Speaker 1: For an entire hour.
Speaker 2: My buddy Richard Smith on a Wednesday, Smitty, Happy Wednesday.
Speaker 1: How are you. Let's turn his mic on.
Speaker 3: It probably works better for your ratings, is well.
Speaker 2: I mean, as I often say, my Christmas wish as
Speaker 2: a radio host is the ability to control microphones in
Speaker 2: the studio.
Speaker 1: But that's probably too much to How are you, How
Speaker 1: are you, buddy?
Speaker 3: We're doing great. Yeah, we're doing just a beautiful day outside.
Speaker 4: And uh, we had a great Thanksgiving weekend last week,
Speaker 4: as as I know you did back east and with
Speaker 4: your family, and uh, you know, it's all good.
Speaker 1: Good to be back east. And for you, you.
Speaker 2: Spent the holiday vacationing in the happiest place on earth.
Speaker 3: This was this was big time spent. It was we
Speaker 3: were down. We were down to Disneyland for four glorious days.
Speaker 4: And I'll tell you what when you're in the middle
Speaker 4: of Disneyland and I did not know this. This is
Speaker 4: the first time that Linda and I've ever done this
Speaker 4: with some friends. But they when you're there, you if
Speaker 4: you did anything else going out in the world, you
Speaker 4: would make the assumption. Well, I guess in the United
Speaker 4: States they don't have the traditional family get together around
Speaker 4: the table at home. Now anymore, everybody just goes to Disneyland,
Speaker 4: just jam packs. Oh it was wall to wall people. Yeah,
Speaker 4: and it was. But the weather was good and we
Speaker 4: had a fun time. It was a different experience for us.
Speaker 4: And yeah, yeah, we had a lot of fun. It
Speaker 4: was great.
Speaker 2: So we'll get to the Jazz in a moment, because
Speaker 2: my goodness. But I wanted to ask you this today,
Speaker 2: and you know, I want to be very clear here.
Speaker 2: I don't know what coach Wait is going to do.
Speaker 2: I just feel like, because there has been no official announcement,
Speaker 2: it leads me to believe he's coming back. I mean,
Speaker 2: right now, it's early signing day. They're so busy with
Speaker 2: recruiting and transfer portal and such. I think if he
Speaker 2: was going to step aside, we would know by now.
Speaker 2: But I wonder if you could illuminate us a little bit.
Speaker 2: What are some of the things you kind of balance
Speaker 2: out when you know, you saw a lot of coaches
Speaker 2: come and go, and when you're in admittedly the late fall,
Speaker 2: early winter of your career, what are some of the
Speaker 2: things you balance out when you want to decide whether
Speaker 2: or not you want to keep going.
Speaker 4: Yeah, when you have a year like the youths had
Speaker 4: this year. I think the most important thing for them
Speaker 4: is to be able to step back and and and
Speaker 4: take a deep breath and and get a little perspective.
Speaker 3: On on what happened.
Speaker 4: You know, when you were in the middle of that
Speaker 4: that tornado that they were in and that downhill slide
Speaker 4: in the in October and November. Uh, you know, a
Speaker 4: lot of things come at you and and you have
Speaker 4: a lot of different thoughts about any time anything goes wrong,
Speaker 4: it's it's just exacerbated and and overblown. So when you
Speaker 4: get to the end of the season, you want to
Speaker 4: be able to step back and and and step away
Speaker 4: from it for a little bit and try and and
Speaker 4: and get away and just clear your head and kind
Speaker 4: of look at it for what it what it really was,
Speaker 4: without all of that drama that that you were in
Speaker 4: the middle of. And I agree, I tend to agree
Speaker 4: with you, Spence. I don't know anything about anything regarding
Speaker 4: UH coach Whittingham and his thoughts and and and the
Speaker 4: program going forward, but it just feels like if they
Speaker 4: were if it was gonna be something around the deal
Speaker 4: of him leaving, that they probably would have done it
Speaker 4: already early this week, just to cut it clean and
Speaker 4: let everybody know, Hey, so don't bother us again.
Speaker 3: We'll give you some more updates kind of thing.
Speaker 4: And uh, it just you know, But then again, maybe
Speaker 4: he's you know, maybe he's off on some uh some
Speaker 4: island somewhere for a week, you know, trying to get
Speaker 4: his head clear. I'm sure with the with the early
Speaker 4: signing date and all that, they're probably you know, just
Speaker 4: the opposite, with their heads down and in the office
Speaker 4: trying to get those kinds of things locked down for
Speaker 4: their program.
Speaker 3: But but it.
Speaker 4: Just it feels like to me also that that just
Speaker 4: as a fan, that that you probably would have heard
Speaker 4: something else if there was something in that regard going on.
Speaker 4: So my my gut also tells me that when the
Speaker 4: dust settles, there won't be there won't be anything. They'll
Speaker 4: just be business as usual and they'll be looking for
Speaker 4: an offensive coordinator obviously, and then just going on with
Speaker 4: that would be my guess.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I'm with you there. And Kyle also doesn't
Speaker 2: strike me as a wishy, washy guy. I mean, he
Speaker 2: seems to be a pretty pragmatic person, where like if
Speaker 2: he knew he was going to leave. I think he
Speaker 2: just would have told everybody and then moved on right
Speaker 2: to whatever's next. But you do have some context with
Speaker 2: college coaches that you know over the years that have
Speaker 2: just elected to not deal with the new reality of
Speaker 2: college athletics. And we've seen examples in college football. Nick
Speaker 2: Saban's the biggest one. Others too, Tony Bennett, who won
Speaker 2: a national championship right before the year.
Speaker 1: It's like, yeah, you know what, I don't think I
Speaker 1: want to deal with this.
