Jimbo’s Mailbag – Defensive Kyrie, Legos & What to Do on Draft Night

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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: Man, I can’t wait for the Jazz to trade for Kyrie Irving. Right, Jimbo?

@natedub9

Yeah, I’d take Kyrie as long as the only thing we give up is Trey Burke, Allen Handy and a couple of Ron Boone’s old sweat-stained dress shirts or something.

In reality, we already have “the defensive Kyrie” in Dante Exum. Hmmm, that sounded pretty good. I think I’ll call Exum “the defensive Kyrie” from now on. It would look heck-a cool on a t-shirt. Let’s get this going viral…at least in Utah. Sound good, Nate?

Q: What do you think Riley Curry has to say about game seven?

@SamJud_17

Ah, kids. They’re the greatest, right?! Tiny, innocent little humans with their dirty hands and their leaky faces. Ugh, okay maybe they’re not the greatest.

When I was little I had a hard time getting along with other kids. I struggled with that well into my awkward-looking adolescent stage. Then one day I heard the Whitney Houston song where she tells us that the children are our future and I started to change my mindset.

That is, until one day I saw kids in a different light. A Lego store light.

It was never officially diagnosed, but I’m pretty sure it was a panic attack. I guess it could’ve just been a migraine or bird flu that was accelerated by eating a boatload of Otter Pops mixed with a really bad sunburn. But whatever it was I was in a bad place, both literally and figuratively.

I was initially drawn into the store because I saw a Lego Corvette display that I thought looked interesting. Without even realizing it I was inside the store smack dab in the middle of a giant herd of children. Totally surrounded.

It came on pretty fast. Something about those high-pitched voices snapped me out of my Corvette stupor. I looked up and realized I wasn’t looking at the Corvette anymore, but was standing in the rear of the store next to a Batmobile Lego set, which we all know is one of the most popular sets among kids these days.

The noise in the store was deafening. I turned my head to look around and there was a shooting pain in my neck. My vision was blurry and the space around me suddenly became very cramped.

I began sweating so profusely that the box for the Lego Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves tree house that I was leaning up against became soaked in seconds. My ventilating got so fast that I began hyperventilating. My knees were shaking and I couldn’t swallow.

Though my vision was blurry, I was able to make out an ocean of children all around me. They were grabbing and clawing at the Lego displays with their tiny fingers. They were yelling things like, “Wow!” and “Check out this one!” and “I’m gonna be an engineer and make a substantial income when I grow up!”

I couldn’t take it anymore. I had to get out. So. I broke out in a full sprint.

I didn’t care where I was running to so long as I was moving farther away from that store and those kids.

Then I blacked out.

The police said they found me in the fetal position in a Dress Barn changing room. It took me about a week to fully recover.

Present day–I’m still working through my issues, but doctors say I may never be able to got to Disneyland again.

…

Now that that’s out of the way, I feel like I can answer your question more honestly. Riley Curry probably doesn’t have anything to say because she’s too disappointed in her father to even speak to him. The silent treatment never works in the Curry house, though. All he has to do is come home with some new Legos and all is forgiven.

Q: If you could have a Freaky Friday moment with any Jazz player, who would it be?

@dianaallen

I LOVE the movie Freaky Friday! My favorite part is when the Asian kid gets drunk and falls out of that tree. Wait, no, that’s Sixteen Candles. Which one is Freaky Friday again? …Oh right, it’s the one where Jodie Foster switches bodies with her mom and hilarity ensues.

I guess if I had to switch bodies with a Jazz player, I’d probably choose the big German Tibor Pleiss mostly because I could just eat a mountain of strudel all day. Then, when I wasn’t eating strudel, I could walk around town and look down at everyone making jokes like, “How’s the weather down there?”

What I’d worry about is how HIS day would go. He’d have to spend a long time figuring out all the weird things that just come naturally to me in my life. Here are a couple of other things he’d have to deal with:

• An EXTREMELY messy garage because of several failed science experiments.
• My neighbor with Tourette Syndrome calling me “*&^%#’n Jimbo.”
• A pantry with dozens of bags of the knock-off Cinnamon Toast Crunch.
• A 6-disc CD changer in my car all full of ABBA albums.
• 174 throw pillows on my bed, couches, and deck.
• The shower drain (I won’t go into detail here, but let’s just say he’d probably skip a shower that day).
• If he was forced to wear my clothes, then my shorts on him would look like Tom Selleck’s shorts on Magnum P.I.

