OLD NEWS RECORDS

I don't really know how this Cyber Monday thing is supposed to work, but I'm trying anyway!

Over the weekend, I went down to the Old News Records office (i.e. the closet in my apartment where I keep everything) and updated all the inventory in there.

The holidays are here already—which is crazy because this year has gone by very quickly—and it's time to start buying gifts. So here are three things you may want to try getting for someone, and they're all in stock and ready to be ordered from the my shop.

Visit the link above, or just type in trevorhale.bigcartel.com and get busy ordering!

Tulip - A great novel written by a good friend of mine. I've written and talked about this before ad nauseam, but it's still worth it.

"Bogged down by the existential angst of the American Dream, Tulip has long since given up on any search for meaning—until a voice he's never heard sneaks into his head.

The small miracles of life, paired with the new voice, sets him on a path of moral awakenings and trials by the Devil's hand. Through it all, Tulip seeks love, fights back hoards of entitled masses and finds a new hope and respect for humanity.

At the same time, Tulip must decide if the voice in his head is real or if reality is just falling apart."

HP tank top - I made this tank top last year because I thought it was a clever idea. Apparently it was clever enough that someone else stole it from me. Either that, or great minds think alike. Probably the latter. Anyway. I've got plenty in stock, in all sizes, and they're ready to ship ASAP.

Long Live Sloan t-shirt - Last but not least, my tribute to the great Jerry Sloan. The Jazz are now on their second coach since the legendary Sloan stepped down, but we'll never forget Jerry.

Everything is available and ready to go. I'm going to say that if you want it by Christmas, you need to order by December 15. I don't trust the post office anyway, but I trust them far less on a time crunch.

trevorhale.bigcartel.com

JERRY SLOAN DAY!

Long. Live. Sloan.

January 31 shall from this moment on be known as "Jerry Sloan Day," according to our own Governor Herbert, who may be just trying to save face from some of his more despicable actions over the past few months. You know, like being really, incredibly, super anti-gay but being totally cool with the air in the state deteriorate at a rapid pace because it lines the pockets of his friends.

Sloan abruptly retired after a game against the Chicago Bulls (a game that I was at and still have the ticket stub for) in February 2011. Lots of rumors swirled about it being due to Deron Williams, Greg Miller and Kevin O'Connor but no one knows exactly what happened. Sloan said he was exhausted and just didn't have it in him anymore and that it was time to go.

He was given a role of "consultant" or something last summer, but it's more just a legacy thing. The Jazz organization doesn't want one of the longest tenured coaches in history leaving in a huff to be a black mark, so they're trying to fix it.

The Jazz will be retiring the number 1223, which represents the number of regular season and playoff victories under his belt. he coached the team for 23 years, which is a lifetime in professional sports. There were 245 head coaching changes around the NBA during his tenure with the Jazz.

I've always been a fan of Sloan and to celebrate, I made these shirts that I still have for sale. If you're interested in one, visit my shop and pick one up. I can't have it shipped to you in time for the game tonight, but at least you'll have it.

Long. Live. Sloan.

MONEY

The Jazz are the team just keep on giving.

They're terrible, but somehow I've figured out a way to write about them three times over the past week.

Earlier this week in New Orleans, Gordon Hayward had a terrible game. He's usually pretty good, but that night, he couldn't hit the broad side of a barn. It wasn't for lack of effort though. He shot 17 times. Only one of them went in. Hayward was 1 for 17 in 39 minutes and ended up with 6 points (four came from free throws). He did have 6 rebounds and 11 assists, but still, 1 for 17 is pretty bad.

Everyone has bad games and it's bound to happen over the course of a season.

The next day, former Jazz center and 3-point guru Mehmet Okur reached out to Hayward and offered him some encouragement. It was an amazing gesture and one that I'm sure Hayward appreciated.

Okur just picked the absolute worst Tweet to respond to. The wording he used didn't help a single bit, either.

The Jazz play in Dallas tonight. Yesterday, on their day off, Corbin took the team to The Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza on the eve of the 50th anniversary of the JFK assassination.

Woops.

THE BALLAD OF FIRSTNAME LASTNAME

I broke down and watched the majority of the Jazz game last night (they won!) and they, surprisingly, looked half-decent.

Richard Jefferson had something of a breakout performance and gave the team a little lift late in the 3rd quarter. It seems that everyone was kind of surprised by it - even the crew in the production department. They made a little snafu when Bolerjack and Harpring (the home announcers) asked them to get the KFC Bucket Chart up so they could show how much better he was last night than in just about every other game so far this season.