Speaker 2: So while I do believe Kyle's coming back, part of
Speaker 2: me wouldn't blame him if he's like, you know what,
Speaker 2: this is a new game. It's not the game that
Speaker 2: I signed up to coach. It's not the business that
Speaker 2: I signed up to lead. Because as a college football coach,
Speaker 2: you're a CEO. You're not just a coach. There are
Speaker 2: so many layers, and yes, now a lot of them
Speaker 2: have general managers and guys that can help him out
Speaker 2: run the program. But the new reality of college athletics
Speaker 2: seems to have really struck a lot of these old
Speaker 2: school coaches in a way where some of them just
Speaker 2: don't want to deal with it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, well that happened, I know last week with Mac
Speaker 4: Brown in North Carolina, a longtime coach and won a
Speaker 4: national championship when he was at Texas. Has had two
Speaker 4: successful stints at the University of North Carolina as they
Speaker 4: head football coach, but they they decided to let him
Speaker 4: go last week before their their final game with NC State,
Speaker 4: and then they had the game with their and they
Speaker 4: and they lost. And in this postgame press conference, he said, yeah,
Speaker 4: I'm done, and he goes, this isn't and he made
Speaker 4: reference to just the whole thing in general, not just
Speaker 4: his his situation, but when he said, this isn't. This
Speaker 4: isn't the game that I signed up for, you know,
Speaker 4: way back when this is it's all different now, and
Speaker 4: so this is probably a good timing for everybody and
Speaker 4: for me to to exit stage left, and and for
Speaker 4: them to, you know, to bring in somebody else. And hey,
Speaker 4: Jay Wright did it last year, right, and he had
Speaker 4: won two national championships, and we know our good friend
Speaker 4: up the road, Randy Ray got out a Weaver State
Speaker 4: a couple of years earlier than he had originally planned
Speaker 4: in terms of his career plans because he just thought,
Speaker 4: you know, he saw this, all this stuff coming and
Speaker 4: said I don't want to. I don't want to deal
Speaker 4: with this, and especially at a place like Weaver State,
Speaker 4: which is a mid major, which you know is gonna
Speaker 4: have trouble competing with nil kinds of stuff, you know,
Speaker 4: with with the biggest programs and and that kind of thing.
Speaker 4: So I'm surprised that that we don't see more of
Speaker 4: the coaches. I guess you know, when you're in it,
Speaker 4: you you like what you're doing, and it changes and
Speaker 4: you have to adapt and and Coach Witt said this,
Speaker 4: I know in one of.
Speaker 3: His recent press conferences that hey.
Speaker 4: Whether you like it or not, whether you agree with
Speaker 4: it or not, whether it works for you or not,
Speaker 4: you know, the bottom line is if you're in in
Speaker 4: the business, then you just have to adapt and figure
Speaker 4: out how to.
Speaker 3: Make it work to the best of your your ability.
Speaker 4: And so that's something that that you know, probably uh
Speaker 4: would come into play if you were to make some
Speaker 4: decision to uh, you know, to get out now, you know,
Speaker 4: just because all of that has changed, and it seems
Speaker 4: spence that it's evolving and changing all the time, like
Speaker 4: there's not a set path that everybody's going down. It's
Speaker 4: always diverging, it's always going left or right, and uh,
Speaker 4: different things are happening, and the you know, the transfer portal,
Speaker 4: and and I heard on the OC's show earlier they're
Speaker 4: talking about just the and with You with Bill Riley
Speaker 4: just in the last segment about the the the early
Speaker 4: signing day and the fact that it really doesn't carry
Speaker 4: as much impetus or weight now as it used to
Speaker 4: with fans in the media in general, because how much
Speaker 4: does it matter because the kid, the kid says, yeah,
Speaker 4: I'm signing with you. Tah, yeah, thanks a lot, okay, okay,
Speaker 4: and then a month from now he says, oh, I
Speaker 4: changed my mind. I'm going to USC instead, you know,
Speaker 4: like they can do that, and so it really doesn't matter.
Speaker 3: And and so.
Speaker 4: That's the hard part I would think the coaches are
Speaker 4: dealing with is is how do we get somebody, how
Speaker 4: do we then hold on to them? Because there's really
Speaker 4: not a contractual type situation at this time in college
Speaker 4: at college athletics where you can get a commitment and
Speaker 4: then have it be binding and have to have someone
Speaker 4: have to stay like you do in the professional ranks
Speaker 4: where you sign contracts.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and you know, we had a guest on yesterday
Speaker 2: named Matt Brown, who writes a college football newsletter called
Speaker 2: Extra Points, and Matt is a very bright guy who
Speaker 2: essentially creates content to help people understand the new business
Speaker 2: of college football. Like college football issues off the field,
Speaker 2: and right now, it's it's it's pretty crazy that essentially
Speaker 2: the nil contracts or whatever you want to call them,
Speaker 2: are created by legal teams from member institutions. There's no uniformity,
Speaker 2: there's no governing body. So University of I'm not saying
Speaker 2: they're doing this, but the University of Utah could have
Speaker 2: their legal team put together a contract for a player
Speaker 2: to sign and essentially say, hey, there's a stipulation in
Speaker 2: this contract that you can't transfer for a couple of
Speaker 2: years or whatever. And the player can, you know, give
Speaker 2: them a double bird and go down and sign a
Speaker 2: BYU because BYU doesn't have that stipulation. For me, Smitty,
Speaker 2: every issue that keeps popping up with collegiate athletics can
Speaker 2: be solved with one thing, and that is moving into
Speaker 2: the pro model, allowing the players to unionize collectively bargain
Speaker 2: with the powers that be.
Speaker 1: The problem is who are the powers that be? Right now?
Speaker 2: Like football wants to break away from the NCAA. But
Speaker 2: the problem is there's so much red tape between here
Speaker 2: and there in that finish line. University presidents aren't interested
Speaker 2: in having their athletes be employees because of all those implications.
Speaker 2: I still believe that's the one solution, though. Do you
Speaker 2: think people would have an issue at this point? Doesn't
Speaker 2: feel like they would have an issue because there's so
Speaker 2: many problems. But you think the people that consume collegiate
Speaker 2: athletics would have an issue if they just unapologetically leaned
Speaker 2: into the pro model.
Speaker 3: Well, I think that.
