Winning and Losing

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Audacity Number 3? I already can’t remember

On The DL Podcast

One of my favorite daily or almost daily podcasts done by Dan Levy who also writes at a couple of different places.  It’s pretty much straight forward news with some good interviews and a little bit of Philly bias.  No guests this week but a great line about T.O. and OchoCinco and generally a good week to test the waters with this podcast.

House of Punte

Another one of my favorites, although just a weekly podcast it’s done by Josh Zerkle who writes With Leather and got his start over at KSK.  Josh and Ryan do a great job mixing humor with some serious discussion of sports and plenty of those good rape jokes we all love.  What really makes it is With Leather’s contributor The Real Shaky who is a complete turd in every way.  Wait to the end of the podcast for the harmonica battle, it sums it all up.

Filmdrunk Frotcast

Not a sports podcast but I love it so you have to hear about it here.  I wrote most of the first half of this post while listening to Vince tear a new nerdhole in Olivia Munn’s new book, which is awesome.  I have to say that I’ve never thought she was hot and always thought she was a pandering bitch and was the reason that I gave up on the G4 and attack of the show, which actually used to be interesting.  If you like my sense of humor, which you must if you read this crap, check out Vince over at film drunk because he’s pretty much a less funny me.

The Tony Kornheiser Show

I know that this isn’t really a podcast, but I listen to it in podcast form and I love Tony and he’s been off for a week so here it is.  Tony has come back this week spitting hot fire as they say after taking a typical Mr. Tony anti sports week off.  Only he would take a vacation during the LeBron fiasco and for that reason I salute him.  His had Aldridge on this week, who is fine, but no Super G,  but has made up for it with some awesome Death Star Rants against the cable company, the power company, and Chris Paul.

Jefferson Vs. Boozer (Not too clever a title)

Yeah, but isn't a comparison of Richard Jefferson and Devin Harris's girlfriends better to look at?

So pretty much everyone on the internet that writes about this kind of stuff has done a comparison between former Jazz power forward Carlos Boozer and PF to be Al Jefferson, although not actually a trade it was affectively one in how it turned out.  So I’m going to jump right on the bandwagon and and give my two cents on this.
It’s kind of hard to compare their recent numbers due to Al’s knee injury, which is affectively a two year injury as we all know now, so we can dismiss last years numbers completely.  If he is back at full strength for this season he should be a wash with Boozer offensively if they were on their respective squads.  The thing is they are not, Jefferson has been essentially a post up player that had the ball dumped into him while Boozer has the Williams run Jerry Sloan pick and roll.  I think with Jefferson running the Utah offense his numbers should improve, he’s taller and he’s hands seem as good so there is no reason to think that he doesn’t pick up a couple more baskets with actual plays being run for him.
Now on to rebounding, something else that he has had almost identical numbers to Boozer on.  I would think that this could improve too, with a couple other big men in there to box out, namely Utah’s too remaining centers I think this can only help.  Jefferson is also tall enough to play more of a center position if you run him with Okur playing a 6-11 shooting forward kind of thing, or put Fez in and go really big in the hopes of matching the Lakers, something Boozer and a younger Fez could not do.
But this brings up his defense, it’s hard to say if he is just as bad as Boozer or actually worse.  His knee could have been causing some defensive lapses, but really it’s hard to say.  He also had no help in the middle up in Minnesota, so maybe paired with some other bigs, a good coach and an actual defensive system he could improve.  I think this is an area where the Jazz have the best chance of improving Jefferson’s game, with Williams and Bell committed to defense I would like to see it rub off on the other players, especially the bigs.
And finally the intangibles, which Monson in his article over at the Salt Lake Trib touched on, attitude, which can be a little over rated.  But in this case where Williams on many nights seemed to be alone out there trying to win having his much bigger Robin actually care about playing for this team is only an improvement.  Jefferson has been more excited to come to Utah than anyone I can remember and this should bring out the best in him.  Besides that he doesn’t have any stupid tattoos, deodorant stains under his arms, crazy ass wife or house that he rented to Prince (although thanks to his last stop over maybe a Prince connection is in the works).
Best of all his contract is less, for a shorter period, which is important with the new CBA and potential lock out as I’ve said many times and he is 3 years younger and barely behind Boozer.  Also he has only had one injury, not a string of them keeping him out almost 25% of the time.  Finally to get him the Jazz had to give up Kosta, which is great for my friend Zander because all the Greek chicks in Salt Lake were swooning over him and poor Zander had no game.

Thanks to all the littles

I think this is some kind of shrimp fountain, but really that doesn’t matter.  I would like to thank all of writers, which right now is just me and Uj, but hopefully will be expanding in the next couple days, and of course our readers for helping us get 80 hits today.  This is the first time that we’ve broken 50 hits on one day and we shot all the way up to 80 which is awesome.

Hopefully a year from now we can look back and proverbially bitch slap the weakness that is 80 with like 1000 hits a day, but this is great for now, on to 100!  I would also like to thank our strangely diverse readership of late, the 5 Canadians and 3 Lithuanians that stopped by today, thanks a lot for getting things all international up in here, take a shrimp home for the kids.

On the Google Machine, episode two!

Look, I’ve actually done one of these stupid round up things more than once, who’d ev thunk it.


