"You Gotta Love It Baby" Official Jazz thread

[Jacob]

Awesome new for Gobear. Hopefully they make the final. As a patriotic American, I'll be rooting for a France win. Go-Bear!

[MarkGrace]

Lowe on an extension for Alex Burkes.

One of the hardest things to do in the NBA is drive to the basket at the kind of calm pace that allows a player to keep all of his options open. A lot of ball handlers turn the corner on a pick-and-roll, stop at the foul line area, and throw a perfectly nice pass to a teammate on the perimeter.

Once that same player gets inside the foul line, he picks up speed and drives into a thicket of bodies with an intent to get to the rim. If those bodies terminate that plan, well, there is no plan B.

Burks is an explosive, ultra-fast athlete, and he made himself more unpredictable off the bounce. He mixed up his use of screens10 and added some Eurosteppy finishes:

He’s an effective passer on the perimeter, but that hasn’t translated into a drive-and-kick game. Burks also doesn’t shoot enough 3s, especially since he’s nearly a league-average 3-point shooter who looks comfortable from the corners.

Again: The context was not ideal. Burks came off the bench for a bad team, facing clogged lanes and playing with point guards who couldn’t bend opposing defenses.

Burks is a so-so defender but not a damaging vortex of suck. He has happy feet and can juke himself out of plays, and he’ll make the occasional failed gamble that is fatal to any team defense. He’s prone to some wild and often unnecessary rotations that leave good shooters wide open, though the Jazz defense overall was a mess under Ty Corbin. Burks isn’t big enough to defend bulky small forwards, and bruising 2-guards like Wesley Matthews hurt him on the block.

Executives view Burks as a sixth man, the customary pigeonholing for any combo guard, and compare him often to Monta Ellis. But Ellis is on another planet as a drive-and-dish force, and Burks could absolutely grow into a fourth or fifth starter on a good team. He’s a worker, and he’s exactly the kind of secondary ball handler every team needs now.

He hasn’t shown that kind of “starter on a good team” ability yet, and it’s unclear how much the Jazz should pay to find out if he might someday show it. Burks isn’t great at any one thing, and he’s mediocre at most things. But he’ll get minutes this season and draw interest in a league drooling over any available young wing player.

A four-year, $28 million extension might seem an overpay given Burks’s record, but it could turn into the new TV-deal version of those $4 million–level extensions teams gave Thabo Sefolosha, Quincy Pondexter, and Jared Dudley. Those deals weren’t home runs, but they provided good value at most times,11 and can return actual assets in trades.

http://grantland.com/the-triangle/nb...ikola-vucevic/

[smokymountainrain]

Lowe on an extension for Alex Burkes.

[BGRTHNUMEGO]

Anyone listen to the Memo interview yesterday? Best teammate he ever played with?

Not Deron. Not Finals MVP Billups. Not Rasheed.

AK. Said AK was easily the best player he'd played with. Makes me sad again that World of Warcraft exists, and that Sloan was an ornery old school farm boy who made absurd conclusions about an incredibly talented player because they couldn't communicate properly.

[woot]

Anyone listen to the Memo interview yesterday? Best teammate he ever played with?

Not Deron. Not Finals MVP Billups. Not Rasheed.

AK. Said AK was easily the best player he'd played with. Makes me sad again that World of Warcraft exists, and that Sloan was an ornery old school farm boy who made absurd conclusions about an incredibly talented player because they couldn't communicate properly.

I hadn't heard about that. Did WoW take up too much of AK's time or did Sloan not like the idea of it?

[MarkGrace]

I hadn't heard about that. Did WoW take up too much of AK's time or did Sloan not like the idea of it?

The former.

[HuskyFreeNorthwest]

The former.

So Sloan was a jerk because AK was addicted to a video game? Where's SloanHater when we need him?

[woot]

The former.

So did his conditioning suffer? Missing practice? Head not in the game? Trying to figure out how WoW could be blamed.

[MarkGrace]

So did his conditioning suffer? Missing practice? Head not in the game? Trying to figure out how WoW could be blamed.

Probably all of the above. Apparently he had quite the obsession. Here's a quote from him:

“When I played for CSKA and we had two days off I could spend 36 hours in a row playing World of Warcraft and ordering food from time to time” said Kirilenko in an interview with Sport-Express newspaper

There were reports from when he was with the Jazz that he'd miss meals and sleep because he was playing WoW. He'd lose weight during the season, show up to practice/gameday tired, etc. The giant ass tattoo he got on his back is apparently somehow related to WoW, but I don't enough about the game to know what it references. But at any rate, dude is/was clearly obsessed. G-Time is also a huge gamre, though I don't think in the ballpark of AK.

[MarkGrace]

So Sloan was a jerk because AK was addicted to a video game? Where's SloanHater when we need him?

AK's biggest problems were lack of improvement to his physique, and year-over-year improvements in his ball handling and shooting. I think there were times he could have been used better (like Memo, Raja made similar comments about AK being the best player on the team), but his lack of skill development, which is what really held him back, was all on him.

[byu71]

Probably all of the above. Apparently he had quite the obsession. Here's a quote from him:



There were reports from when he was with the Jazz that he'd miss meals and sleep because he was playing WoW. He'd lose weight during the season, show up to practice/gameday tired, etc. The giant ass tattoo he got on his back is apparently somehow related to WoW, but I don't enough about the game to know what it references. But at any rate, dude is/was clearly obsessed. G-Time is also a huge gamre, though I don't think in the ballpark of AK.

I don't believe the 36 hour thing. His wife was very hot. I am sure he took a break.

[MarkGrace]

Just noticed this:

This isn't a fun story. Brooklyn Nets forward Andrei Kirilenko, who still has a home in Utah as well as one in Russia, had his Utah home burglarized this past weekend, in a community his wife calls "the safest place on Earth."

According to the Deseret News, a TV, a Playstation, some Marvel action figures, and some clothing items were taken at minimum from the couple's home in Utah, which Kirilenko's wife Masha Lopatova said doesn't hold many valuables.

Didn't realize they still had a place in Utah. It's kind of surprising how many guys from that era still have homes there, because that never seemed to happen before. But Deron still lives in Utah in the offseason, AK still has a place there, and I got the impression from Memo that he does as well and will now split time.

[Sizzle]

Just noticed this:



Didn't realize they still had a place in Utah. It's kind of surprising how many guys from that era still have homes there, because that never seemed to happen before. But Deron still lives in Utah in the offseason, AK still has a place there, and I got the impression from Memo that he does as well and will now split time.

It sounds like Deron's family really likes Utah still, and I wouldn't be totally shocked if that's where they end up making a permanent home eventually. Which is bizarre considering the way his tenure ended.

On Memo, I really think we forget how much his injury hurt the first post-Boozer team that ended up being blown up. With Memo available to stretch the floor, that would've created a lot of space for Big Al down low. Granted, that team still would be just terrible defensively, but I think Gordon would've been able to mesh well. I'm a little bit sad we didn't get to see a healthy team featuring Memo, Big Al, Deron, AK, G-Time and Hayward. I think that team could've grown together into something decent. Especially had they kept Korver. But that's just me.

[HuskyFreeNorthwest]

Aren't G-Time and Hayward the same guy Siz? Or am I missing something?

[MarkGrace]

Aren't G-Time and Hayward the same guy Siz? Or am I missing something?

Hayward is the guy that mopes around like Opie and looks like he's lost his puppy. G-Time the alter ego you see when he's come to play.