Speaker 4: I don't think the fans are going to have a
Speaker 4: problem with it as long as your your team gets
Speaker 4: the guy that they want. I mean, but you know
Speaker 4: what's interesting is I saw I think a couple weeks ago,
Speaker 4: uh one of the ESPN broadcasters had done a recent
Speaker 4: game with Williams and Amherst uh Division three football programs
Speaker 4: back in Massachusetts, the you and I are familiar with,
Speaker 4: and they don't have scholarships, they don't have all this
Speaker 4: kind of you know, n I L kind of stuff
Speaker 4: going on at that level. He said, he went, went,
Speaker 4: was part invited to the game, went and did the game.
Speaker 4: UH saw experience that on the small college level. And
Speaker 4: then afterwards the you know, the team from from Williams.
Speaker 4: When they win, they have a in that big ival regame.
Speaker 4: They have all the whole team marches up the hill
Speaker 4: that goes through campus, go through town, and and everybody
Speaker 4: rallies around them. And he said it was such a
Speaker 4: great old style collegiate experience. And you know, I wonder
Speaker 4: if if at some point, you know, fans will go, well, yeah,
Speaker 4: well I can go to Utah games, I can go
Speaker 4: to BYU games. But you know, these guys are just
Speaker 4: you know, they're they're getting paid like money, and they
Speaker 4: getting paid more than I work at my job, and
Speaker 4: their eighteen year old kids playing basketball or playing wide
Speaker 4: receiver on the football team, whatever it is. And I
Speaker 4: don't know how much interest I have in that, especially
Speaker 4: if they keep raising my ticket prices. I'll just go
Speaker 4: to watch the guys over at Westminster play play basketball, right,
Speaker 4: Or yeah, I'll go out to Soli Community College and
Speaker 4: watch the the the women's softball team, which is you know,
Speaker 4: highly competitive and all that kind of stuff, and and
Speaker 4: get my fixed that way. It's really it's really going
Speaker 4: to be interesting. I think, Uh, what's gonna happen. Is
Speaker 4: when as this continues, UH, with the nil stuff and
Speaker 4: the money that's involved with with a student athletes, it
Speaker 4: how it affects your ticket prices and how it affects
Speaker 4: you actually attending games, UH, is gonna be a big
Speaker 4: deal because you know, this year, trying to go to
Speaker 4: Utah football games is was was really really astounding to
Speaker 4: me the prices that you were looking at to try
Speaker 4: and go to a game. And that's what one game
Speaker 4: and and they have a lot of people who are
Speaker 4: paying season ticket prices and and seat licenses and and
Speaker 4: UH and that kind of stuff and Crimson Club dues
Speaker 4: and all those those kind of things. At some point,
Speaker 4: there's a saturation point where the fan is gonna say
Speaker 4: that's enough.
Speaker 3: I'm not I'm out.
Speaker 4: You know, unless your team runs a table, has a
Speaker 4: year like b YU had in football, right, Otherwise, if
Speaker 4: you're middling around, it's really going to be tough to
Speaker 4: hold on to the fan base that you have.
Speaker 2: All right, let's move over to some NBA stuff, And
Speaker 2: I have a big picture NBA topic before we get
Speaker 2: into some jazz stuff. And I'm really interested to get
Speaker 2: your take because the highest rated television NBA Finals nineteen
Speaker 2: ninety eight.
Speaker 1: You were there, I was there.
Speaker 2: Jazz Bowls at its peak, it was essentially thirty five
Speaker 2: point eight million viewers that Sunday night game, which is
Speaker 2: a twenty two point three rating, So thirty five point
Speaker 2: eight nine million viewers is a massive, massive number. The
Speaker 2: highest rated NBA Finals game from last year was Game
Speaker 2: four Celtics MAVs nine excuse me, eleven point four to
Speaker 2: three million viewers. That's the highest rated game and we're
Speaker 2: talking about nineteen million less. And to be fair, the
Speaker 2: highest rated NBA Finals, which was Jazz Bowls, Jordan's last dance,
Speaker 2: all that stuff. And during the mid to late nineties,
Speaker 2: pro basketball never passed the NFL, but it was throwing
Speaker 2: punches with it. There was a legitimate debate like what's
Speaker 2: the most popular sport in America?
Speaker 1: Is it basketball or football?
Speaker 2: And while football was the answer, then continues to be
Speaker 2: the answer.
Speaker 1: Now the gap is huge. The other night one point
Speaker 1: nine mil for.
Speaker 2: The TNT, that was the biggest number TNT pulled the
Speaker 2: other night one point nine mil. That's down seven percent
Speaker 2: year over year. Why do you think people are tuning
Speaker 2: out NBA basketball games? Why do you think the ratings
Speaker 2: are dipping so hard.
Speaker 3: Well.
Speaker 4: I think a couple of reasons spens right on the surface.
Speaker 4: One is that there are so many other options now
Speaker 4: and the generation now that's younger than we are being
Speaker 4: brought up with accessibility to anything they want, any time
Speaker 4: they want online and streaming services. So getting people to
Speaker 4: focus in on one thing, you know, like an NBA game,
Speaker 4: even if you're a basketball fan, you have so many
Speaker 4: other outlets and so many other options to do. Unless
Speaker 4: there's something that's really compelling at that moment to attract
Speaker 4: your attention, You've got all these other things that you
Speaker 4: can go and spend your time doing. Another reason I
Speaker 4: think personally is that I don't think the the NBA
Speaker 4: game is very attractive.
Speaker 3: Right now to to the average fan.
Speaker 4: I think it's all, yeah, I'm watching the game last
Speaker 4: night and I was counting the number of possessions where
Speaker 4: where both teams were running running a half court offense,
Speaker 4: and there wasn't one player anywhere near the lane. Everybody
Speaker 4: was out on the perimeter and it's all drawn kick
Speaker 4: and it's all you know, long range shooting, and people
Speaker 4: can't shoot very well. That's why the guys who can shoot,
Speaker 4: whether to Kevin Durant, you know, or Ray Allen his day,
Speaker 4: or guys like that Steph Curry, who are good shooters.
Speaker 4: That's why they stand out so much, because most guys
Speaker 4: can't shoot. But what happens Spence, they do shoot all right,
Speaker 4: because that's what the last night I saw several times.
