Jimbo’s Mailbag: The Hill Hex, Dealing With Losses, & More

Melissa Majchrzak via utahjazz.com

Some questions demand answers. Others demand Jimbo. Jimbo’s Mailbag is our regular dose of levity here at Salt City Hoops. Jimbo, by virtue of being recently featured in the Deseret News, is now the world’s most famous Utah-based basketball mailbag artist. You can submit questions to Jimbo at mailbag@saltcityhoops.com or by tweeting to @JimboRudding.

Q: Is management holding George Hill back? Who has his voodoo doll? One of the Burkes? (Shelvin) Mack?
@LanRovr0

I think you’re right on with the voodoo doll theory, although I don’t know who would be malicious enough to use that doll. Perhaps someone in George Hill’s past has some sort of evil vendetta with him? Or maybe it’s a righteous vendetta? What in the world is a vendetta anyway?

Maybe there’s an old girlfriend who thought he was “the one” and had it in her mind that they were soulmates only to find out that George didn’t like the way she said the word “kinda” all the time and maybe she would always tell him which shoes he should wear whenever we’d go out…… whenever THEY’D go out. Ha ha, this is about George.

Seriously though, I think Hill just has had really bad luck. He’s had the worst luck of anyone in Utah since Jazz fans had to watch Jim Les play basketball. He’s even had worse luck than that owl that thought it would leisurely glide through the air only to be kicked in the face by Dell Schanze on his fan glider thing.

I mean it though, it can only be a string of really bad luck. All of George’s injuries have been caused by strange, out-of-the-ordinary incidents. Check this out:

1. He hurt his thumb by slapping at the ball trying to get a steal and then prematurely giving his teammates the thumbs up sign because he was so excited he got the steal only to end up jamming said thumb on Carmelo Anthony’s thigh.
2. He hurt his big toe after cutting too hard to the rim causing his little piggy to go to the market and not come back for 13 games.
3. Then, he takes an elbow to the face from some big dude on the Phoenix Suns that no one has even heard of, nor does anyone ever want to hear of, and suffers a concussion and lip laceration. To make matters worse, because of that lip laceration, he can’t even eat solid foods because it hurts his mouth to chew. But the worst part is, smoothies and broths are natural diuretics, which means his Downtown Georgie Browns are probably a little moister than usual. (I have no idea what that even means or if “moister” is even a word. Microsoft Word seems to think it is. Also, it’s late at night and I’ve had nothing to eat but smoothies and broths because I’m trying to lose weight for the new year.)

Q: Is Derrick Favors going to finish the season healthy?
@Steeleman77

Man, he doesn’t look good, does he? He just seems slow and in pain, kind of like our dog Buster right before my dad took him on a hunting trip in the mountains and Buster ran away and was never seen again. Not sure why he ran away; we all loved him. I miss him so much. He was my best friend.

In Favors’ses’ defense, he WAS out for quite a while and it DOES take time to get back into NBA shape. However, NOT in Favors’es defense, he is only 25 years old and a mammoth of a human being with giant muscles and he should’ve been back to normal by now.

I, for some reason, am convinced that Favors might need some type of surgery on his knee. I don’t have any inside information (other than what my dog Buster’s ghost tells me in my dreams sometimes), I just think it’s unusual that Favors came into the season unhealthy and it has taken this long to start to get right. I know the Jazz are saying it’s the IT band syndrome, but how do we know they didn’t just make that up? It sounds suspiciously like the name of a music group started by some guys who were networking computers, if you ask me, which you did.

So, no, I don’t think Favors will finish the season healthy. But maybe that’s a good thing and the Jazz won’t have to pay him as much later? I don’t know, my knowledge of how NBA contracts and money work in general is extremely limited. For instance, I just found out what the difference is between debit and credit. It only took a few minutes to forget again, but at least at one time I knew the difference.

