fingers crossed

today's post inspired by my favorite band from scandinavia, in no small part because they manage to make a gretsch and a dual rectifier work together. for those of you who, while musically inclined, are not up on your guitar/amp pairings, that's like george harrison joining slayer.

oh, the nba and your constant flurry of making me feel human emotions. what's the single biggest heartbreaking story you've delivered to my electronic doorstep this season?

the end of greg oden's career in portland? no (although wesley matthews, on whom i am developing a creepy man crush, going to portland is in my top five).

the unsurprising news that your idiot fans voted yao to the all-star game even though (1) he mediocre at best, and (2) he's constantly injured? booooriiiing.

is it even the jazz and their middling, consistently inconsistent play? i'm afraid not.

no, the nba's 2010-2011 saddest byline has been, and continues to be, the plight of the cleveland cavaliers. i get that gilbert's open letter, along with footage of fans burning lebron jerseys, from seems-so-long-ago summer made the team and its supporters out to be a bunch of crying bitches. but you know what? they were right to be angry.

hey jazz nation, remember every time boozer had a radio interview with chicago or miami? remember how you wanted to pluck out his goose-turd (anyone ever play a round at forestdale?) eyebrows and forcefeed them back to the guy for talking about leaving utah so openly? how do you think you'd feel if he had promised you a championship after growing up in ogden, only to run to LA as soon as he was a free agent?

see, they had a right to be changry.

and now, given the 25-and-counting losses by the cavs, i present to you the saddest story in modern basketball. a team, once a perennial playoff contender; a team that, for a few seasons, was at least a darkhorse championship threat, is now a poster child for pity. and it's not like the season started out completely bleak for cavs fans; even before the streak, cleveland wasn't looking fantastic, but they were sitting at 8-19. that's a .296 record, enough to have them only 4 or 5 games out of playoff contention right now had they kept that tepid pace (detroit, at .373, is 3.5 games out of 8th as of this writing, while new jersey, at .288, is 8 back). but this losing streak: it's enough to make most nba fans look away from sports center out of sheer embarrassment.

so what's got my fingers crossed? besides always having some lateral strain on the knuckles in my hand for the sake of the jazz making it to 4th in the west in the next 9 weeks, i'm crossing them in hopes that the jazz don't turn into cleveland after the 2011-2012 [season/lockout]. yesterday, scott howard-cooper, or scow-poop as i like to call him, posted a quick note regarding sloan's recently announced one-year extension over on nba.com's hangtime blog. predictably, the comments were split evenly along three lines:
(1) non-jazz fans who respect sloan but hate the jazz wishing their team had a coach like sloan;
(2) jazz fans who are excited about the news; and
(3) jazz fans who have a flaming case of hemorrhoids who think the team would be better off without sloan if only because retaining him is going to send d-will packing once his contract is up.

i'm not one to put much weight behind comments on sekou smith's brainchild, though i realize the irony of being one of many inane sports fans with his own dozens-of-hits-per-week blog while discounting my fellow social-media-savvy morons. but the last few weeks of chatter regarding deron's unhappiness, sloan's unwillingness to change, and the "necessity' of having a big three to be a championship contender has given me pause.

frankly, i don't see sloan's presence as a deal-breaker for his gr8ness. if deron wants out of utah, it's not going to be because of sloan (despite a snide comment about running the same plays for 23 years). it's going to be because of the front office's unwillingness to spend "what it needs to" to build the jazz into a title threat (i refuse to refer to championships as "chips," by the way). it's going to be because the existing team is, frankly, pretty lazy. it's because the ESA is getting quieter by the game. it's, to some degree, because he moved from downtown to holladay which is full of creepy polygamists and people who say things like "i got that H for you."

simply put, it's because deron wants to win a championship, and because he's such a perfectionist, he's not going to wait for that to fall into his lap.

the comparisons to john stockton need to stop, and they need to stop now. stockton was a fundamentals-only workhorse who did what he was told and played one game at a time. stockton played before kobe and shaq's personal problems led to one of the deadliest frontcourt pairings splitting apart; before dwayne, dwight, and chuck did commercials together; before the nba stole a championship franchise from seattle; before lebron. simply put, he played before the league finally became, right up front and unabashedly, about money first, rings second. deron wants a ring, and he knows that the fastest way to get there is with a hefty price tag.

but he also knows that a huge payroll, by itself, isn't going to be enough. the jazz are over the salary cap now and it's not working, which means utah's players and fans have one more year to prove to deron that he should stick around. that's not going to be on jerry; the guy is a hall-of-fame coach that has been to the western conference finals twice. please, go ahead and name me another coach on a team, as it exists right now, with room for deron who has better credentials.