Speaker 4: I was kind of keeping track of my head. How
Speaker 4: many times I thought that they took a three point
Speaker 4: shot what we used to phrase by default, meaning that
Speaker 4: I was there, I can take this shot, or I
Speaker 4: can work for a better shot. There's still nine seconds
Speaker 4: on the shot clock, but there's a defender near me.
Speaker 4: But I'm being lazy and it doesn't really matter. So
Speaker 4: here it goes and just jack it up. And nobody
Speaker 4: wants to watch that stuff because it looks lazy, in
Speaker 4: large part because it is lazy and the players don't
Speaker 4: work as hard. That's why the announcers last night, you know,
Speaker 4: kept harping on the fact that Oklahoma City was playing
Speaker 4: very well, especially on the defensive end, because there are
Speaker 4: hard nosed defensive team who sticks to their principles and
Speaker 4: shows it by the way that they play.
Speaker 3: They force you to do things.
Speaker 4: We talked about this and one of our earliest segments
Speaker 4: as if you're a good defensive team, you want to
Speaker 4: try and be the protagonists. In other words, you want
Speaker 4: to try and dictate to the offense what they're doing.
Speaker 4: That's what Oka Se did last night to the Jazz,
Speaker 4: which resulted in the Jazz having twenty nine turnovers, which
Speaker 4: resulted in forty five points off turnovers for okay See.
Speaker 4: The Jazz actually shot a better percentage than Oka See
Speaker 4: did for the game from the floor, but the fact
Speaker 4: was they couldn't hold onto the ball, and they couldn't
Speaker 4: hold onto the ball because of the pressure of Okac's defense,
Speaker 4: coupled with the fact that the Jazz are a sloppy
Speaker 4: at sometimes lazy ball handling team, and they called it
Speaker 4: they're sometimes.
Speaker 3: They're their own worst enemy.
Speaker 4: How many times last night did they drive into traffic
Speaker 4: and just stumble around and the ball came out the
Speaker 4: other way on a fast break for OKC. But I
Speaker 4: think to answer your question, the fans of finding other
Speaker 4: things to do, I think they don't really like the
Speaker 4: product as much of the NBA that they're seeing nowadays,
Speaker 4: with dollus five out and none in stuff and people
Speaker 4: just jacking up shots and a lot of one on
Speaker 4: one kinds of stuff, and I think they're finding other
Speaker 4: ways to spend their time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the Warriors Calves era, the Lebron versus Steph era,
Speaker 2: the ratings were pretty healthy, you know, they approached seventeen eighteen,
Speaker 2: nineteen mil nothing has touched ninety eight when Jordan was
Speaker 2: in his last year in John and Carl, and they
Speaker 2: were so compelling. And I hate to be the old
Speaker 2: guy that yells into the microphone, but there was just
Speaker 2: something about that era of basketball. And maybe I'll come
Speaker 2: out of from a selfish perspective with my background of
Speaker 2: the Jazz and the Knicks when both those teams were
Speaker 2: so fun and compelling in the nineties. I don't know
Speaker 2: if it's production value, I don't know if it's characters.
Speaker 2: I don't know if it's protagonists antagonists. There was something
Speaker 2: so compelling about nineties NBA basketball, and even me as
Speaker 2: a basketball junkie and somebody who will watch random games
Speaker 2: on a random Tuesday night, all tune in and it's
Speaker 2: like I want to take the dog for a walk,
Speaker 2: you know, like there's just something about it that is
Speaker 2: not as compelling as it was when I was growing
Speaker 2: up in the nineties.
Speaker 3: Well, and I.
Speaker 4: Think Spencer again to date ourselves, right, you're talking about
Speaker 4: games are almost thirty years ago, so you're talking about
Speaker 4: a different generation, and you're talking about all the things
Speaker 4: that happened between then and now relative to access of
Speaker 4: information through the Internet and laptops and your phone and
Speaker 4: all those kinds of things. It's interesting that nowadays, what
Speaker 4: does the NBA do? What have they done for a while?
Speaker 4: They they market the star players and they hope that
Speaker 4: you will tune in on the Tuesday night to see
Speaker 4: Kevin Durant, you know, go up against Lebron James. Oh
Speaker 4: oh they're both out tonight. Oh that's right. Oh they're
Speaker 4: not playing, you know, for whatever the reasons. And so
Speaker 4: you know, there goes your hook if you're the NBA.
Speaker 4: It's it's just that there are a lot of games there.
Speaker 4: There's a lot of content, and there's a lot of
Speaker 4: that's successible to the fan. If you're a basketball fan.
Speaker 4: How many college games were on last night? How many
Speaker 4: you are on tonight? You know that you think, well,
Speaker 4: maybe I'd rather watch that instead.
Speaker 3: It's just it's just a different era.
Speaker 4: And and look, another part of that equation for me
Speaker 4: when you're talking about peeling back the layers. Is that
Speaker 4: when you look at you look at the bench of
Speaker 4: any team in the NBA now, and they've got more
Speaker 4: guys in pullovers than they have in uniforms. Right, So
Speaker 4: they've got seventeen coaches and analytics guys and whoever, whoever.
Speaker 4: Those guys aren't doing whatever it is they're doing, and
Speaker 4: the end of product on the floor is not any better,
Speaker 4: And you could argue that it's worse, you know, And
Speaker 4: so you wonder what that equation is and how that
Speaker 4: fit factors into everything.
Speaker 2: One more thing, we'll catch a break. We'll do our
Speaker 2: second segment pretty jazz centric. Do you think this NBA
Speaker 2: cup idea? And I want to be clear, like I
Speaker 2: applaud the effort. I applaud and I respect trying to
Speaker 2: do something different, I really do. I think the NBA
Speaker 2: does that as well as any league. The NFL doesn't
Speaker 2: have to adjust anything right there top of the mountain.
Speaker 2: Major League Baseball might bring a golden bat to the equation.
Speaker 2: I'm not sure if you've heard about that, but the
Speaker 2: NBA really tries to be forward facing and progressive with
Speaker 2: some changes. If things aren't working, it just seems to
Speaker 2: the courts are weird, players are slipping. Do you think
Speaker 2: at some point this will reverberate and maybe prove the
Speaker 2: interest level during the regular season.
