Money man

It's official: if the playoffs started today, the Jazz would be left out. That means that they currently own a record worse than a Yao-less, McGrady-less (for all practical purposes, although he is an all-star starter!?!?!) Rockets team, a Blazers team which is so injured that I won't even bother saying who is out, and an Oklahoma City team that is still very, very young.

My fears before this season started were that the Jazz would be willing to keep Boozer so that they could be a mid-level playoff team and lose in the second round. As it currently stands, they won't even make the playoffs. What has been the response from the team? Get rid of a Harpring contract and a young, talented point guard to clear up some cap space for a 9th place team. It seems preposterous, but there it is. If they can't make the playoffs, there is no point in keeping this team together. The Jazz need to take a gamble by trading Boozer and hopefully finding some impossible way of dumping Okur.

As I have previously stated on this blog, I am not a big Okur fan. In fact, you could go so far as saying that I passionately dislike his basketball abilities. The western conference is full of talented big men, and to survive and thrive in it, you need one on your team. We have Boozer's offense and occasionally 15 points from the money man. Neither plays defense. Boozer rebounds. If we amalgamate all of these talents, we have half of a good player in two people that make multimillion dollar contracts this year. The Jazz are no longer being smartly conservative. Just conservative.

Please, no more money man antics in the future. A good old-fashioned center who plays defense, can't shoot worth shit from beyond 17 feet, and at least tries to earn his millions of dollars will do. Money man indeed.