Jimbo’s Mailbag – Gordon, Say It Ain’t GO.

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 Hayward going to leave us?

@drawsmalls

Ah, the golden goose question. The question to end all questions. The question we all get to ask ourselves for the next five months. Is Gordon Hayward going to sign with another team this summer?

My answer to that question is: I don’t know. I’ve only ever met Gordon once and it was right after he was drafted and he came to Deron Williamses’s dodgeball tournament. I approached him and said, “Welcome to the team,” and then I patted him on the shoulder. We both just stood there staring at each other. It was awkward. I don’t like talking about it.

The point is, I haven’t personally asked him what he’s planning on doing, so I feel like I can’t honestly answer. But what I CAN do is take a wild guess. I’m good at that. So, let’s go through the two possible scenarios:

1 – HAYWARD RE-SIGNS WITH THE JAZZ

Yay! He stayed! I knew he’d stay. I tried telling you guys all along, but you never listen to me! He loves it here so much that he bought two adjacent lots houses and dug a trampoline pit. Gordon has two little kids and a wife now, just like we all do. He’s just like us, you guys!

Sure, Gordon can’t stand salt water taffy or the inversion, but who can? I literally coughed for the entire month of January. But we get through it. We always do.

However, now the Jazz are committed to paying Gordon Hayward 30-something million doll hairs a year for the next 5-6 years. Fine, you say? Whatever it takes, you say? Well, we’re already paying Gobert 101 million doll hairs for the next 4 years. So, if my math’s right, then that’s like, a boatload of doll hairs. Also, we’re going to need a solid point guard to go with those guys, so the Jazz will have to pay George Hill upwards of a pile of doll hairs as well.

So now you have most of your doll hairs tied up in three players. Are they good players? Yes! Are they players you could take home to mom and dad? Yes, they’re all fine young men. Are they players that could take you to the Finals? Ehhhhhhh…hopefully? But probably not by themselves. They’re gonna need help…and that’s where the doll hairs come in.

The thing is, after those three guys get their doll hairs, there aren’t many doll hairs left for the Jazz to give to other players. I know I’ve said this before, but if I were Hayward and I’d been extremely smart with my money up to this point in my life, I would negotiate a good contract that would enable the team to have some flexibility with their payroll and allow them to add additional players to take them over the playoff hump.

Would that be awesome if he did that? YES! Do I think it’s going to happen? No. Why not? Well, because money talks and no matter how much you have, you always want more. But Gordon wants to win, doesn’t he? Yes, but he also wants a boatload of money for his nice couches and fine china and his posterity or whatever. So, that’s it? Yep, that’s it.

2 – HAYWARD SIGNS WITH BOSTON OR SOME OTHER DUMB TEAM

Boooooooooooooo! Hayward’s a bum! I always knew he’d leave! I tried telling you guys all along, but you never listen to me! I’ve been saying it from the very beginning! He couldn’t do it by himself, so he had to go searching for help to get him over the playoff hump!

Pardon my language, but if this really happened and Hayward left the Jazz, it would be SUPER DUMB! Not necessarily because Hayward is a superstar or irreplaceable, but it would  throw the Jazz back into rebuild mode and as we all know, rebuild mode isn’t fun. It’s full of false hope in the form of a guy who needs a giant bed (Al Jefferson), a disgruntled high draft pick who loves mountains and hates defense (Enes Kanter), and guys who used to be pretty good at basketball things but aren’t anymore (Marvin Williams, Richard Jefferson, Brandon Rush, Jim Les).

So now what? We’re forced to build around Gobert and hope a big-name free agent does what absolutely no big-name free agents have ever done–sign with the Utah Jazz? Yeah, I guess so. Well that’s lame, isn’t it? Yep, pretty lame indeed, mate. Wait, why are you Australian all of a sudden? Ummmm maybe it’s because a dingo ate my baby?

Q: What’s the dankest meme of February?

@ebudd08

There are so many words in your question that I don’t understand. Like, what is a “February?”

It’s pretty sad that I would have no idea what “dank” meant if it weren’t for a quick phone call I just made to my hip nephew Jake. Also, if it weren’t for the ENTIRE internets, I wouldn’t know what a meme was either.

My nephew Jake can be somewhat annoying at times, but he has a good heart. Well,  I guess I should say, he has a “better” heart. His original heart got sick and wasn’t working well, so he had a heart transplant and everything seems to be fine now. That’s a whole other story that I don’t like talking about.

The family has been a little worried about Jake lately because all he seems to want to do is eat Burger King and talk about how Justin Bieber sucks. (He’s a huge Evanescence fan, so what does he know?) He LOVES Burger King so much that the entire extended family knows his order. He, without fail, orders “Three Whopper Juniors, hold the lettuce and mustard.” That’s all he ever gets and none of us are sure why. It’s like, they have other things on the menu, Jake.

