Salt Lake Tribune - Jazz: First Quarter View
How should Jazz fans feel one-fourth of the way into the season? Here are four projections suited to fit any world view. The Jazz's season is unofficially one-fourth of the way finished after Friday's game.
Or one quarter, for you hoops purists. Knowing there are those who are predisposed to see the glass half-full (not to mention those extremists who will insist it is, quite actually, 54.6 percent filled to capacity), and those who will see it half-empty (and again, those gloomsters who say the glass has a hole in the bottom and is draining as we speak), the Page 2 staff has, in its typically indiscriminate fashion, compiled projections sure to satisfy even the most twisted of perspectives.
* A steady hand from Jerry Sloan earns him his first Coach of the Year, continued growth from point guard Deron Williams makes him the league's Most Improved Player, and a never-ending supply of double-doubles makes Carlos Boozer MVP.
and the rechristening of the "Delta Center" brings a joyous end to months and months of awful, recycled "Radium Stadium" jokes. * The 1995-96 Bulls, who went 72-10 and won that season's NBA championship, will, by comparison, forever henceforth be considered underachieving hacks.
* Forward Andrei Kirilenko decides to use the extramarital "freebie" allowed by his wife Masha, and she keeps her word and doesn't hold a grudge. No, really. * Boozer's hamstring is tweaked, Kirilenko's jumpshot never does come around, and the previously smooth-running offense grinds to a halt.
* A string of talented opposing shooting guards, a la Kobe Bryant and Michael Redd, exploit fatal flaws in Utah's still-shaky perimeter defense with 50-plus-point efforts. * Sloan's amnesia is cured, and his sudden recollection that he used to hate playing youngsters causes him to give back minutes to Jarron Collins and Gordan Giricek that had been going to Paul Millsap and C.J.
Miles. * Williams develops a taste for fry sauce, gains back all the excess rookie weight he had lost, and eventually balloons to a size unseen here since the Ike Austin era. * A glitch in his paperwork causes Mehmet Okur to be deported to Turkey, and Greg Ostertag is brought out of retirement as an emergency replacement.
* Kirilenko uses his aforementioned marital "freebie," but is subsequently lost to a season-ending injury when Masha goes all Lorena Bobbitt on him.
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