SB Nation User Blog: Shums

Peep Deron's post-gold-medal-winning stogie. (Looks like...

Shums — Sun, 31 May 2009 08:42:41 -0000

Peep Deron's post-gold-medal-winning stogie. (Looks like He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named-But-Whose-Initials-Are-C-and-P has one too. Maybe everyone does; those are the only two whose right hands are visible.) Didn't know he was the smoking type.

(And yes, it's 3am, I can't sleep, and it's the offseason.)

(original here, as part of this BDL post)

Korver makes it sound like he is thinking out of Utah - his agent will talk to teams to see if they...

Shums — Fri, 15 May 2009 23:49:03 -0000

Korver makes it sound like he is thinking out of Utah - his agent will talk to teams to see if they want him. - Please opt out - please

http://twitter.com/Lockedonsports/status/1811052812

From David Locke's Twitter. How would everyone feel about losing Korver? (Except Danielle, I think we know how she would feel.) Does the extra cap space help? Does it free up minutes for Ronnie B/Miles? Is that a good thing? I can't really wrap my head around why Locke is so happy about it (although I didn't listen to the show, so maybe he explained about this?)

OkurClaus. WHAT. THE. FRAK.

Shums — Mon, 11 May 2009 21:46:34 -0000

OkurClaus. WHAT. THE. FRAK.

PLAY THE KOOF IF YOU WANT TO LIVE

Shums — Fri, 01 May 2009 13:01:09 -0000

via i173.photobucket.com

The date is June 28, 2008. The event is the NBA Draft. The team is the Utah Jazz. Seeking to avoid further embarrassment on the interior defensively, the Jazz worked out such big men as Georgetown's Roy Hibbert, Florida's Marreese Speights, and Rider's Jason Thompson. Yet when it came time to choose, all these men had been selected by other teams. And thus it came to pass that the Jazz selected an entity from the land of the Buckeyes, a being of such unimaginable power that only capital letters are able to harness the force of his utterances, a creation so mighty that his respectful demeanor and grinning countenance only served as ironic counterpoint to his staggering capacity for destruction. This omnipotent creature, this force of nature, this demigod-in-rookie-form, would come to be known only as THE KOOF.

Oh... and it could DANCE.

Okay, so the whole "THE KOOF" thing started here, when I started making comments in game threads as if he were saying them himself in the third person. (To combat the intermittent periods of utter misery that punctuate the lives of Jazz fans, I invent little jokes and memes about the team and its players, some of which are funnier than others. I stick with the unfunny ones anyway.) Koufos was just finishing up a very promising month, where he averaged 8 points and 5 rebounds in only 16 minutes a game. And those averages are dragged down by games where he only played a minute or two and didn't score -- when he got adequate playing time, he hit double digit scoring five times that month.

Somehow in that January game against the Cavs, I got the image of Kosta as a Terminator, an implacable, emotionless, stone-cold killer of a big man. The combination of that image with Kosta's well-established polite attitude, work ethic, and goofy grin, seemed inherently humorous. So I bequeathed Kosta his definite article, started writing stuff about him in all caps, and it stuck. (To the point that, at every instance in these two paragraphs, where I have written "Kosta" or "Koufos," I had to make a conscious effort not to type "The Koof" instead. It is possible that I may or may not have a tendency to take my jokes too far. But I digress.)

When the Jazz drafted Koufos, there were fears that he would end up another Curtis Borchardt -- a talented big man whose lack of mobility and previous injuries caused his stock to fall in the draft. Kosta did little to assuage those fears in the Rocky Mountain Revue -- Ty Corbin said he had a long way to go. But it didn't take long for The Koof to get a chance to shine, earning a handful of starts during Mehmet Okur's November absence attending to his father. Even Jerry Sloan was practically effusive in his praise of the rookie: "He was fine." For those of us accustomed to Jerry, that's tantamount to calling the kid an All-Star.