the problem for utah is that this final year might not come. it's a real possibility that, with a season-long lockout, sloan and deron both walk; sloan permanently, and d-will to blue and greener pastures in dallas after jason kidd also hangs up his nikes.

thus i keep my fingers crossed. not for the jazz, but for the NBA, the NBAPA and derek fisher (booo) to make sure there is no lockout, no de-certification of the union to bring lawsuits. i'm crossing them for the thousands, if not tens of thousands, of people across the country who will be out of work (part or full time) as a result of stadiums being closed. i'm crossing them for jarron collins and sundiata gaines and all the players who make relatively few dollars, half of which goes to taxes and the other half to union dues that might put them out of a job*.

but, selfishly, i mostly keep them crossed for myself, to keep jerry sloan and deron williams in utah. i'll take 48 wins on the season over 25 consecutive losses any day of the week.

and now we all know, 25 consecutive losses after losing your coach and your all-star is an all-too-real possibility.


*i don't need a lecture that $200k isn't a lot of money. do the math: $100k, more or less, to taxes. $30k to union dues. $10k or so to relocate yourself, and your family, to a new city every 2-3 years. family coming out of the woodwork for financial support. pressure to live up to the NBA rep and drive a benzo and eat at fleming's. suddenly these bottom-tier nba players are bringing home about what you do, and they are going to have ruined knees and backs when they're 40.

The Coach; under pressure

people familiar with my lazy, intarw3bs-friendly low-caps typing may note that the title of today's entry is actually capitalized. i do that generally when i'm quoting or trying to make a point about the importance of a particular proper noun. like, andrei loves The Filet O' Fish (there's only one), or how george the president/war monkey was really more of a marionette for The Man (thanks pat bagley).

jerry sloan is, for those of us in/from utah, not just a coach. he's The Coach. because he's so simplistic yet sage; hard-nosed yet honorable; obvious yet ominous (these examples are alliterative yet algoddamn stupid). while deron's role as on-the-floor coach is increasing (and, as last night's post-game shows, his willingness to bask in this role is getting moderately narcissistic), jerry's role is simple: coach the team, expect hard work and wins.

turns out, he's coaching us, too. don't believe me? think of some of the things sloan has talked about recently:

• on boozer: sloan pointed out several times early this season that fans should get over it because there's nothing we can do now except wait for this team to gel. anybody noticed any talk on the uj360 boards about boozer that haven't effectively ended with "it doesn't matter that boozer's gone, we're doing fine anyway"?
• on The Dick-cision: sloan said in his day, guys wouldn't abandon their team for money, but now the money is a lot bigger and he doesn't know how he'd handle being in the lyin' king's shoes. as much as i think lebron's summer me-first party was a joke, the dude has been annointed as the future of the nba since he was 18. i thought, when i was 18, that by the time i was almost 28 (i.e., now), i'd either have a mountain bike world championship or three gold records. suppose everybody else told me i'd have those things also along the way. don't think i'd be jumping at every chance to make my world-domination dreams come true? don't think you would have done the same? don't think sloan knows exactly what he's talking about? he's not george costanza's old man sending back soup at a deli.
• on derek fisher: every time somebody asks him about fans booing fisher, he says he doesn't get it. he gets it. but he knows (a) for all of our perceived justifications, it's still classless - not that "classless" and "i'm moving to new york to help my daughter oh wait i'm resigning FURTHER from new york" are mutually exclusive; and (b) it just pisses kobe off and that don't help nobody.
• on the jazz when they play half-heart ball: nearly always the same two part answer - players get paid to play 48 minutes, and the fans expect effort. see, he's calling out his whole team publicly (singling out players in an interview is less effective, which is why he usually lists four guys in a row that need work), and he's calling out his fan base to demand more effort in the future. remember the handful of games last season at ESA that ended in boos (not "Booze;" maybe booze for some) as the jazz headed towards the locker room? think they would have been as loud if we didn't have a coach effectively telling the fans every other day for 20 years that they are entitled to wins at home?

sloan is nobody's fool. either the trib or the DN ran an article a few weeks back (i'd find the link but i'm behind on my patent law studying), polling all of the players and coaching staff about their thoughts on sloan and his system. nearly everybody said that sloan is much more personable and (gasp) friendly than his media persona suggests. what this suggests to me (notice how i turned the word "suggsets" there? it's called looping) is that sloan knows the nba, he knows the western conference, he knows his organization, he knows his players, he knows the refs, and he knows the fans. he knows that the indiana farmer sloan can speak to the media and say "we've got to execute more" or "we need to attack if we want rebounds" or "our defense looked a little stagnant" if he wants the crowd to respond at 110 decibels when the white-jersey jazz execute, clean the glass, and frustrate opponents' shots. everybody cheers when ronnie price sprints the length of the floor for a come-from-behind block a particularly overrated lakers forward who's only in the league because of his last name. but people aren't necessarily going to blow the roof off the House that Larry Built after two consecutive defensive stops - unless, maybe, the crowed has been primed for exactly that after a week of sloan hammering the point into a KFAN microphone.