Q: Since the Jazz are not hosting a draft party, what should rabid Jazz fans do on draft night?

@phelpss6

This was very disappointing news for me. I LOVE the draft party. It’s like Christmas for me…but instead of Santa I have “Kanta,” which is a mythical draft fairy that brings the Jazz good luck the night before the draft. It’s just a thing I made up after the 2011 draft lottery when the Jazz won the 3^rd overall pick and took Enes Kanter. The Kanta fairy isn’t real (even though I’ve seen some things with my own two eyes that can’t logically be explained) but simply thinking about it does give me a sense of hope when odds are not on my side, which is often.

It’s not like the Jazz are required to throw us a party, but the party has been around for so long that we all think of it as a “tradition.” It’s a chance for us to get excited about the possibilities and to plant new hope for our future. It’s a chance for Jazz fans to get together and reminisce about the good times when we didn’t need to worry so much about who we were taking in the draft because we were a playoff team and our pick was always in the 25-30 range.

But no, the Jazz had to go and schedule out the arena. Like there are other things in life other than basketball and the Utah Jazz? Pffffft!

Here are some suggestions of things to do both before and during draft night (some of them may bring good luck):

• Begin every conversation with EVERYONE you come in contact with on draft day by saying, “So who do you think they take at 12?”
• Put the Guns N’ Roses’ Use Your Illusion II album in your boombox and blast it while doing 1500 jumping jacks on your front lawn.
• Make a Frisbee trick-shot video.
• Call up the Jazz ticket office and ask if rabbits are required to have a ticket and about how many rabbits are allowed to sit on your lap during the game.
• Use a few loaves of bread to lure a dozen or so ducks into a Sam’s Club.
• Wear every single bit of Jazz attire that you own at once. (This worked for me back in 2007 during a playoff game.)
• Greet every cashier with, “Hey beautiful!” Even if the cashier is male.
• Head over to Classic Skating and just skate in a circle as fast as you can until closing time. Keep skating until they have to open a special door next to the rink they only use for emergencies and shove you out.

I’m not saying those things will guarantee a good draft, or will even be better than the draft party, but I WILL guarantee that it will make your life more exciting.

Q: Why not have a draft un-party set up by the fans for the fans?

@mollyfud

I only approve if it’s at Golden Corral, Crown Burger or the field where they filmed The Sandlot.

Q: Would the Jazz win Game 6 of the 1998 Finals in the age of replay? Looking not only at the Jordan push-off, but also the Eisley 3 clock violation.

@phelpss6

Oh man, this week was rough with it being the 18^th anniversary of Dick Bavetta single-handedly screwing up our title run. Bavetta is currently 76 years old, but a little-known fact about him–he’s been 73 years old for the last two decades. I know it seems humanly impossible, but there were people who said we’d never land on the moon too and we’ve done that, what, a dozen or so times now? So why CAN’T people stay the same age for decades? Angela Lansbury is currently doing it as we speak!

I whole-heartedly believe that the Jazz would’ve won both Games 6 and 7 of the 1998 Finals if the refs had had a chance to look at the replay for those two plays. The Eisley three-pointer was CLEARLY out of his hand with time to spare, the Derek Harper shot clock violation was CLEARLY in his hand as time expired, and the Jordan push-off was CLEARLY obvious.

So, what are we as Jazz fans going to do about it??? Keep complaining. It’s what we do best and it totally makes us feel better.

Part of me wants Bavetta to pay for the heartache and agony he caused me and all the rest of us Jazz fans for the last 18 years. Like, it’d be cool if someone stole his credit card and then had UPS deliver 250 cases of Metamucil to his house. Or if someone replaced his back pills with stool softeners? I don’t know; just shootin from the hip here.

Thanks for all the questions, you guys! Remember to tell your dads about Jimbo’s Mailbag. Do it right after commenting about how dirty the inside of your gas tank can get if you don’t use Techron. Make it weird.