Speaker 3: Well, I think one of the.
Speaker 4: Things is that they're trying Spenser, and it's gonna take
Speaker 4: a little while for for people to look onto it.
Speaker 4: But it's the the whole Cup thing to try and
Speaker 4: get interest in. Uh in November and December, in the
Speaker 4: early months of the season, when when you're struggling to
Speaker 4: get get attention from from fans and and especially in
Speaker 4: the TV viewing and uh, and what what's part of
Speaker 4: the approach you're taking now is what you saw last night?
Speaker 4: And okay, see with an all blue floor and and
Speaker 4: and every team is trying to come up with the
Speaker 4: new thing that looks cleaner and sharper and hipper on
Speaker 4: TV and whatever. The product is still the same, you know,
Speaker 4: the the eight teams, Uh, they're they're gonna go into
Speaker 4: the quarterfinals next week of the Cup. You know, all
Speaker 4: four teams in the West are different than they were
Speaker 4: last year, so that those fans get pulled into it
Speaker 4: a little bit, you know, and and uh, and then
Speaker 4: they have the whole Vegas vibe with it. At the end,
Speaker 4: you know where they'll be playing the Semis and the
Speaker 4: final four, so to speak, in in Vegas in a
Speaker 4: few weeks.
Speaker 3: You know, will it hold? I I don't know.
Speaker 4: It's it's it's better than that than than just playing
Speaker 4: the games. I guess in early season when people aren't
Speaker 4: paying attention, I think it's the teams that make it.
Speaker 4: Now to these uh one and done games over the
Speaker 4: next couple of weeks, those fans will be interested. The
Speaker 4: other fans now, like the Jazz fans for example, couldn't
Speaker 4: care less what's going on with the NBA Cup because
Speaker 4: they're not in it, right, So they get a couple
Speaker 4: of games and and uh next week they're rescheduled and
Speaker 4: all that, and they and you move on.
Speaker 3: So, yeah, trying something new, is it? Is it hooking people?
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 4: I guess they'll they'll have TV ratings that will tell
Speaker 4: you whether it did or not. I don't know, you know,
Speaker 4: it's you know, for me, I understand what they're trying
Speaker 4: to do. It's I think again, it's it's it feels
Speaker 4: somewhat to level, like a gimmicky type thing. You know
Speaker 4: that we're trying and see if it if it hooks
Speaker 4: or not?
Speaker 1: All right?
Speaker 2: Coming up next with you a jazz centric segment with Smitty.
Speaker 2: I want to get his take on a conversation that
Speaker 2: we've had all week about the potentially most exciting prospect
Speaker 2: of the six young players, first and second year players.
Speaker 2: We'll see if he agrees with a take that was
Speaker 2: handed out on the show this week. Smitty Today brought
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Speaker 2: can beat the rush and from the factory at your
Speaker 2: front door in eight weeks or less at eight oh
Speaker 2: one eight five zero ninety one hundred. Richard Smith live
Speaker 2: in studio forty years with the Utah Jazz front office.
Speaker 2: He's gonna bring in Howard Beck today. We made a
Speaker 2: little bit of a pivot. Zach Harper is busy, one
Speaker 2: of my favorite riders, the hippiest NBA rid out there.
Speaker 1: Howard Beck from the Ringer.
Speaker 2: And then Ali Mata, who is a player for the
Speaker 2: Utah Hockey Club, just was called up to represent his
Speaker 2: homeland of Finland.
Speaker 1: He'll be playing some hockey for Finland.
Speaker 2: So interviewed Dolli before Really nice kids, stay tuned hockey fans.
Speaker 2: That comes your way in about an hour from right now. Oh, smitty,
Speaker 2: smitty smitty. As we've talked about before, and as I
Speaker 2: readily admit, we are spoiled basketball fans in this market,
Speaker 2: and part of it is your fault. And the front
Speaker 2: office you worked for always seem to put a very
Speaker 2: good product on the.
Speaker 1: Floor, with very very few exceptions.
Speaker 2: Now, there were some exceptions, but Scott Lane and Kevin
Speaker 2: O'Connor Dennis Lindsay found their way out of what i'll say,
Speaker 2: poor to mediocre basketball very quickly. Oh, by the way,
Speaker 2: before we do, I can't believe I buried the lead.
Speaker 2: Paul millsap retired. Yes, now, I will say I thought
Speaker 2: he retired two years ago. But when I and I
Speaker 2: love Paul, who doesn't. But you had a front row
Speaker 2: seat too, And then we'll get back to the topic
Speaker 2: that I was just unpacking. But I wanted to ask
Speaker 2: you this kind of right off the top. I forgot
Speaker 2: looking at my notes. Paul caught Jerry's eye as a rookie,
Speaker 2: which is hard to do, asked Darren Williams. And you know,
Speaker 2: we were kind of having some fun topically, like where
Speaker 2: does he exist on the all time great jazz player
Speaker 2: list if you include his entire career, probably top fifteen,
Speaker 2: top sixteen ish. He actually if you look at the list,
Speaker 2: you know, but that's a different topic. What was that
Speaker 2: like to watch Paul kind of evolve and how would
Speaker 2: you characterize what he meant to some of those really
Speaker 2: really good jazz teams.
Speaker 4: Well, you know, it was interesting with Paul when we
Speaker 4: when the Jazz drafted him, he was we got him
Speaker 4: in the middle of the I think it's the number
Speaker 4: forty seven pick, in the middle of the second round.
Speaker 4: And he came in that summer league, he did okay,
Speaker 4: you know what was anything special, came into training camp,
Speaker 4: he was you know, really uh, you know, in all
Speaker 4: honesty in terms of our group, was just another guy there.
Speaker 4: You know, is he gonna is he gonna make the cut?