Even the @utahjazz production department has lost all interest in this team. #NOPatUTA pic.twitter.com/1HojypBfU8
— Trevor Hale (@trevorhale) November 14, 2013

I noticed the "FIRSTNAME LASTNAME" error, snapped a picture and sent a Tweet. I figured I'd get a few laughs and that would be that.

Wrong.

The replies blew up for about an hour while I cooked some delicious Top Ramen and I got a kick out of it. Definitely the most popular Tweet I've ever sent out - even more popular than those hilarious Twilight Concert ones.

Didn't think much about it today until my brother sent me a text that said, "Did you see your Twitpic is a top story on Yahoo!?"

Sure enough, it was. Must have been a really, really slow news day. But hey, at least they gave me credit.

"THE AMPLITUDE OF THEIR INEPTITUDE"

The Jazz are a terrible basketball team. They haven't won a game yet and have lost 7 straight times (*update - 0-8) to start the season.

Everyone knew they were in for a tough year, but it's hard to say that anyone expected them to be as bad as they are.

Well, that's not true. I fully expected them to be terrible. I told people the Jazz would be lucky if they hit 20 wins this season. The best player on the team (Gordon Hayward) would be the 2nd or 3rd best player on any other team. Enes Kanter and Derrick Favors might be pretty great players someday, but no time soon and I think Alec Burks is the second coming of C.J. Miles. Those are the guys we're going to war with. Those are the Core Four that Jazz Fans thought were going to set the NBA on fire and were happy to get rid of Paul Millsap, Al Jefferson and every other professional basketball player on the roster to make room for.

Trey Burke, the injured starting point guard might help when he comes back, but unless as Spencer Checketts said "Trey Burke better be a solid combination of Chris Paul and Jesus," the Jazz are out of luck.

I admit, I'm taking a little too much pleasure in how bad this team is. After they let every single one of their free agents walk, traded for Richard Jefferson, Andris Biedrins and Brandon Rush then signed John Lucas III in order to turn the team over to the young guys, I knew it would be terrible. Very few people believed me and I spent the summer listening to the accounting dorks on the other side of my divider at work talk about how good the Jazz were going to be this year and that they were going to surprise a lot of people.

They are surprising a lot of people - but not in the way they hoped. After a 115 - 91 loss on Saturday night (which the Raptors lead by as many as 38 points at one time), Toronto Star columnist Cathal Kelly wrote a pretty scathing column about how as bad as the Raptors are, the Jazz are worse.

Let's look at some quotes:

Coming in, we knew Utah was bad. They hadn’t won a game. They hadn’t scored more than 93 points since opening night. They have the worst defence* in the league.

In reality, we knew nothing. The awfulness of the Utah Jazz is a full-on sensory experience. To appreciate the amplitude of their ineptitude, it has to be suffered through in person. Like waterboarding.

After two hours of this dreck, I’m not sure what the Jazz play. It isn’t basketball. It’s a strange cross between Red Rover and inside-out dodgeball.

Halfway through the second, the usually invisible Quincy Acy was inserted. In the second quarter. Hopefully, the Jazz understand how shaming that should feel.

So we're in for a long, long season here in Utah. It's only a matter of time before Jazz fans start booing their own team. Hell, I'm surprised they haven't started yet.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: Jazz fans are some of the worst people on the planet. I'm always happy when they get a nice reality check.

*I don't know if that's a typo or just a Canada thing.

LONG LIVE SLOAN - BACK IN STOCK

Wanted to give everyone a heads up that the LONG LIVE SLOAN shirt is back in stock.

Just in time for basketball season and just in time to show your support for the legend - especially now that he's back in the Jazz organization in some capacity.

Head over to my shop and pick one up.

Old News Records Store - Long Live Sloan

REAL LIFE CONVERSATIONS ABOUT JERRY SLOAN

I had the LONG LIVE SLOAN shirts for sale this past Saturday at my Craft Lake City table. Here are a few of the better conversations I had with passers-by.

"Long Live Sloan? Who's Sloan?"
"Jerry Sloan. The old Jazz coach that quit."
"Oh. Are you related to him or something?"
"Nope. Just thought he was a great coach and wanted to do something to honor that."
"Huh."

Walks away giving me a sarcastic thumbs up.

