Jimbo’s Mailbag – My Brother, George Hill

Melissa Majchrzak/utahjazz.com

Welcome to the next edition of Jimbo’s Mailbag, our regular dose of levity here at Salt City Hoops. In each mailbag, Jimbo answers your burning questions with his unique outlook on 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: Who do you love more this week, your family or George Hill?

@joel_hiller

My family. However, I consider George Hill as part of my family, so…trick question, right? Ha ha, Joel! Always trying to trip me up.

It’s so refreshing to see a Jazz point guard go to the rim with a plan. I’m not saying that Trey Burke never had a plan or even that he doesn’t know how to finish at the rim…actually, no, that’s EXACTLY what I’m saying. Burke was pretty much non-effective on defense and, except for the occasional game where he’d hit a bunch of threes, his offensive game was…not stellar. There, I said it. Go tell his dad; see if I care. I wasn’t a Burke fan…of course, on the flip side, you have to take into account that I don’t know a whole lot about the game of basketball. For instance, I just learned that just because you throw a ball at a player and it touches them, it doesn’t mean they’re “out” for the rest of the quarter.

Hill is so good. He just knows how to play the game. He’s like Bob Ross the painter and we’re all the happy little clouds and trees. He’s like Billy Joel and we’re all like the keys on his favorite piano. He’s like Aristotle and we’re all like…Aristotle’s best friends who drink a ton of soda.

So, bravo to Dennis Lindsey and the Jazz front office for making that pre-draft trade. I’m still amazed that they got Hill and only had to give up their first-round pick. Dennis is a wizard. Lord Lindsemort. That’s what I’m calling him from now on. You’re all welcome to join me. Or don’t. I’m not your dad.

Q: Can you expound more on the Utah Jazz curse backstory that we can use as justification for winning an NBA title?

@robdelacruz

First of all, congratulations to my Chicago Cubs and their first World Series win since 1908. I’ve been a HUGE Cubbies fan ever since I watched Paul Shumpgerff throw a ball from the shore onto a cruise boat. He wasn’t actually ON the Cubs, but he had a Cubs hat on that day and I remember how everybody on land and on the boat were freaking out. It was a good throw, one I’ll remember until the day I die.

Now that the goat and Bambino curses are over, the only true curse that’s left in sports is the Bavetta curse. It’s been 18 years since the Jazz last went to the NBA Finals. The truth is, the Bavetta curse is actually a mixture of things that are both directly related to the Jazz and/or strange things that happened to me and some other people I knew back then.

Let me show you what I mean. Here’s a list of things that make up the Bavetta curse:

• Dick Bavetta himself
• Michael Jordan pushing off
• My Old Home Utah Jazz card set that I foolishly traded for a six-pack of IBC root beer
• Rony Seikaly refusing a trade
• Derek Harper saying, “You go live in Utah.”
• In 1997, Kate Hampton said she had to cancel our date because she was sick and then later I saw her making out with Craig Passey in front of Classic Skating.
• The San Antonio Spurs
• The original triple threat: Milt Palacio, Jason Hart, and Brevin Knight.
• Jim Les is the worst
• Trey Burke’s dad
• Hakeem Olajuwon traveling in the paint
• Kobe Bryant and pretty much everything he stands for
• One time we watched a video about supernovas in my high school Astronomy class and I fell asleep and had a nightmare that I was an astronaut and my ship was malfunctioning and drifting into the sun and I woke up screaming “YELLOW DWARF!” and the whole class laughed at me.
• No more mints given out at the door after a Jazz win

Q: Do you have any mnemonic devices for remembering the new players’ names?

@benwalker14

Great question! YES, I do. Here it is:
“Aw, Joey boy went up the championship hill.”

It’s pretty self-explanatory, but since there will always be that one guy that doesn’t get it, and that guy is usually me, here you go:

“Diaw, Joe, Bolomboy, Hill will win a championship this year.”

It’s not perfect, but it works for me.

Q: So sick of the boo-birds of DWill saga. Can we just appreciate the dude and wonder how he got Lego to build him a hair-piece?

@JimmerFrodette

I’m still not exactly sure why we still boo Deron Williams. I get that there are a still a number of fans who think he caused Jerry Sloan to resign, but it was bound to happen sooner rather than later anyway. Jerry was getting older and his coaching style wasn’t evolving with the game.

I love Jerry Sloan with all my heart. He’s like a third grandpa to me. However, it was time for him to hang it up. I’m at peace with that decision. Let me be clear thought that I wasn’t at the time. I was sick of DWill’s surly attitude towards everything and everyone. For some reason, Deron found reasons to be angry even though he was being paid millions of dollars to play a kids game. But maybe his anger and surliness had nothing to do with any of that? Meh, as I type this, I realize that I really just don’t care anymore. It’s all in the past. Water under the bridge. Bridge over troubled water. Cecilia. Mrs. Robinson.

Really, Jerry did what a lot of TV shows fail to do–get out at the right time. Take LOST for example. The last two seasons were garbage turds wrapped in shiny packaging. That’s the best way I can describe it. Flash forwards? Really? And this helps the plot how???

Jerry Sloan knew the ship was sinking. I think we all knew it too once we saw Al Jefferson play defense. It was a great time to call it quits, in my opinion.

Thanks for the questions this week, you guys! Remember to tell your nieces and nephews about Jimbo’s Mailbag. Tell them using the word “keen” a lot. Example: “That Jimbo’s got a keen wit!” or “You guys keen on reading Jimbo’s Mailbag?” Make it weird.