Jimbo’s Mailbag – A Jazz Time Machine

DeLorean Time Machine. (wikipedia)

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: I dreamed last night you were sleeping in Big Cottonwood and I saved you from a grizzly bear. Real dream not a question.

@JJForman1

I’m going to comment on this even though it’s not a question. I hope that’s OK with you.

First of all, thank you for saving my life. You, sir, are a hero. You may only be a hero from a dream, but to me you’re a hero in real life too. Why you ask? I don’t know. I just like making people feel like they’re worth something. It’s the reason I’m a hero.

Dreams are weird, right? One time I had a dream that I interviewed Deron Williams and for some reason I only asked him questions about Hootie and the Blowfish. He was incredibly gracious with his time and answers, but each time I asked him a new question I felt bad for him and very confused as to why I wasn’t asking Jazz-related questions. After the interview, I took him out to my car where I showed him some unreleased Hootie songs I had on a CD and that totally blew his mind. (Here’s where the dream got a little nuts.) For some reason there was one of those Mexican wrestlers in the backseat trying to harmonize with Darius Rucker, which as we all know is no easy task. Not sure why the wrestler was there and what that whole meant. Like I said, dreams are weird…on second thought, it probably had something to do with me being in that Hootie and the Blowfish cover band with all those Mexican wrestlers.

Even when I start having a good dream, it’s always a little bit off. For instance, one time I had a dream that I was a player on the Jazz and we were in the NBA Finals. For some reason that year the Jazz carried four point guards and I was fourth-string, which I was fine with because I really was just blessed to have a great job and to be surrounded by great teammates who believed in me. Anyway, guys kept getting hurt and pretty soon I was the only healthy point-guard left. (This is when the dream turned into a nightmare.) Coach pointed to me and said, “Get in there!” and as soon as I stood up I realized that he wasn’t pointing to me at all. He was pointing to someone behind me. I turned around and saw this extremely obese lady smoking a cigar and riding in a motorized wheelchair. She went right past me in full Utah Jazz uniform, drove up to the scorer’s table, and checked into the game.

I couldn’t believe it. All my friends and family had come to the game and when I looked up into the stands, they were all pointing and laughing at me. To make matters worse, the wheelchair lady missed a buzzer-beating three-pointer to win Game 7. Then, to make matters even worse than that, I noticed that everyone from high school was at the arena and they were all blaming me for the loss. Then I looked down and I was naked.

Q: Waitress is taking a long time running my card. Should I worry she’s stealing my card info? She’s wearing a Nuggets shirt btw.

@MitchHenline

A Nuggets shirt!? How dare she! What kind of restaurant are you at, a crappy one that serves dumb food from Colorado??? There’s no other explanation for it, she must be stealing your card info. In fact, her boyfriend is probably out in the parking lot trying to break into your car to steal your CDs too. My advice would be to place her under citizen’s arrest until the cops arrive.

See, this is why I only eat at IHOP. The waitresses at IHOP are always pleasantly dressed in the required uniform and they’re thoroughly trained on how to deal with customers who would like to pay with either debit, credit, baseball cards from the 70’s, or Beanie Babies. Plus they have the most delicious pancakes you’ve ever tasted, both domestically and internationally.

Q: Is Alec Burks too fragile to be relied on? Is Rudy too fragile to be relied on? Is D-Faves too fragile? Are the Utah Jazz too fragile?

@dphilton

Good question! I remember back in the D-Will/Boozer days I asked a lot of my Jazz fan friends if maybe the problem wasn’t just Boozer and Kirilenko having bad luck, but the Jazz’ses’s strength and conditioning coach Mark McKown. It just didn’t make sense that so many players on the team could miss extensive time because of injuries during a basketball season. I’ve backed away from that theory in recent years because it seemed a little outlandish and accusatory. My new theory is that God hates the Utah Jazz.

To answer your questions:

Is Alec Burks too fragile? Short answer—yes. Long answer—I don’t know because he’s just a little guy throwing his body into giant humans who are consistently jumping into him and swiping at him. Props to Alec for not shying away from contact, but you do have to wonder if maybe he needs to tone it down a little.

Is Rudy too fragile? Short answer—yes. Long answer—I don’t know because with a solid back-up center and better defensive wings coming off the bench, Rudy wouldn’t have to help on everything. Let me explain: Rudy Gobert IS the Utah Jazz’ses’s defense. Without him on the court, the Jazz are in the mediocre-to-crappy range defensively. The numbers back me up on this. At least that’s what I assume; I’m way too busy to look them up.

Is D-Faves too fragile? Short answer—no. Long answer—I don’t know because his back issues this year seemed to be a fluke thing. Mix that with the coaching staff being maybe a little too cautious with him and you get 20 games of Trey Lyles and Trevor Booker playing together. But at least Favors was fresh for the playoffs!

Are the Utah Jazz too fragile? Short answer—yes. Long answer—I don’t know. They just need a different bench that can make it so Hayward doesn’t have to play so many minutes and Hood can have a bad night once in a while and not have it be a guaranteed loss.

Take all of this with a grain of salt. After all, I don’t really know that much about basketball or really anything except how to fix a running toilet.

Q: If you had a time machine, where/when would you go? What would you do to help Jazz fans cope with another early offseason?

@JimmerFrodette

OK, I’ve used so much of my life on this planet thinking about the answer to this question. The fact is, there isn’t enough plutonium and gigawatts in the world to take me to the places and times I would want to go.

Assuming I already used the time machine to kidnap baby Hitler and give him to some people near the Amazon river, here is a list of other things I would do:

• I’d go back to March of my 3^rd grade school year and tell Kelly Livingston that it was me who wrote “Alf loves Kelly” with a permanent marker on the back of her coat. But I only did it because I had a huge crush on her and I didn’t know how to deal with it. Then, I assume, we’d go kiss by the tetherball poles.
• I’d visit Derek Harper in 1997 and Rony Seikaly in 1998 and freak them out with a laser pointer or a remote control helicopter or something. Once that got their attention and they realized I was a time traveler who meant business, I’d tell them if they didn’t agree to the upcoming Jazz trades then I would burn all of their Jordache jeans.
• I’d try to convince Larry Miller not to let Derek Fisher out of his contract. Mainly out of spite.
• Carlos Boozer would be getting a complementary massage before, after, and during every game through the 2004–2010 seasons from yours truly.
• I’d go to Vegas in between Games 4 and 5 of the 1997 NBA Finals, find Michael Jordan, and suggest that he gamble and drink a little more. That way, instead of having the “flu game” he would be way too hungover to play and have to sit out Game 5 on account of all the barfing.
• I would give Dick Bavetta a one-month roofie.
• I’d visit the Jazz front office on the draft nights of Raul Lopez, Morris Almond, Curtis Borchardt, Kirk Snyder, and Ryan Humphrey and threaten to burn all their Jordache jeans if they drafted any of these players.

Thanks for the questions, you guys. Remember to tell your kid’s teachers about Jimbo’s Mailbag. Do it while aggressively eating an ice cream sandwich. Make it weird.