---

"Is that Jerry Sloan?"
"It sure is."
"He was a tough guy."
"I believe that."
"Did you ever watch him play?"
"I've seen videos and highlights and things like that."
"No, no. I mean in person. Did you ever see him play in person?"
"Uh, I didn't. Didn't he retire from playing in like the early 70s?"
(I checked. It was 1976 when he retired as a player.)
"Yeah."
"No. I wasn't born yet."
"Oh. Well. You missed out. Good luck with the shirt though."

---

Older Woman spots the shirt: "Oh my gosh! I love that shirt. I have to take a picture of it!"
She starts digging in her purse for a camera.
Her daughter: "Long Live Sloan? What does that mean?"
Me: "Jerry Sloan. He was the coach of the Jazz until a couple years ago.
Older Woman, just about to take a picture, stops: "Oh. That's not who I thought it was, then."
She puts the camera back and the two of them walk away.

---

FAN UP

The facade is over. I don't think we should be allowed to talk about how we're the best fans in the world anymore. We're not. At all.

You know how I know? I went to the game last night. It was game 4 of the first round, the Jazz were down three games to none and on the brink of elimination. That's when those so called "fans" need to step up. They didn't. Tip off was at 6 PM, which is a little early, but the game was nationally televised on TNT and they had to fit two west coast games in last night. So it was a little earlier than the usual 7 PM start, but that's of little matter.

It's a playoff game and when tickets went on sale last week for games three and four, lower bowl seats were around $140 a piece. I bought a lower bowl seat yesterday afternoon for $40. Season ticket holders were having a hard time GIVING these seats away.

I've said some harsh things about the Jazz (CJ Miles and Raja Bell in particular) this year, but that's because I love the team and want to see them succeed. I made it a point to be at the game and in my seats for the opening tip-off and I was. I couldn't say the same for most of the rest of Energy Solutions Arena, though.

Best fans in the league.

I took this picture with 7:10 left in the first quarter. How pathetic does that look? The arena is barely 1/2 full, if that. About midway through the second quarter, the place was a little more full but still not at capacity. The game went on and the Jazz kept it close for a bit, but then towards the end of the third quarter, the Spurs went on a run and before anyone knew it, we were down by 20. A few people grabbed their stuff and headed for the exits.

Then things started happening. DeMare Carroll started playing hard (and pretty much gave them a spark they needed), Favors, Millsap and Jefferson all got back into it and suddenly, we were on a little bit of a run and just as quickly as we got behind big, we were right back within 4. Less than a minute left and only down by 4. It's still a long ways away from winning the 4 straight games we needed to advance, but at least it looked like we might not get swept and embarrassed completely.

The problem was, that a lot of people were gone already and more people were leaving every second. There was a long delay while the refs looked at a replay that would give the Jazz the ball back for a chance to pull within two. While that was going on, more and more people were leaving. The jazz got the ball back, but immediately squandered the opportunity and Manu Ginobili hit a wide open, fast break layup to put the Spurs back up by six with 18 seconds left.

That's when the whole building emptied out. With 18 seconds left.

You're telling me that we're the best fans in the world and we love this team and all that but we can't sit in our seats for 18 more seconds? Are you kidding me?

When time ran out and we'd been swept out of the playoffs we weren't even supposed to be in, against a team that is probably the heavy favorite to win the NBA title, some fans started booing. They were booing their own team, for the second time in as many games (because that happened at the end of game 3, too).

Best fans in the world? Please.

You can't bother to show up on time or stay for an entire playoff game. Stop kidding yourselves.