next time you watch jerry's comments from shootaround or see him getting interviewed before he calls it a night (before that awful "nba league pass goodnight" screen robs you of Big T's insightful postgame), listen carefully to what he says and remember it the next night the jazz play at home. you might find Jerry's Kids playing a little harder in the paint or setting tougher screens, and the fans, including you, appreciating it a little bit more.

***

oh david bowie and queen, who knew that when you got together you'd create a masterpiece larger than all of you put together could seem capable of. "under pressure" has universal appeal; it's been covered by dozens, featured in one of the best skateboard video segments of all time, sampled by vanilla ice, and generally inspired millions.

"under pressure" also is a fitting description for the jazz as they travel to dallas today in an attempt that can best be summarized as "redemption." last week's loss to Big D was embarrassing. it was worse than embarrassing. the jazz were supposed to deliver one of the best early-season games, seeing as how the matchup was between the hottest two teams in the nba who, if the western conference standings stay static until april (they will not), are likely to meet in the post season. but they jazz flailed. they flubbed. they barely showed up for the fourth quarter, and felt like passing to the first row rather than each other. think the jazz don't have vengeance on their minds? i'd wager everybody on the team had a bag of chips for their shoulders on last night's flight to texas, and i'm not talking 'bout nacho cheesier.

the problem is everybody knows it, including that dirk nahootski guy (apparently he's from poland now?) and the rest of a team sloan described as actually two great teams in their starters and their bench. the jazz have a great team and one great bench player (CJ) along with several medicre and a few not good bench players. last year, we played in dallas twice, winning one of those matchups. our bench had 45 - FORTY FIVE - points in that game, including almost-double-doubles by AK and paul. more generally, boozer put up 17, memo put in 15, ronnie brewer had 19, wes matthews added 10, and korver poured in 17 points in fifteen minutes. not to mention we won every quarter (26-18, 24-22, 33-22) except the fourth.

last night's bench had 30, 26 of which came from CJ.

i hope the Big Tulip, watson, and RP ate their wheaties this morning; we're going to need more than just CJ.

yet hope remains, at least in terms of opportunity and who is likely to get more up for tonight's game. i mentioned last week that the jazz have it pretty easy for the next couple of months, generally speaking. after tonight, utah has 46 games to play before they have to play three games in a row against teams currently about .500 (OKC-new orleans-dallas late in march). but given our so-so home performance so far this season, this is the jazz's chance to break open the easiest half-season they've faced in recent memory with a huge win on the road against arguably the best team in the NBA. i'm guessing the players know that, and i'm hoping they can use that anticipation to their advantage.

dallas is on game three of a 6-game homestand, and should be feeling pretty complacent tonight after spanking my neighbors (the nets) last night and having a ho-hum contest against starting-to-streak-but-still-9-and-13 milwaukee on monday. the jazz like to get up for big games on the road, and this is the best time to do it.

doo-da-doo-dada-doo-doo snapclap.

praising the note at the blue note

“Didn’t you ask for them strawberries first?”

As a child with all of five years under my belt, you can imagine my surprise and awe when I turned around to see who had so politely reminded Bill at 8th Avenue Grocery (may its memory rest in peace) that my mother had, in fact, ordered the case of berries first. And despite the fact that the grocer had handed them to the newly minted All-NBA Second Defense Team standout from Louisiana Tech, who could have just as easily walked to the register and on with his life, Karl Malone reprimanded the store’s manager with a smile and handed the fruit to my astonished mother while she and I craned our necks and gaped, soaking in the moment.

The guy may have been a little green in terms of games played, but we knew we were in the presence of someone great. And he didn’t mind making sure that manners were observed, and that he wasn’t above anybody else waiting in line for strawberries. Well, maybe physically. But you get the point.

And that point has stuck with me ever since then. As I’ve watched the league erupt into a preening show for primadonnas, both players and brass, there has been one constant force on the hardwood that has stuck with being classy. They hang on to coaching staff when they make the playoffs instead of cleaning house because a team didn’t bring home any hardware. They groom players into all-stars instead of showering money onto already platinum-plated runner-ups. They push fundamentals and hard work. They’re the Utah Jazz, and everybody in the country knows that they do one thing and do it well.