All in all, here's the stat line on The Koof's rookie year:

Year	Team	G	GS	MPG	FG%	3P%	FT%	OFF	DEF	RPG	APG	SPG	BPG	TO	PF	PPG
08-09	UTA	48	7	11.8	0.508	0.000	0.706	1.0	1.8	2.9	0.4	0.2	0.6	0.54	1.50	4.7

Not great, but not bad, given his limited time. However, check the difference in his numbers as a starter:

SPLIT	G	GS	MPG	FG%	3P%	FT%	OFF	DEF	REB	APG	SPG	BPG	PPG
As A Starter	7	7	24.4	.542	.000	.800	2.4	3.7	6.1	1.0	0.7	1.9	10.3

Hmmmm. 10 and 6, with 2 blocks and well over 50% shooting? YES PLEASE. The blocked shots are especially tantalizing. The Jazz's best shot-blockers, Andrei Kirilenko and Paul Millsap, average almost the same number of blocks per game COMBINED. (Carlos Boozer, meanwhile averages .19 blocks per game. Yup. Thanks for that, Carlos.)

Now, that's only 7 games as a starter for The Koof, which is a very small and perhaps statistically insignificant sample size. But given the Jazz's defensive woes, especially in the paint... surely it's worth the venture, giving the Koof some burn, right?

Wrong. Apparently.

See, The Koof's last appearance in a Jazz uniform this year was on February 17th. After a month of languishing on the bench, Koufos was swapped for Kyrylo Fesenko, taking his place on the Utah Flash of the D-League while Big Fes took a seat on the Jazz bench.

And that's where things get interesting again:

Season	Team	G	GS	MPG	FG%	3p%	FT%	OFF	DEF	RPG	APG	SPG	BPG	TO	PF	PPG
08-09	UTA	10	10	29.8	.566	.000	.600	3.5	4.9	8.4	2.0	1.0	2.6	1.90	2.00	16.7

Wow. Just... wow.

Again, a small sample size, and definitely against inferior, D-League level talent. But... holy crap. Check the points. The BLOCKS. Even the steals. What in the name of Mark Eaton was going on down there? Those numbers, by the way, all add up to an efficiency rating of +21.00. Only 20 players in the ENTIRE NBA can boast a better rating.

If nothing else, Kosta Koufos' rookie season can be summed up in one word: potential. If The Koof shows even an inkling of this year's promise, he can and should be a rotation player next season. If he can improve this offseason and during the Rocky Mountain Revue (and given his work ethic, there's ample reason to believe he will), then he should be more than just a rotation player, and we may not need to worry quite so much about our uncertain roster.

The one thing that can hold back the unstoppable fury that is The Koof? Minutes. He needs them. There's got to be a conscious decision by Jerry Sloan and the front office to develop his talent, on the court, during game time. We didn't see it down the stretch this year. We didn't see it in the playoffs -- we saw the unstoppable fury of Jarron Collins instead, which, as unstoppable furies go, is a lot more stoppable. I honestly don't know if we'll see it next year.

But as someone else well acquainted with Terminators once said: "The future is not set. There is no fate but what we make for ourselves."

Let's make our own future. PLAY THE KOOF IF YOU WANT TO LIVE.

From ClutchFans.net, a Rockets fan site. Funny, guys, but needs more injuries. Embiggen here.

Shums — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 02:02:01 -0000

From ClutchFans.net, a Rockets fan site. Funny, guys, but needs more injuries. Embiggen here.

SLC Dunk bracketology

Shums — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 21:58:07 -0000

If anyone is interested, I have created a Yahoo group for the NCAA Tournament. You know, just so I can beat you all at that in addition to fantasy basketball. Okay, I'm kidding. I'm notoriously bad at bracketing. Anyway, like you needed one more bracket to fill out, but I'm doing it anyway. Tourney starts tomorrow, so get a move on.

The group is called SLC Dunk.

The link is this: http://tournament.fantasysports.yahoo.com/t1/group/181341

The password is: ninja

Get to bracketing, fools.

FanHouse Rotation: Fear the Utah Jazz

Shums — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 21:44:28 -0000

FanHouse Rotation: Fear the Utah Jazz

I take back everything I've ever said about Ziller. Thanks for the props.

FanHouse Roundtable: Are the Jazz for real?

Shums — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 21:10:17 -0000

FanHouse Roundtable: Are the Jazz for real?

Alternate title: "FanHouse Roundtable: Avowed Jazz haters who think the Jazz suck try to pretend like they are not avowed Jazz haters who think the Jazz suck and don't even mention the 150 games lost to injury because they're too busy talking about how much the Jazz suck."