RANDOM JAZZ NOTES

• Raja Bell is pissed because he didn't play the entire postseason and barely played at all the second half of the year. Raja Bell also thinks he's still the same great player he was the last time he was on the Jazz and the first few years he was in Phoenix. He's not. He also said he was willing to do whatever the Jazz organization asked of him and be professional about it. Corbin basically asked him to sit on the bench and not do anything. Then any time Bell was asked about it, he complained and said he didn't want to play for the Jazz anymore but in the same breath said he wouldn't ask for a trade, but kept heavily insisting on it. Really glad we gave him that 3 year contract. I bet we can get a lot for him in the offseason.
• The CJ Miles era (hopefully) ended last night. He said this morning that Corbin did a poor job communicating with him and he never knew what was expected of him this year. I don't play professional basketball, so I can't exactly speak for the coach, but my guess would be that pretty much all that was expected of CJ Miles was to play hard, not take dumb shots, actually play defense and maybe try to live up to some of that "potential" we've been hearing about for the past six years. Since he did none of that, Corbin put in people (like Alec Burks and DeMare Carroll) that did the things they were supposed to do—probably without having to be specifically instructed to do so like Miles apparently needed.
• I love Paul Millsap, but I hate that he's fantastic for about 2.5 quarters and totally replaceable for the other quarter and a half. With the way Favors played during the playoffs and the 15 million Jefferson is owed next year, Millsap will either have to learn a few new moves and shift to small forward (where he'll have to play like/guard Melo and LeBron) or he'll be gone when the season starts. I love him to death, but I can't decide which is a better option.
• I have no idea what we're supposed to do with Devin Harris. Neither does Devin Harris.
• I'm afraid that Gordon Hayward is becoming the new CJ Miles. I hope that's not the case, but the evidence is there—one or two great games followed by one or two really, really bad ones.
• DeMare Carroll said that the Jazz are picking up his option for next season. I'm totally okay with this.
• I hated the idea of Jamaal Tinsley on the team, but now I really like it. I think he'd be great to have as the number two PG. But that also means I'm okay with getting rid of Earl Watson, which I think I am.
• Josh Howard is in the same boat as Devin Harris.
• Enes Kanter and Alec Burks will be really good. I just hope they're both still on this team when that time comes.
• Corbin also said that Sloan has had enough time off that he'll reach out and see if he wants to be involved with the Jazz in some capacity. I say we give him Kevin O'Connor's job. Unless Vinny Del Negro or Scott Brooks gets fired after next round and Sloan takes either of those jobs. Because then I'll be a full fledged Clippers or Thunder fan.

And with that, we'll see you next year.

Also, I've still got a few LONG LIVE SLOAN shirts left in case you still wanted to get in on that.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, COACH

Coach Sloan turns 70 today.

He's one of the greatest NBA coaches of all time and if Deron Williams hadn't been such a cry-baby and Greg Miller cared as much about running an NBA team as he does about car dealerships, prompt lunch meetings and Internet-bullying, he might still be around today.

But he's not. Coach Corbin (who I respect and think is doing a great job with a deeply flawed roster) took his place, but it's still strange to see him roaming the sidelines instead of the old guy with the silver hair and penchant for calling referees a "cocksucker".

When Sloan retired, I had these shirts printed up in his honor and I've still got a few of them left, so what better way to celebrate than by wearing a shirt of the man that made the Utah Jazz a relevant basketball program for so many years.

Long Live Sloan.

Available at my Big Cartel Store that you get to by clicking this link.

http://oldnewsrecords.bigcartel.com/product/long-live-sloan

RHYMIN' AND STEALIN'

If you're a Jazz fan like I am, there are definitely a few players on the current roster you're just not sure about.

For every one fantastic game that Kirilenko played, he gave you five borderline terrible ones. Okur (prior to injury) was either 100% on or 100% off. Millsap, as much as I love him, completely disappears for like 20 minutes each game.

Then we have C.J. Miles. For years, (literally years) beat writers, bloggers, announcers, talk show hosts and everyone else keep reminding me of his potential, that he's still young and once it all clicks for him, the rest of the NBA better watch out.

The problem with that is that C.J. has been in the league for six years. If it hasn't clicked yet, I don't think it's going to. He's an effective player from time to time, but he's killed the Jazz far more times than he's saved them.

When we matched OKC's offer sheet to keep him around, I wasn't upset because it wasn't a lot of money. But it was a 4-year deal, which meant that I was going to have to suffer through his erratic play for another four seasons.

I don't really know how the lockout works, but I'm pretty sure the 11-12 season would be Miles' last under his current contract, but since it's becoming increasingly clear that there's not going to be an 11-12 NBA season, I kind of think we're through with him, which would be okay with me.

I'm sick of him. I don't trust him. I want to, but I don't. I want him to be the player that everyone has been telling me he'll be, but he's not and I don't want to keep waiting for him to become that player.

All of that was a super long-winded segue into the fact that thanks to my old boss Rachel Piper, I found out that C.J. Miles has some hip-hop tracks floating around.

I knew he rapped, because my friends in the band Reviver have been trying to get a guest spot from him on one of their new tracks for a year. They've exchanged Tweets, but I don't think anything ever came of it. But even if it did, Reviver/C.J. wouldn't have shit on Foekus and Cherem.

I don't know a lot about hip-hop, but I know that this isn't terrible. There are definitely far worse NBA star-turned rapper tracks out there (Kobe Bryant feat. Tyra Banks, anyone?) but at least he's spending the lockout doing something productive. God forbid he'd be working on his shooting.