KSK at their best
So Peter King is back up to his usual shenanigans which means Drew over at KSK is back to one of the best features in Blogfrica, breaking down Peter King’s column almost line by line with some of the funniest comments around.  And this one is a real gem, from fighting to Tony Romo bathroom bathing fantasies.
ESPN being ESPN
Deadspin has a screen grab of an article that was posted this morning on ESPN.com and then immediately taken down about LeBron’s night out in Vegas with Chris Paul and some other guys.  It’s pretty tame, so I don’t know exactly why ESPN took it down other than that’s the kind of thing they do.  It’s so nice that Disneyland controls the biggest sports news outlet in the world.
Better be some motherfucking Falcons in this mother fucking Super Bowl
So Sam Jackson did a commercial for the Falcons about rising up or something with some gospel singers, I think it might have been for MLK day, I can’t really tell.  There are probably links to this all over the internet, but I like Punte and With Leather, even though Ryan Walsh wrote this so check it out there.
SLC Dunk
And finally I wanted to link to a local blog since I never do that because frankly I don’t think any of them are super great.  But here’s a quick rundown about Hollinger’s winners and losers post by SLC Dunk which I didn’t ever mention because it didn’t mention the Jazz and I think Hollinger treats Basketball like Baseball, which makes the Jazz look good but doesn’t really translate to the actual games.  But the real reason is for the Raja Bell, Kobe Orange Julius photoshop which is epic.

MuchoCinco and the Raiders East

So, seems like old Ocho has got himself a little show on the VH1 right before his buddy and new team mate T.O.  I am currently writing an article over at My other site about the idea of the shoes, so over here I’m going to focus a little more on the Bengals and what the hell is going on in southern Ohio.
Let’s not pretend that the Bangles haven’t been crazy as shit for years now, I think that while they have not led the league in any on field stats they have certainly led the league in arrests for a few years.  But this is the first time that any team has had back to back VH1 realty star wide receivers on the same team.  Not only this but they have picked up Benson and Tank, both of whom have had very close relationship with the men in blue.
I have to say that this looks to me like the dream line up for the crypt keeper out in Oakland.  Criminals, realty stars, diva receivers, no chance of winning, possibly broken down quarterback, it’s the Raider’s dream scenario.  I have talked about Bizarro teams already this week, the Bulls being the Bizarro Jazz due to players moving.  But this is different, this is more like the Simmons evolutionary team situation.  That what the Raiders were, the Bengals have become.
I can’t wait to see what will happen this season, best case scenario VH1 cross over special where T.O. and Ocho fight it out in a huge pit of lube ala Old School while their skanks cheer them on for the #1 receiver spot, Tank and Cedric take down a Cinci bank Heat style and Marvin Lewis burns the stadium to the ground.  At least we can dream.

Jazz East vs. Jazz West

Due to some of the vagaries of the NBA trade market the Bulls have now become the Bizarro Jazz, which I think presents the question (not begs the question, that means something else) of which Jazz are better, especially due to the Jazz’s history with the Bulls.  I have to say that I always loved the that Boozer and Brewer were really easy names to involve with drinking during Jazz games, often referring to our friends as the Brew Crew (yeah I know how frat douche that is) when going down to ESA.
I’m not going to do a position by position run down on this since it doesn’t really make sense since some of the players don’t really match up.  It’s going to be more of an over all feel of the teams and what they can do and what the Jazz have lost and the bulls have gained.
To start out let me take a contradictory position to both some of my friends and the general consensus of fans around Utah about two players we lost, Boozer and Brewer.  I have never really had the animus towards Boozer that most people have had, I think we had gotten so used to Karl Malone, who was in many ways the BEST power forward ever that we held Boozer up to a standard that he had no way of achieving.  To think that Williams/Boozer only a few years into their carriers was going to match Stockton and Malone at the height of theirs is insane.  Boozer certainly had a lot of problems, he was a terrible ball handler, dropping the ball I don’t know how many times in the paint, he was injured about 25% of the time and was a terrible defender; but he was also a 20 and 10 guy every night he played and had some real moments of brilliance.
Brewer was exactly the opposite, he was way over rated by most fans, mostly for being that Jerry Sloan kind of player, someone who played defense and didn’t open their mouths, like a good draft horse out on Jerry’s Illinois farm.  Now don’t get me wrong, I loved Brewer, but wasn’t really too worried about him leaving, although athletic he couldn’t create off the dribble, he was a poor shooter, especially from 3 and while his passing lane defense was great, his on ball defense was not.  Mathews, who is also gone at this point was much better at shutting down 2s, which is critical in this league and especially the west.
So what we have here is the Bulls picking up an often injured, but still all star caliber power forward and a shooting guard that can’t shoot.  I don’t know how affective Boozer will be with Rose running the point, they certainly won’t be running the pick and roll offense and I think with Brewer as the 2 a lot of shots will come from Rose with minimal ball movement.  The coaches obviously don’t even compare, so it’s hard to see how a very disciplined passing offense will be put into place in Chicago.  Utah on the other hand still has Williams who knows the Sloan offense very well and I think Jefferson, if the knee is no longer a problem is even more well suited for that style offense with more size and frankly more desire to work with Williams in the offense.
I also think that Bell is much needed, especially with Korver gone, there needs to be two people that can stretch the floor and Bell is a much better range shooter than either Brewer or Mathews.  He is also a much, much better on ball defender and that was something the Jazz really needed at the 2.  Besides that he has more playoff experience and that killer attitude that everyone on the Jazz besides Williams has been lacking for the last 3 or 4 years.  If Miles can continue to improve his long range game, the addition of Bell with Okur adding that unique big man 3 point option to stretch the floor in a unique way, especially if Jefferson can manage the key more affectively by himself, and Fez continues to improve this may be the Jazz team I have been wanting to see for a while now.
The Bulls also have Noah and Deng in the middle which I don’t think any of the Jazz’s big men can really compare to.  The way those two rebound and fill out the key if impossible for Okur to match with his play style and Fez has a real long way to go to match them in any meaningful way.  The real difference makers to me are going to be at the point and then defensively.  It’s unfortunate that these two teams will only play twice this year because I think this would be a very interesting match up and have something to say about certain players and certain GM moves.