Speaker 4: Is he not gonna make the cut? And we're gonna
Speaker 4: have him on the team, and we not, you know,
Speaker 4: And it was kind of a debate, like and it
Speaker 4: was really kind of you know, a lot of shrugging
Speaker 4: shoulders like whatever, you know, you want him, you don't
Speaker 4: want him, whatever. And then and then I remember and
Speaker 4: in the last meeting, we had to make a decision
Speaker 4: yes or no to have him on the team that
Speaker 4: had that rookie year. And and it was coach Sloan
Speaker 4: who just said, I kind of like him, and uh,
Speaker 4: we said, what do you like, coach, And you go, well,
Speaker 4: you know, he seems to work hard, and he kind of, uh,
Speaker 4: he kind of does this a little bit, and you know,
Speaker 4: does that. And then he said no for the ball
Speaker 4: he said, but you know, probably maybe his best attribute
Speaker 4: at the moment is, uh, I don't even know what
Speaker 4: his voice sounds like, because because I heard him say
Speaker 4: one thing, and and and and uh so, so Jerry
Speaker 4: goes and only the way Jerry could he goes. So
Speaker 4: so that's pretty good, you know. And so he was saying,
Speaker 4: you know, well, let's keep him because we don't have
Speaker 4: to listen to him complain or anything, you know. Okay, yeah,
Speaker 4: all right, whatever you want to do. And then you know,
Speaker 4: and Paul was was a good worker. Uh but he
Speaker 4: but he was a very quiet guy. And at that time,
Speaker 4: of course, he came in and he's behind Carlos Boozer,
Speaker 4: who was an All Star level player, Olympic level player
Speaker 4: for US, and and he had to wait his time.
Speaker 4: But he just worked hard and and and developed uh
Speaker 4: you know, enough of an outside game, uh that that
Speaker 4: could compliment his mid post game and his ability to rebound.
Speaker 4: And that was the thing that struck us when we,
Speaker 4: uh when when the just drafted him, was that he
Speaker 4: had led the nd n C A A in rebounding
Speaker 4: all three years that he was at Louisiana Tech. And
Speaker 4: that's one of the skills usually Spence. You look at
Speaker 4: UH on prospective players. That's the one area where typically
Speaker 4: you can make a correlation that that's going to translate
Speaker 4: to the NBA level without without much of an interruption.
Speaker 4: Is your ability to go get the basketball, UH, you know,
Speaker 4: off the rim and UH and Paul made himself into
Speaker 4: a better player. He was a fourt time All start
Speaker 4: when he was in Atlanta. You know, in Atlanta had
Speaker 4: some very good teams when he was there. And UH
Speaker 4: was just a really good guy to have on your team.
Speaker 4: Because even even when he when he got quote good
Speaker 4: and he and he was a regular rotation guy and
Speaker 4: then he was a starter, and then he went to
Speaker 4: Atlanta and became an all star level guy. You know,
Speaker 4: he was still the same approach every day, just you know,
Speaker 4: the old Jerry Sloan phrased a lunch bucket guy just
Speaker 4: bring his lunch pail and and go to work and
Speaker 4: not say much. And you know, I know he had
Speaker 4: stopped playing a couple of years ago, and I think
Speaker 4: it came out today probably because the way the NBA works,
Speaker 4: you can stop playing, but you can not officially retire
Speaker 4: like forever. Yeah, you know, you have to put in
Speaker 4: if you want the retirement benefits and all the stuff
Speaker 4: that comes with retirement and pensions.
Speaker 3: And all that.
Speaker 4: At some point you have to submit the proper paperwork
Speaker 4: to the NBA. I'm guessing that's why this this came out,
Speaker 4: you know, the last few days. It's probably because they
Speaker 4: probably decided to put his paperwork in after the last
Speaker 4: couple of years of maybe sitting out the sidelines waiting
Speaker 4: to see if you got a last minute call from
Speaker 4: somebody in a playoff type run.
Speaker 2: Yeah, more of a role player for you guys early on,
Speaker 2: and then after Booze bounced and Darren was traded. He
Speaker 2: was kind of a main cog with those Al Jefferson years,
Speaker 2: you know, seventeen points eight boards in twenty ten, played
Speaker 2: all eighty two three of first four years for you guys,
Speaker 2: but didn't start mini games up until kind of the
Speaker 2: second iteration.
Speaker 1: But he reinvented himself after he left here.
Speaker 2: Were you surprised to watch him shoot like thirty eight
Speaker 2: percent from three and kind of expand his horizons after
Speaker 2: he left the Jazz.
Speaker 4: Yes, yeah, I mean, but that's you know, to his credit.
Speaker 4: You know, that was something that that the coaches talked
Speaker 4: to him. About and about being able to get be
Speaker 4: a little more versatile with his offense and be able
Speaker 4: to step out.
Speaker 3: And he was willing to do it.
Speaker 4: And he had enough of a touch, you know, shooting
Speaker 4: wise in the free throw line that he could extend
Speaker 4: it out a little bit. And again, it wasn't a
Speaker 4: high volume, but it was you know, him taking smart shots.
Speaker 4: And most of the time he was a kind of
Speaker 4: player who would who would just go with the flow
Speaker 4: of what was happening in the game. In otherwids, he
Speaker 4: didn't force shots. So most of those kind of three
Speaker 4: point shots that he would get would be open shots
Speaker 4: on the weak side or the defense would sink in
Speaker 4: that'd swing it. He got it, had a lot of space,
Speaker 4: you know, got into a nice little easy rhythm, and
Speaker 4: was able to knock down enough that that made you know,
Speaker 4: defenders honest against him. And then that's set up his
Speaker 4: ability to go a couple of dribbles into the mid
Speaker 4: lane and get something there, and you know, but he
Speaker 4: was willing to do that, and that's the kind of
Speaker 4: guy he was. He was, you know, a little bit
Speaker 4: like Carl uh in that he was always willing to
Speaker 4: look at adding something to his game. And trying to
Speaker 4: diversify it that would make him, you know, keep him
Speaker 4: on the floor more and and get him more opportunities.
