to change.

Fun fact: Phil Johnson was [Pistons Head Coach] John Kuester’s first NBA coach in Kansas City.

(Update: It turns out that Booner was on that Kansas City team as well. Small world, eh? And just as a matter of fact (thanks Wikipedia!) Booner is first All-Time in turnovers and second All-Time in fouls in the ABA lol. He’s also 3rd in scoring and 6th in assists, and once played 1,041 consecutive games. The more you know…)

Oh and by the way, Memo used to look like this:

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Game 12 @ SA: Breaking Announcement

“Well,” [Jerry Sloan] said, “it was nice from my standpoint to get a win in this building before I die.” (H/T desnews)

This shirt is officially retired. A championship probably wouldn’t feel this good. SLC–meet the guys at the airport for the parade!

Game 11 vs. TOR: Signs of Life

The Jazz got off to a rip-roarin’, red-hot start in the emptiest, saddest ESA/Delta Center I’ve ever seen. Unfortunately, the last three quarters of the game were nothing to write home about.

Bosh and Boozer played equally good D all night, a.k.a. they rolled out the red carpet for each other in the lane. As a result, both racked up monster lines–CB4 went for 32&17 while CB5 went for 22&18 (he could have done a lot better, but after spending the first quarter going to the hole, was content to jack bad J’s the final three).

In regards to this particular game, Deron and especially AK made me AND my fantasy teams happy. Memo and Calderon did not please me or my teams, however.

The good: The Jazz started to collapse but Jerry called a TO (yes, that is part of the good) and they played well enough down the stretch that yet another 4th quarter meltdown was narrowly averted. Also, lots of PT for the young guys.

The bad: The hapless Jazz have apparently never heard of basic basketball fundamentals. Not only is boxing out an unknown concept to them (I mean, come on, even I learned that in middle school P.E. class), but the Raps got so many completely open shots all over the floor it was ridiculous.

The scary: The sight of Fes dribbling and barrelling his way down the floor, lol.

The optimism-inspiring: I cannot say enough how impressed I am with Eric Maynor. eMay FTW!

In conclusion, I’m not convinced that the Jazz have turned a corner, and I will likely be Debbie Even Downerer tomorrow since the Jazz are playing in SA*, but a somewhat decent win (by this roster’s standard) feels good.

*I hope the Jazz don’t force me to bust this out (but curses do exist, and streaks are streaks for a reason):

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The joke that is the Coach of the Year award

“In this business,” Sloan said Friday, “you don’t want to be the Coach of the Year.” (H/T desnews)

It’s a well-known fact that Jerry Sloan has never won the NBA Coach of the Year award, despite being the only coach to have amassed 1,000 wins with one team and despite there having been 234 coaching changes in the league since he became head coach of the Jazz.

It’s also well-known (in Utah circles) that Jerry Sloan is the only Utah Jazz coach to have never won the award. (So there were only two coaches before Jerry. The statement is still true.)

Perhaps less well-known is that the COY landscape is littered with coaches that have, at one time or another, had some relation to Jerry. In fact, every coach that has ever been affiliated with Sloan the player and Sloan the coach (apart from his rookie year coach), has won the award.

I remain adamant to this day that Jerry was robbed of the award (shame on you, media) in ‘03-’04. That was the year that he coached without Stockton and Malone for the first time in 18 years and took a team that was predicted to be the worst team in NBA history to a 42-40 season.

Let’s take a look at COY winners since then.

Sloan is also the only coach in NBA history with more than 1,000 wins to have never won the award. Furthermore, he and George Karl are the only two coaches in the top ten of most coaching victories to have never won the award:

My conclusions:
1) The COY award is a joke and/or bad luck (and Mike Brown might want to start preparing himself*);
2) The COY award should be named after Jerry Sloan.

That is all.

*If history holds and Mike Brown is fired within this next year, I’m predicting LBJ moves to New York next summer. You heard it here first.