Well congrats, C.J. you can finally be mentioned in the same sentence as Shaq, Allen Iverson, Jason Kidd, Chris Webber and Kobe.

It's just a shame it's not based on your playing skills.

"L.A.S.T."


"Loud Thoughts"


If you're on Tumblr, keep an eye on C.J.'s. He's bound to put up more tracks eventually.

LONG. LIVE. SLOAN.

Let me tell you a little bit about this shirt.

The last band I was in was called Collapse. We quit playing about a year ago, but before that we had this idea. We'd planned to do a split 7" with our friends in Xibalba, who were from Los Angeles. It was going to be a Utah Jazz vs. L.A. Lakers themed split, with half the records either purple or gold and the other half either light or dark blue (since this was before they'd officially changed back to the color scheme they're wearing now) and the Xibalba side was going have a picture of Kobe (booo!) and the Collapse side was going to have a picture of D-Will.

We'd planned the layout and everything and while we were at it came up with an idea for a shirt. It was this design, but instead of LONG LIVE SLOAN, it was going to say "WHERE'S THE FUCKING FOUL?!" on the front and COLAPZZ on the back. Great idea, right?

Then none of us ever had any free time anymore, we all started doing our own thing and the band just kind of stopped. Didn't break up, nothing bad happened, we just never practiced again.

But I always liked that shirt idea.

Then, a few days after Sloan quit, it popped back in to my head. I called Candace (since I have no graphic design skills whatsoever) and she designed it for me that night. Then I found a guy willing to print a few for a reasonable price, so I went for it.

Took a couple of weeks longer than I would have liked and they're probably not as good as a few of the other Sloan shirts I've seen pop up since then, but I'm still pretty stoked on it.

If you're interested, I've got a few for sale over at my shop.

Long Live Sloan.

LONG LIVE SLOAN

I literally had to stop working for a few minutes today to process this news. I knew something was up last night when I read the reports of a blow-up between Sloan and VP Kevin O'Connor after the game. Then he took an extra long time coming out for the post-game questions with media.

Never expected he'd quit mid-season. And it breaks my heart, truly.

Things didn't look right at the game last night and Deron Williams quit in the last two minutes. They could have won it. I was there. I saw him. He looked listless, bored and disinterested as Derrick Rose came up and took the ball away and sealed their fate for the night. That's what it's come down to today. All sorts of reports about how Sloan was tired of D-Will blaming everyone else for everything even though he hasn't been trying for weeks. He's supposed to be the best PG in the league, but the past two weeks he's been killed by Derrick Rose, Russell Westbrook and Rajon Rondo. I know he's had a bum wrist, but still. He clearly didn't care and now it looks like he's bad guy in this situation.

And he very well might be. He's been changing plays on the fly and the entire team (that he's supposedly the leader of) hasn't been running the plays. Former Jazz beat writer Ross Siler has been saying there's something wrong for weeks while he watches the games. Says there's supposed to be multiple moving parts of each play and the Jazz just weren't doing it. They were getting lazy. Surprising because in the 23 years that Sloan has been running that system, they've only had one losing season.

Another thing I'd like to share is what former Chrony editor and current Standard Examiner writer Matthew Piper said on Twitter:

"How could the Jazz blame Sloan's system? They're in second place with so-so talent! And I thought I liked this Jazz team... #fuckthejazz"

And Steve Luhm, a long time reporter for the Tribune just posted this (by the way, it's days like today that I love Twitter. I was at work away from everything and I was still able to follow every single moment of this ordeal) on Twitter:

"One trusted source says Deron Williams-Sloan relationship was the big factor in this, despite press conference spin."

"The trusted source, in fact, is quite angry that Deron Williams now has the ability to force management's hand."

"Source: 'Deron Williams quit the last month.' Wow."

And that's the biggest thing I keep coming back to. The system works if you're not too lazy to run it.

But I can say anything I want. I'm not the one out there on TV every night trying to win ball games. I'm bitching like a fanboy on the Internet. I know this.

I'm going to miss Sloan a whole bunch. And I've also got to say, after listening to assistant coach Phil Johnson (who also resigned today) talk on the radio, I've got a newfound respect for him, too. He talked about how he would have been the logical successor to take over the team, thus earning a couple million dollars, but decided to walk away because it wasn't about the money. He was in solidarity with Sloan and I loved hearing that. He and Sloan ate lunch and dinner together nearly two hundred times a year for over twenty years and as soon as Sloan said it was time for him to go, Johnson didn't even skip a beat and said, "Then I'm going with you."

