Jimbo’s Mailbag – I Know Ante Tomic’s Girlfriend

Photos by D. Clarke Evans/NBAE via Getty Images

Welcome to the next edition of Jimbo’s Mailbag! At Salt City Hoops, we know that covering a losing 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: If you were the social media manager for the Jazz, what are the top five things you would be fired for and would you last 24 hours?

@thatcho

Oh boy. That poor, poor Rockets Twitter guy. He probably thought he was the cleverest guy on the planet right as he clicked SEND. I think it’s disgusting that we live in a world where someone can get fired for a brilliant jab like that. I don’t know if I would have been brave enough to tweet that, but I know I would have been brave enough to stand right next to that guy and encourage him to tweet that.

If I were the social media manager for the Utah Jazz, I would no doubt have been fired after a few hours. Here are the top five things I can almost guarantee I would be fired for:

1. Telling fans to get to the game early because the first 5,000 fans to enter the arena will receive a piggyback ride to their seats by an assistant coach of their choice.

2. Every half hour I would tweet out that the Jazz are going to make a “huge announcement” and then a few minutes later I would tweet that the arena is getting a thorough spring cleaning.

3. I would post on every social media outlet that the Jazz are going to start handing out chocolate mints at the door after every win just like they used to. And I would continue doing this until it actually happened.

4. When the Lakers came to town, I would make fart noises over the PA every time Kobe Bryant went up for a shot.

5. I would announce that Gordon Hayward would be at a certain location at a certain time to sign autographs. Once a considerable number of people had lined up, I would have my Uncle Dale (the one with the limp and missing teeth) enter wearing a Hayward jersey and a bunch of gold chain necklaces and see how much Jazz gear the fans would let him sign.

Yeah, that would probably do it, wouldn’t you say?

Q: If the grease from Olynyk’s hair played a role in dislocating Love’s shoulder, can the NBA require he get a haircut?

@JimmerFrodette

Listen, I wasn’t born with what you would call “good looks,” but I like to think that I try to make the best of what I was handed in life. There are some people who, no matter how great things are going for them, seem to feel the need to take a step back in the looks department. Maybe it’s just me who notices this stuff. I had a hard time concentrating in high school because I wanted to brush everyone’s hair.

If the NBA is going to do things like go after players for their looks and tell Olynyk to cut his hair, here are a few things they could request from other players/coaches in the league:

• Paul Pierce – Shave your face. Your beard is so patchy it looks like tiny aliens landed on your face and made “beard circles.”
• Nick Calathes, Kosta Koufos, and Bojan Bogdanovic – Just give it up already and shave your heads. You all look like a picture of my three uncles at a barbecue back in 1989.
• Marreese Speights – Have your second head removed.
• Doc Rivers – Get all the sweat pores sealed around the head area of your body.
• Ty Corbin – Finish shaving your upper lip. You’re SO close!
• Dirk Nowitzki – Maybe file a little bit of your teeth…well, never mind. You’re a handsome enough fella.
• Deron Williams – Have your “No Guts No Glory” tattoo changed to say, “Guts Gore I LOVE THE WALKING DEAD!”

The NBA would be a much cleaner-cut league with me at the helm.

Q: You heard it first from @JimboRudding and his excellent twittering. Tomic isn’t coming over. How does it feel to break a story?

@gothedistance49

I don’t know if I was the one who really broke the story, but Ante Tomic’s girlfriend DID reply to the first tweet I ever sent her, so I’ll take that.

Twitter is great, isn’t it? It sure does make these people we see on TV seem so much more real. I remember when I was a kid and my neighbor told me he said hi to Jim Les after he saw him buying a blender at Kmart. I was like, “JIM LES!? I hate that guy! What does he need a blender for?” My friend answered, “How should I know? Maybe he likes to make his own jams and jellies.” To which I was adamant that such an activity would NOT require a blender. We ended up arguing about how to make jelly for nearly three hours before we decided to part ways and never speak to each other again. But that’s neither here nor there.

Back to the point.

It was so mind-boggling to think that a Jazz player would do the same mundane things that we all do. Twitter sort of bridges the gap between player and fan in a way that is pretty awesome for us fans, but can probably be pretty annoying for the players.

So, to answer your question—How does it feel to break a story? It felt fine. I’ve felt better, I guess. I just hope that during Tomic’s press conference he mentions how right when he was about to sign with his European team, West Barcelona UCLA or whatever it’s called, his girlfriend said that she received an amazing tweet from someone in Utah saying how much he thought he would like playing in Salt Lake City because of all the clean cul-de-sacs and cordial elderly people.

Mission accomplished.

Q: Now that you’re all chummy with Jimmer, who feeds whom grapes when you guys go on picnics together?

@DJJazzyJody

Thanks for the question, Jody, but Jimmer and I would like to keep our outings as private as possible if you don’t mind. We are both not usually ones to feed grapes and tell.

I just want you to know that Jimmer is going on a whole three months of following me on www.twitter.com. I feel like I owe most of that to you, since you were the one who “set us up.” He was pretty good at playing hard-to-get by ignoring me for 2+ years, but he figured out over time that the Jimbo doesn’t quit.

I would LOVE it if the Jazz considered signing him this offseason. It would be so much fun to have him so close. I’d really like to teach him how to play racquetball or maybe show him how good I’m getting at the piccolo.

I just miss him. As they say, distance makes the heart grow fonder.