Speaker 2: So, look, fifty years of jazz hoops has bread a
Speaker 2: lot of simple, simply very loyal jazz fans. Right Like
Speaker 2: we were talking about this through the Utah Hockey Club prism,
Speaker 2: the novelty appears to have worn off, and the past
Speaker 2: couple of home games there's it's not as full as
Speaker 2: it was opening night when I was there first couple
Speaker 2: of games. And some of it's gonna pend depend on opponent,
Speaker 2: because we do have hockey fans who live here. But
Speaker 2: if you go to Utah Hockey Club games, and if
Speaker 2: they're playing like the Avalanche, you see out of Avalanche jerseys.
Speaker 2: So for the Utah Hockey Club to consistently draw people
Speaker 2: to sell out the building, they're gonna have to be
Speaker 2: really good, really quickly, like the Vegas Golden Knights were,
Speaker 2: or it's just going to take a number of years
Speaker 2: like I did with the jazz, very lean years early
Speaker 2: saulve Palace, shout out jazz band, all the things. But
Speaker 2: fifty years of jazz basketball has b read a lot
Speaker 2: of loyal jazz fans, and there have been so many
Speaker 2: really really good teams and exciting teams, never over the
Speaker 2: hump to win a championship. And this is a tough ask,
Speaker 2: even for loyal Jazz fans. This is as bad of
Speaker 2: a team as we've ever had here, and maybe the
Speaker 2: worst team that we've ever had here. So what do
Speaker 2: you make of And look, the problem is, and you
Speaker 2: and I both know this. Of course this is by design,
Speaker 2: but we can't turn on a mic and say, hey,
Speaker 2: they're trying to lose.
Speaker 1: We'll talk to you tomorrow. We have to kind of
Speaker 1: unpack it a little bit.
Speaker 2: It is a tough ask of a community to show
Speaker 2: up night in and night out and road games, turn
Speaker 2: on your television.
Speaker 1: Yes we're a cold weather city.
Speaker 2: You want something to do at night, you turn out
Speaker 2: a Jazz game, go to Jazka And I get all that,
Speaker 2: but there has to be some sort of pushback from
Speaker 2: a lot of fans who are watching this product night
Speaker 2: in and night out and say, what are we doing here?
Speaker 1: You know what I mean?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 4: Sure, well I think what's what's happened? I think the
Speaker 4: first couple of years here of the of the Ryan
Speaker 4: Smith and his group ownership group. Uh, taking control of
Speaker 4: the team from the Miller family. Uh. They've made a
Speaker 4: lot of changes obviously, if they've made changes all the
Speaker 4: way across the board, you know, with the team itself,
Speaker 4: with the coaching staff, the front office, the building, the uniforms.
Speaker 4: I mean, they've changed everything from A to Z that
Speaker 4: they can think of, trying to get it younger, trying
Speaker 4: to get it hipper, trying to get it more mod
Speaker 4: you know, whatever, whatever the approach, marketing approach is. And
Speaker 4: I think some of that, you know, fans have bought
Speaker 4: into oh okay, yeah, okay, we're trying to get Oh
Speaker 4: that's that's kind of change out.
Speaker 3: It's kind of new okay and.
Speaker 4: And uh and and but now they're they're right near
Speaker 4: that that point I believe where during the third year
Speaker 4: of doing this and you know, the team is not
Speaker 4: look like.
Speaker 3: It's getting any better, they've any worse.
Speaker 4: They've invested a lot while they've invested a lot in
Speaker 4: in young guys, and that's that's the route they've chosen
Speaker 4: to go for whatever their their rationale is. They believe
Speaker 4: they can build that up. They've got to hit on
Speaker 4: the right draft picks, you know, the you know, we
Speaker 4: we just played a team last night, and okay, see,
Speaker 4: they're showing how you can do it if you hit
Speaker 4: the right guys, uh and add guys in, and how
Speaker 4: you can rebuild a team that they did that when
Speaker 4: they had the the Paul George fiasco and and had.
Speaker 3: To move on from that and kind of bottom down.
Speaker 4: Then you see what the Houston Rockets have done once
Speaker 4: they moved on from James Harden and Westbrook and Chris
Speaker 4: Paul and now they've they've bottomed out and now they've
Speaker 4: they've got a nice competitive team, young guys, and they
Speaker 4: and they've had several good draft picks. And that's what
Speaker 4: the Jazz are trying to do. You know, the the
Speaker 4: you know, uh, several of the top five, six, seven
Speaker 4: teams in the NBA right now if you include okay, see,
Speaker 4: if you include Houston as a young team, if you
Speaker 4: include the Orlando Magic, all these teams were bottom feeders
Speaker 4: spens three, four or five years ago, and they've all
Speaker 4: built up by drafting smartly and and and and putting
Speaker 4: together a roster that makes sense. The Jazz are trying
Speaker 4: to do that. They've got a bunch of draft picks
Speaker 4: they're trying to play. There are a bunch of guys
Speaker 4: who who in my opinion, the way I look at
Speaker 4: them when they're playing, I think, well, these guys, they're
Speaker 4: supposed to be doing this at the G League. They're
Speaker 4: supposed to be throwing the ball up in the third
Speaker 4: row in a G League game, not in an NBA game.
Speaker 4: But they're they're force feeding them, They're they're making them
Speaker 4: play against NBA guys.
Speaker 3: They they think that.
Speaker 4: That's gonna that's gonna get them, you know, hardened and
Speaker 4: and develop quicker. In all of that, that remains to
Speaker 4: be seen. The guys they have I don't think again
Speaker 4: in my opinion, that it's a good mix of guys.
Speaker 4: I don't like the just how they play off each
Speaker 4: other or don't play off each other. The defensive end
Speaker 4: is very worrisome to me because the defensive they just
Speaker 4: have not gotten any better from last year to this year. Statistically,
Speaker 4: they're in the same they're bottom five in all these
Speaker 4: different categories. And you watch them last night. They play defense.
Speaker 4: The defense is very lazy. And I'll give you two
Speaker 4: examples from last night that really struck out of me.
Speaker 4: The last play of the first half, they come down Okay,
Speaker 4: see as the ball. They're walking it up the floor
Speaker 4: to get the last shot with like fifteen seconds left.