That is something special.

And to Deron Williams, if all this is true: You wanted to be the Alpha Dog, well now you are. This entire season is now on your shoulders so you better deliver.

But my guess? The Jazz will come up short and you'll blame someone else just like you have been all season. Then you'll leave town (for somewhere like Dallas or LA) and the only legacy you'll ever leave was of the guy that forced out one of the best coaches in NBA history.

I hope that's not true, but a big part of me thinks that's exactly what will happen.

And I thought Le Bron was a dick. Well, move over sir. There's a new heel in town.

THERE'S ALWAYS NEXT YEAR. AND THE NEXT YEAR. AND THE ONE AFTER THAT.

You're going to have to forgive me as I get caught up.

I've been away from my computer for a few weeks, unable to write. There were a ton of things that I thought about while I was gone, but hardly had any time to write anything down in the notebook I brought.

(The one night I did have some free time, I spent watching LOST so I'd be caught up for the finale the day I got back.)

So for the next few days, I may be addressing things that are old news, but still on my mind. So, skip over them if you need to.

The first thing that comes to mind is the Utah Jazz. They were ousted by the Lakers just a few days after I left and I've been thinking about it off an on ever since. I didn't really expect them to beat the Lakers, but I also didn't expect them to get swept either. Jesus, put up a little bit of a fight. Oh well.

Here's what worries me about the team that just lost in the playoffs: They didn't have Mehmet Okur or Andrei Kirilenko. Not that those two would have been huge difference makers (Kirilenko might have helped a bit more if he was in game shape, but Okur basically took the entire year off) but they would have helped at least a little.

The main thing is that since those two were out, it's just going to give Greg Miller and Kevin O'Connor an excuse to not do ANYTHING this offseason. The entire front office is going to fall back on the same bullshit excuse they've used for the past few seasons: "We think we have a good team and we want to see how well we do when we're at full strength."

Add that excuse and Greg Miller's "I thought we were very aggressive at the trade deadline this year" comment (in which we gave away Ronnie Brewer and Eric Maynor to make room for Okur's extension that he signed right before he decided he wasn't interested in basketball) and you've got yourself a front office!

In other words, "We're going to sit back and watch the same team finish exactly the same next year because we don't really want to take any chances."

I was reading a column by Bill Simmons the other day where he was talking about Mikhail Prokhorov, the new Russian billionaire owner of the New Jersey Nets, and he dropped this paragraph in there.

"...instead of chewing up Jersey's cap space with overpaid free agents, I bet Prokhorov trades for Andrei Kirilenko -- his former CSKA star, as well as an expiring 2011 contract of $17.82 million -- in a deal that won't cost Jersey anything because Utah (struggling to find money for Carlos Boozer) could easily replace Kirilenko with its lottery pick (No. 8 overall) and a second trade. For the Nets, even if they just rented Kirilenko and picked Georgia Tech's Derrick Favors (the draft's best power forward) at No. 3, that's an intriguing short-term front line (Favors, Kirilenko and Brook Lopez) and they'd maintain flexibility for a run at Carmelo in 2011 and/or have Kirilenko's expiring deal to shop this February. And it would go over big back home for Prokhorov. Win, win and win."

Sometimes Simmons is dead on and sometimes he's way off, but did you see the part in that paragraph that makes me worried sick as a Jazz fan? I'll help you out, it's this line "Utah (struggling to find money for Carlos Boozer) could easily replace Kirilenko with its lottery pick..."


Yep. Boozer wants a max contract (upwards of $80 million) and Simmons, one of the most plugged in guys in the NBA, thinks that Utah is going to give him one. Again. They gave him one five years ago and he only showed up for a little over half the games in that time period.

Now I can only imagine that running a professional sports team is an extremely difficult job, not one that I'd be able to do, but holy shit. If the Jazz front office sits back, resigns Boozer just to watch him "get hurt" for half the season again I, along with thousands of other fans (minus Tom and Mike who will be stoked) will be furious.

The team they have now (and have had for the past three seasons) doesn't work. Something's got to give and something has to change.

Unfortunately I know that's not going to happen.

The slogan for next year should be "Mediocrity at it's Finest!"

Always good, but never great. You'd think after 25 years someone would try to do something about it.

5.6 TO GO...

I could watch this clip all day long.



And this is pretty good, too.