Plus, last summer he brought his new girlfriend Madelyn to the family reunion and she spent the whole time either doing Tai Chi in the middle of an empty volleyball court or trying to persuade my aunts to let her fix their eyebrows. Her name is Madelyn, but she goes by “Maddie.” My nephew Jake calls her “Mads” which annoyed our Uncle Roger to the point he blurted out, “YOU KNOW WHAT?!” in the middle of dinner, but caught himself and never finished his question. Everyone stopped eating and the whole reunion went silent. We all figured his outburst was about Jake though, because Uncle Roger just sat there making intense eye contact with Jake and his girlfriend Mads. Families are weird.

But back to your question–probably the dankest meme of February would have to be the “All the February are belong to us!” That’s hilarious because it implies that someone can actually own a month, which as we all know isn’t really true because Donald Trump would own at least three or four of them if he could.

Q: If a car is traveling at the speed of light and you turn on the headlights, do they do anything?

@conundrum801

Of course they do, they emit light. Although, the light would only reach like an inch in front of the car (give or take a centimeter). No matter how far the light went, you sure would see some fireworks all right!…………but not literal fireworks, I just meant you’d see some sort of light.…………I guess you could’ve packed fireworks for the trip and lit them during your light speed journey in which case yes, you would see fireworks, but they more than likely would burn out fairly quickly on account of the speed at which you were traveling. I’m no Einstein, but if you had the windows rolled down during the trip, I doubt you’d be able to get the fireworks lit at all.

I saved a house from catching fire once, as long as we’re on the subject. Let me tell you about it:

It was July 4th around 10 p.m. and the neighbors had piled all their used fireworks in a plastic bucket and left the bucket a few inches away from their garage door. Well, the bucket of fireworks eventually caught fire.

I noticed the fire and ran over to the house. The flames were easily six or seven feet high, so I kicked the bucket over and rolled it around on their grass with my foot until the flames were extinguished. Since no one was home and no one saw me do it, I just walked back to my house and never told a soul.

Now, does that make me a hero?…yeah, sort of. I mean, to that family it does. So, that’s why I call myself the “Fire Hero” now. I’m still waiting to hear back from the state if they’re going to allow me to be the grand marshal at the Days of ’47 parade next year. Fingers crossed!

Q: At what point do we have enough Oreo flavors? What flavor would you like to see?

@JimmerFrodette

I believe that we already have too many Oreo flavors and none of them are better than the original. The double stuff are the best, but if you really like that white stuff in the middle (what IS that stuff???) then you should try the mega stuff. They call it “mega” because there is more of the white stuff. Just FYI.

I once made a 14-stuff Oreo and ate it in three bites. But that was a lot time ago when I had roommates; I don’t usually like to talk about it…but I guess I will just this once. PLEASE do NOT tell anyone else about this, though. I’d hate for it to get out and put mine and my family’s privacy in jeopardy.

It was a Thursday night and my roommates dared me to make a giant Oreo and eat it. Guys were cheering, their girlfriends were dry heaving, stray animals gathered outside out apartment door to see what all the fuss was about.

I connected 14 double stuff Oreos together and ate it in three total bites. The crows kept waiting for me to get sick, but I kept it down. That’s how I got the nickname “Oreo Dude” on campus. Most of my college days, girls would point and say, “That’s the Oreo dude!” and guys would stop me and ask if I was Oreo Dude and when I’d say, “Yes, that’s me,” they would give me a high five and walk away laughing. Some called me “the man,” but not all of them. I was as famous as you can get going to college.

Things got out of hand after a few weeks, though. Students would scour campus looking for me and want me to recreate the 14-stuff Oreo feat for their friends and family. I’d usually oblige, but deep down I always wondered if they really liked me for me or because I could cram a 14-stuff Oreo into my pie hole in only three bites.

Gradually those Oreo requests became fewer and eventually they didn’t ask me to do the 14-stuff Oreo thing anymore. However, that was mainly because a few months later I was at a party and someone dared me to drink a bottle of Tabasco sauce and so I did it and that’s why people call me “Tabasco Daddy” today.

Q: What player would you like to have seen the Jazz get before the deadline?

@Steeleman77

Probably Danilo Gallinari. I like that dude. He can shoot, dribble, pass, apply a healthy amount of hair gel, and is an average defender. I would love to have another shooting big like Memo so that Gobert has more room to work and get easier positioning for lobs.

However, you have to take into account that I don’t know anything about basketball and just barely graduated high school. No really, I spent Senior Slough/Lagoon Day finishing an Of Mice and Men book report so that I could pass senior English. I still think it was the teacher’s fault though because she never really explained what I had to do or when things were due. Plus, there wasn’t email back then so she didn’t have a great way of telling my parents what I needed to turn in.

I wish that teacher could see me now. Writing about Oreos and Burger King for a basketball website. How you like me now, Mrs. Shumway?!

Thanks for the questions, you guys! You Jimbronies light up my life, you know that? Seriously, I’m not just saying that.

Make sure you tell your BFFs about Jimbo’s Mailbag. When you tell them, say that your OTHER best friend told you about it so that they question what the appropriate number of BFFs a person should have. Make it weird.