No, actually the article isn't that bad, and I was surprised to see the Zilla Gorilla give us as much props as he did. Moore, time for another argument. Jazz fans don't even mention getting through the Warriors to the WCF two years ago any more. We don't use that any more to build ourselves up, so quit using it to tear us down. It's equally irrelevant either way now.

Anyway, read and be enraged.

Larry H. Miller dies at age 64

Shums — Sat, 21 Feb 2009 00:33:28 -0000

Note by Basketball John, 02/20/09 7:08 PM MST ]

via farm4.static.flickr.com

Just received word.

Larry H. Miller, husband, father, grandfather, a well-known entrepreneur, community advocate and humanitarian, died from complications due to type 2 diabetes today, at home, surrounded by his family. He was 64.

More news as it breaks.

Greg Miller is now officially the team owner (he was in charge of operations as the CEO already, but now it's for real). Probably nothing will change for the Jazz in the short-term, but it's still a major loss. I hate to overuse the whole "end of an era" thing, but in this case it's true.

UPDATE: Link now goes to full obit from Doug Robinson of the Deseret News.

[Note by Basketball John, 02/20/09 7:12 PM MST ]

What they're saying...

Salt Lake Tribune Editorial

Jerry O'Brien, The Tribune's late publisher, used to muse that the only place in Utah where the Mormon/non-Mormon divide didn't exist was the Delta Center. He was right, and the state has Larry Miller, a dedicated Latter-day Saint, to thank for that.

He was a regular guy. All you had to do to know that was to look at him. His uniform was a golf shirt, a pair of khakis and athletic shoes. He was just Larry. People liked that.

He also was an emotional guy. Tears came easily during press conferences about Karl Malone's latest pronouncement or some other tempest in the Jazz pot or, frankly, almost anything. And he made decisions from his gut. Or, as he put it, "feel."

Gordon Monson

What's relatively unknown about the man is the personal transformation he underwent over the past eight months, since his initial hospitalization after a heart attack. In our conversation, Larry hit that hard, emphasizing that as his body became weaker, his spiritual awareness became stronger.

"I've always considered myself a religious person," he said. "I've made mistakes, but I never set out to hurt anyone. I've been put now in situations where I am more sensitive to spiritual things, to Gail, to my kids, to my grandkids, to people in general. I hope that's one of the things that stays with me when I get better."

It will have to stay with him now in the Great Beyond.

Doug Robinson

Miller considered the Jazz his "gift to Utah." With a net worth of only $4 million, Miller convinced six lending institutions to loan him $8 million to buy half of a moribund basketball franchise that had lost $17 million in its 11-year history and, in its best year, had lost $1 million.

In 1986, it appeared the Jazz were about to leave town again, and Miller appeared unable to prevent it. He actually picked up a pen to sign a contract that would complete the sale of the team, which not only would have erased his original $8 million debt but would have given him a tidy $6 million profit — double his net worth at the time — for just a 14-month investment. After a long pause, with his pen hovering over the contract, he finally tossed it on the table and told co-owner Sam Battistone he couldn't do it. To buy Battistone's share, Miller passed up the fat profit and took on even more debt — to the tune of $14 million — for a total debt of $22 million.

Patrick Kinahan

Often, he spoke for me, the run-of-the-mill fan. All of us felt better when, after an injured Carlos Boozer made that idiotic comment about intending to opt out of his contract, Larry went on the radio to say it ranked among the top 10 most stupid things he’s heard.

...
We want to celebrate his life, an incredible American success story born of humble beginnings. But as we reflect, all of us need time to mourn. It won’t seem right, not seeing Larry sitting in his customary courtside seat. Not all change is good.

Governor Huntsman

Every citizen in our state feels a little empty today. Larry was Utah and Utah was Larry. He inspired many and served countless. We all have been made better by his extraordinary life.

Mary Kaye and I wish to express our deepest love and sympathies to his wonderful wife, Gail, and their entire family and wish them a sense of deep condolences at this difficult time

The Cowhide Globe

True Blue Jazz

ESPN - Visit during last year's playoffs.

Big Fes vs. The Koof dance-off! Via Ball Don't Lie (hit that link for a close-up on The Koof's...

Shums — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 18:56:13 -0000

Big Fes vs. The Koof dance-off! Via Ball Don't Lie (hit that link for a close-up on The Koof's slammin' moves). Thanks, Skeets.