Jimbo’s Mailbag – I Am Right About EVERYTHING

(AP Photo/Eric Gay)

Welcome to the next edition of Jimbo’s Mailbag! At Salt City Hoops, we know that covering a team without any humor can be dreary. As such, we decided to add a little bit more levity to our site via Jimbo’s unique outlook on the world of Jazz basketball. Jimbo, by virtue of being recently featured in the Deseret News, is now the world’s most famous Utah-based basketball mailbag artist. Interested in submitting a question to Jimbo’s mailbag? Email it to Jimbo at mailbag@saltcityhoops.com or tweet @JimboRudding to appear.

Q: Hi Jimbo, I’m from France and not good at maths. Had the Jazz not spent so much in medical bills this season, could the Jazz have gotten a good player for that money? Or at least do they get a group discount?

@Pedrounet

Thanks for the question, Geoffrey! I’m so happy to find out that Jimbo’s Mailbag reaches across the ocean. (France is across an ocean, right?) Technology is a wonderful thing, isn’t it?

You’re right about all the medical bills. I haven’t seen so many injuries since the last time I was at Classic Skating and they played “Thunderstruck.” There’s just something about that song that gets my adrenaline flowing and makes me believe that I’m a better roller skater than I actually am. Right about the time he sings, “You’ve been… THUNDERSTRUCK!” is where I start trying to do tricks like the jump-splits or a bunch of high-speed spins. So, like I was saying, the last time that happened did NOT turn out well for me and for the eight people in my direct vicinity. But I apologized to all the parents and thankfully that elderly man on the bench has started to regain feeling in his left side again.

I’ve done the math in my head and it looks like with all the MRI’s, EKG’s, and WMD’s the Jazz have done this year, the total would be somewhere close to $758,436.12, which I believe is about triple what Jeff Withey will make this season.

As far as getting a group discount goes, I believe the Jazz purchased the Pass of All Passes for all their players, so really they can get as many MRI’s as they want. I tell ya, that Pass of All Passes just makes sense when you need some fun in your life, but you want to keep that fun within a reasonable budget. Spending that money on the passes only makes sense if you use it though, so it’s great to see the Jazz taking advantage of it. Do they have the Pass of All Passes in France?

Don’t listen to me, though. I’m not what you would call “financially intelligent.” One of the tellers at my bank was a little curt with me once and to get back at them I refused to make a car payment for a whole year. One of the worst decisions I have EVER made. Well, if you don’t count the “mall kiosk” decision. But that’s a whole other story for a COMPLETELY different mailbag.

Q: You said before the season a big injury could keep the Jazz from the playoffs. Do we blame you or follow you as our NBA prophet?

@JJForman1

Wow! I said that?! I’m such a downer. Always look on the bright side, that’s what I always say.

Listen, you can blame me if you want. I know how important it is sometimes to have a punching bag at the ready. After all, I spent my teenage years watching the Jazz lose two consecutive NBA Finals. I had to take so many walks and then return and apologize to a TON of family members during those years. However, it was those seasons that made me the strong, optimistic Jazz fan I am today. So, go ahead and blame me. I can handle it.

On the other hand, if you would like to follow me, there are a few things that I ask of you first. It’s sort of a Jimbo’s Mailbag Club initiation. I’m not going to waste my time with people who aren’t committed to becoming a correct Jazz fan. So, if you’d like to bow out now, I totally understand…………. still here, huh? Well, then here are the requirements:

1. You will need to pick one coach or player on the team to consistently complain about. Mine this year was Elijah Millsap, but now that he’s gone I have my sights set on that skinny young assistant coach. Zach something?—and since I don’t know his last name, I will refer to him as “Skinny Zach.”
2. You can never “like” the enemy, and by that, I mean you must never find yourself enjoying another team’s player(s). The most you can do is appreciate an opposing player’s skill.
3. You may have a current day favorite Jazz player, but no one, and I mean NO ONE, will be as good as Stockton and Malone were.
4. Michael Jordan’s “flu” game was actually a Las Vegas hangover… and he pushed off.
5. The Derek Fisher year never happened.
6. You must NEVER criticize the Miller family, especially Gail. If I find out that you so much as even made fun of her dress slacks, you’re out!
7. If you accompany me to a game, then we combine our Crown Burger fries into one giant pile. (You may think that this is a fairly absurd, but I, to this day, refuse to speak to one of my uncles because of his failure to adhere to this requirement.)
8. The Big Al years never happened.
9. You must hate the Lakers with a hatred so strong and powerful that even a member of the Westboro Baptist Church would be like, “Dang son, calm down.”
10. Dennis Lindsey ALWAYS knows best (except for on draft night and at the trade deadline).

Q: Do you think Trey signed his junior high love letters “Trey Smyles?” I’ll take your answer off the air. Thx.

@BenKFAN

Thanks for the question, Ben! You and the Gunth do a great job on your radio show. Keep it up!

I’m not sure if Trey ever signed his name “Trey Smyles” in junior high, but I HAVE done some intensive research on him for the last eight hours or so and found out a TON of embarrassing things about Lyles’ early love life. Normally I wouldn’t divulge this type of information without the player’s consent, but I watched closely and I’m pretty sure he gave me the thumbs-up last night during the game.

Here are a few of the things I found out:

• Trey has never seen the movie “Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves,” which explains why his love life is/was very underwhelming.
• Apparently, when Trey was a senior in high school he had a huge crush on one of his student teachers. There were a few things about her that drove him bonkers, namely: she had a tattoo of a rose on her ankle, she used to call him “Trey Bien” when he’d do well on quizzes, and she would eat lunch with her boyfriend to make him jealous.
• He once asked a girl to prom by leaving a bucket of fake blood on her porch with a note that said, “Couldn’t think of a clever rhyme about blood. Prom?”
• He once accidentally elbowed his first girlfriend in the eye while he was trying to teach her how to do the “running man” dance.
• He fell in love with a girl in his 2^nd grade class named Cynthia. He had no idea what to do about it so he wrote his name in permanent marker on the back of her coat.
• To break the ice on first dates, he used to tell them about the time he had some bad macaroni salad and had to beg the manager of a Kinko’s to let him use their bathroom.

There was one more thing I found out about him that involved some of those Chinese finger traps, but it seemed a little too inappropriate to share on a family mailbag such as this.

Q: You were right about playing Withey more and also about letting Millsap go. What other suggestions do you have for the Jazz franchise?

@drawsmalls

It’s SO refreshing to hear that I am right about some things. It would be nice if other people recognized that for a change, RIGHT MOM?!

Anyway, I have a TON of suggestions on what the Jazz could do to make the team, the arena, and the franchise as a whole be more successful. Here are a few suggestions I’ve thought of recently:

• Make the eyes on the Stockton and Malone statues glow at night.
• Bring Crown Burger inside the arena.
• Allow one lucky fan to brush Allen Handy’s hair.
• Don’t ever end a game playing Lyles and Booker together ever again.
• Make Trey Burke tattoo the words, “No Guts, No Glory” directly underneath his tattoo of a baby.
• Make Bolerjack try out different accents as the game goes on.
• Make the bike taxi drivers serve complimentary churros.
• Have a contest where the fans guess which member of the Jazz Dunk Team has had a fistfight with his dad.
• Keep honoring veterans, but during a different timeout, recognize local people who got to be an extra in “Touched By An Angel.”
• Make the ticket scalpers sing, “Anyone selling tickets, I need tickets.” in a type of barbershop quartet style.

Every single one of the suggestions mentioned above would make the Jazz experience 1000% better.

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Thanks for the questions, y’all! Please tell your aunts and uncles about Jimbo’s Mailbag. Even if they never really acknowledge you at family events. Get close to them when you tell them. Hold their hand. Make it weird.