Q: Which current Jazzman do you think has the best chance of being traded this year? 
@Mikeyvp

This is a tough one. For the last three years or so I wanted the Jazz to just make a trade for the sake of change. For example, not long ago I remember saying that I wasn’t emotionally attached to anyone on the team and wouldn’t be sad if any of the players were traded. My grandma listened, but I could tell she really didn’t care. She just sat there with her eyes closed complaining about “the pain.” C’mon grandma, the Jazz haven’t been relevant in the playoffs for six years. We ALL have pain!

This year the Jazz finally have a pretty good team on paper, but I still wouldn’t mind them trading for another good wing or back-up center who plays angry and is capable of carrying a team to the NBA Finals.

If I had to bet, I would say the Jazz don’t do anything at the trade deadline. I assume they just want to get everyone healthy and see what they have before they go changing things.

But you wanted to know who has the best chance of being traded, so let’s go through the team:

• Favors and Alec Burks have little to no trade value due to their injuries.
• Gordon Hayward and Rudy Gobert are untouchable (or at least they should be).
• It’s too early to trade Dante Exum or Trey Lyles.
• Jim Les isn’t on the team anymore, otherwise he’d be traded.
• You can’t trade Trey Burke twice, can you? So, I guess it wouldn’t be Trey Burke.
• Favors is on the fence for me, but he’s good locker room guy and has a good attitude.

That being said, I would guess Shelvin Mack and Rodney Hood would be on the short list of player that have potential of being traded. Mack wouldn’t get you much, but it’d be interesting to know what Rodney Hood coupled with one or two picks and a few truckloads of the greatest snow on earth could get you.

I like Rodney Hood: Prince of Threes and I would prefer not to see him go, but if it would get the Jazz into the top tier of the Western Conference, I’d be all for it.

Q: You know in the movie Never Ending Story where Atreyu’s horse Artax is drowning in the Swamp of Sadness and Atreyu starts crying? Is that how you feel after every Jazz loss?
@artdirector_g

Wow, great question!

I have to admit there have been some Jazz losses that have been so excruciating that they’ve brought me to my knees. Utah Jazz fans have been through some pretty great times through the years, but also some heart-wrenching losses.

As I’ve gotten older I’ve realized that in the grand scheme of things, none of this really matters. It’s just a game and the sun will rise in the morning  and our hearts will eventually recover and we’ll all feel better. But the half-hour or so right after the Jazz lose there’s a tough mental and emotional internal battle going on.

Those who don’t follow the Jazz or don’t like sports can’t really understand why we let it get to us. So, I’m going to try and describe the feeling we fans get when the Jazz lose in “normal life” scenarios. Here we go:

• It’s like when you’re really excited to wake up and go somewhere and the night before you get food poisoning (the Downtown Georgie Browns) and you can’t go.
• It’s like when you finally save enough money to buy that really cool thing you’ve been wanting and so you head to the store to buy it and they don’t have it in stock and it will take 7-10 business days to have it shipped to the store. So then you get irrationally angry and spend the next hour quietly rearranging items on their shelves.
• It’s like when you’re in line at the mall to sit on Santa’s lap and you have an epiphany in line and then finally come to the conclusion that Santa isn’t real so you get back in your car and head home.
• It’s like when you’re excited to get home and eat something and then you get there and find out that another family member, roommate, or pack of wild raccoons already ate it.
• It’s like when you’re at Hobs and Lobs (that’s what I call Hobby Lobby) and you reach up to get something off the shelf and you accidentally knock down an ugly statue of a naked cupid baby and the employees expect you to buy it.
• It’s like when you really like a girl and you take her to a classy dinner at Jersey Mike’s subs and you tell her you like her and she chokes on her sub and you have to do the Heimlich on her and the lack of oxygen to her brain causes her to have amnesia and not remember you the next time you see her.
• It’s like you are out of commission with the stomach flu, but then you start to feel better so you decide to invite all your friends and family come over and watch you do a bunch of cartwheels in a row and you find out after the second cartwheel that you still have the flu.

Thanks for the questions, you guys! Remember to tell everyone you encounter in the new year about Jimbo’s Mailbag. Do it while playing air guitar without any music on. Make it weird.