They play basketball.

Since I’ve moved out to Newark, New Jersey, for law school (go Pirates), I’ve had everybody who finds out I’m from Utah ask me two things: (1) how many moms do you have, and (2) am I a Jazz fan. The answers, respectively, are (1) one, you jackass, and (2) can’t you see the jersey, hat, jacket, and keychain? I’m this close to getting a Stockton tattoo on my forehead just to make it slightly clearer.

But the Jazz thing always opens up a conversation I never get tired of. How long is Sloan sticking around?* Do you really think Jordan pushed off?** How good is Deron Williams?*** Think you can take the Lake-show down this year?**** Everybody knows our system, and they all respect it. The people I’m meeting now range from wealthy wide-eyed college grads to struggling 30-year men that work on the PATH train, and they share one thought with me. There’s not enough old-school tenacity or grit in the NBA, especially at MSG or The Rock. And, further, there’s a particularly dire lack of respect and loyalty running rampant through the country, which is exemplified by the shining temple of self-centeredness that is the NBA.

But, and there’s always the same but, it doesn’t seem like that in Utah.

Sloan’s still around. Deron’s still around. AK (for the time being) is still around. Raja’s back. LHM may be gone (another man and memory I hope is enjoying a well-deserved rest), but his family is carrying the torch of Jazz hoops in a manner that should make him smile, wherever he is. We’re in the playoffs every year, and when our offense is clicking it’s the most beautiful thing to witness in sports. That beauty is rooted in simplicity and efficiency, and Jerry’s Kids have known it for twentysomething years.

Folks out here, just like back home in the land of Deseret, know that we have our problems. But that doesn’t stop me from selling them on an important point. I’m not trying to push people to abandon the Knicks, Sixers, Magic, or whoever they’ve grown up loving. But, just like Jazz fans, they all hate the Lakers and don’t have a real favorite out West. I figure this is the real reason I’m out here; not so much to learn the law, but to educate the masses on the perpetual W machine on 300 West. And they’re receptive to it.

I figure a lot of people trying out for this job want free seats to some games while having a public outlet to blab about stats and complain about inconsequential things. No doubt they have the same level of passion about the team that I do. But I figure I’ve got slightly different perspective from several of the other tryers-out. I’m selling the Jazz to a bunch of big-market fans, and I’m doing a pretty good job. Writing for the Jazzbots would have its perks in terms of swag, but really I want to have a connection with fans all over the country and keep a lifeline to the team itself (and its stalwarts) in Salt Lake. My goal as a Jazzbot is to talk about the organization in a big-picture sense; I like rattling off numbers as much as the next guy or gal, but I also believe in the short (pun intended) lesson my post-toddler self learned from Number 32 two and a half decades ago. Even though the Jazz might be a group of astronomical talent (with bankrolls to match), they’re still essentially people who happen to play great basketball. And they know it.

That humility (along with a few other reasons) is what I’ve always loved about the Jazz. It’s what my new friends in North Jersey love about the Jazz. And it’s what I want to keep as my touchstone when I talk with you as the cowhide globe floats home.

*Hopefully forever.

**Hell yes, I think he pushed off. Are you blind?

***First, it’s DARE-in, not Da-RON. Second, well-made jambalaya is good. The clam chowder at Market Street is good. Deron Williams is a freak of nature, like lightning striking twice, except he strikes constantly for 40 minutes about 100 times a year. He’s not good. He’s perfect.

****I don’t think. I know.

author's note: this was my original submission to be considered for a blogger at utahjazz360.com as a "jazzbot." because i couldn't show up personally for my interview at ESA, it was conducted over the phone. i alternated from whispered answers as i ran out of the library and then was winded (that 50-yard dash was tough!) for the next few minutes. keeping in line with my generation's propensity toward entitlement-fed narcissism, my responses to the interviewers' questions basically filled them in on how awesome i think i am and what great insights i'd have regarding the team and jazz/nba culture.

not surprisingly, i was not selected. but something tells me this unofficial jazz booster club is as conservative and anti-northeast as the rest of utah's elite - including jim matheson - which doesn't really bother me. the shoe fits, so i'm not going to complain when people wear it. but i have to figure there are deron williams/jazz/nba fans who remember when they fell in love with a team enough to have it literally overtake the rest of their life, who love punk rock music, who wish the midwestern/mountain west states could proportion their electoral votes, who love new york/new jersey, and/or are fans of education generally. thus, to satisfy these four people across the country - i'm looking at you, greg hetson - my foray continues.