Speaker 4: In the first half. The Jazz don't switch, they don't
Speaker 4: match up properly. They've got Walker Kessler guarding Shay Gilgess
Speaker 4: Alexander for the last player of the first half, and
Speaker 4: and everybody's just standing around and they're they're leaving Walker
Speaker 4: Kesseler out on an island and there's no way he
Speaker 4: can guard that guy who's an MVP level player and
Speaker 4: wing player, and he just rides up and shoots right
Speaker 4: over him and he drows up three at the end.
Speaker 4: Then in the second half, they're in a in a
Speaker 4: in a secondary transition and and they're coming back over
Speaker 4: half court and Kessel's walking looking for someone his guy
Speaker 4: to guard, and and uh can't they George points to
Speaker 4: uh Alexander and and just says, you know, like to Walker, hey,
Speaker 4: you get you get him? And and I go and
Speaker 4: I'm watching the game. I'm going you get him. You're
Speaker 4: telling you your seven foot center to go guard the
Speaker 4: m v P wing player. I said, when you have
Speaker 4: time to go get you know? No, no, why is that?
Speaker 4: My again? My opinion is that they're just lazy, and
Speaker 4: so hey, you get him. I don't want to have
Speaker 4: to run another ten feet and go guard the guy
Speaker 4: I'm supposed to guarding. So you get them and the
Speaker 4: same thing. And Alexander played around with them. Boom boom
Speaker 4: between the legs, step in the laying, little step back
Speaker 4: jumper from the free throw line.
Speaker 3: You know how you doing?
Speaker 4: That's you know, they're just they look like they're a
Speaker 4: lazy defensive team. It doesn't look like that they're being
Speaker 4: called out on it. I'm sure they work on it
Speaker 4: in practice. I'm sure they drill on it. I'm sure
Speaker 4: they talk about it, I'm sure they watch film about it.
Speaker 4: But in the game, they're making the same mistakes, and
Speaker 4: they're making the same the same errors in judgment. They
Speaker 4: don't approach it with any kind of urgency, and that's
Speaker 4: why you get twenty nine turnovers in the game. I'lbet
Speaker 4: again against a very good defensive team who caused some
Speaker 4: of those. But that's because you're you're careless, you're lazy.
Speaker 4: You don't really have play with that that fortitude that
Speaker 4: you need to be able to secure the ball, and
Speaker 4: that leads to forty five point soft turnovers for the
Speaker 4: other team, you know. And and while that's egregious and
Speaker 4: that's that's a big example, and maybe you know, but
Speaker 4: it's not, unfortunately an outlier. That is the type of
Speaker 4: thing that's been happening all along. And that's why the
Speaker 4: Jazz are sitting, you know, with the third worst record
Speaker 4: in the league at four and seventeen, and with a
Speaker 4: lot of road games coming up here in December.
Speaker 2: So Cody Williams, who's the highest pick they made this
Speaker 2: last draft, and number ten out of Colorado, get some
Speaker 2: time early on.
Speaker 1: It didn't look great.
Speaker 2: It looked well, I'll be honest, it looked bad. He
Speaker 2: badly needs to get stronger. He's only nineteen years old.
Speaker 2: He will fill out, he will put on weight. Time
Speaker 2: will tell what he will be. I'm not ready to
Speaker 2: annoint or dismiss at all. Taylor goes down will Elects
Speaker 2: to start Cody, and you're watching, You're like, dude, this
Speaker 2: is not it's not working. So they send him down
Speaker 2: to the G League to develop. Now, that's what the
Speaker 2: G league is for, So I get it. And to
Speaker 2: your point, all of these guys, maybe outside of marketing
Speaker 2: and the Vets could utilize some G League minutes. We'll
Speaker 2: get to Walker in a minute, who, in fairness has
Speaker 2: been really, really good. I do want to talk Walker Kessler,
Speaker 2: But don't you want your top ten pick to show
Speaker 2: some signs of being ready to at least show that
Speaker 2: these shows that he at least belongs. I mean, there
Speaker 2: there was nothing from Cody at all. And what do
Speaker 2: you make of the fact that the highest pick they
Speaker 2: made in the draft last year is now cutting his
Speaker 2: teeth in the G league.
Speaker 4: Well, that's again, that's that's what the game plan that
Speaker 4: they have for for for these guys that you know,
Speaker 4: they're bringing him in and they're throwing them to the
Speaker 4: wolves and they're saying, hey, go figure it out. And uh,
Speaker 4: you know, with the Williams kid, I don't know. I
Speaker 4: don't know what he's going to end up being. Maybe
Speaker 4: he's going to be, you know, a top level player.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 4: You know that obviously that that stuff remains to be seen.
Speaker 4: For me, when I saw him in Colorado last year
Speaker 4: is one year there in college and what I've seen
Speaker 4: in a handful of games he's played in in the
Speaker 4: Summer League, both in Salt Lake and Vegas and then
Speaker 4: here early part of the NBA season, he doesn't for me,
Speaker 4: doesn't play with any any sense of urgency, doesn't play
Speaker 4: with any sense of pop or or toughness. He's yeah,
Speaker 4: he's long, he's rangey. Yeah, okay, so what you know,
Speaker 4: you have to you have to figure out how you
Speaker 4: use utilize that to your advantage. He had a couple
Speaker 4: of plays, and by a couple, I mean two or
Speaker 4: three or four plays in the Summer League action where
Speaker 4: you said, whoa, now that's good. Now that's you know, okay,
Speaker 4: took it off the bounds, went by two guys, went
Speaker 4: up over a third guy, boom and banged it on
Speaker 4: his head. And okay, that's that's what you want to
Speaker 4: see out of those guys. But he doesn't has not
Speaker 4: shown that, And so that is going to be interesting
Speaker 4: as you pick it on one guy Spence for a moment,
Speaker 4: because that is the part of a guy's game that
Speaker 4: is very hard to develop, and that is that aggressiveness,
Speaker 4: the tough minded mindset that by the way, his brother has.
Speaker 4: Now maybe his brother has all of us, I don't know,
Speaker 4: and uh, and that's the way he plays.
Speaker 3: Maybe the Jazz.
Speaker 4: Took him thinking, oh, we can develop him to be
Speaker 4: some some form of his brother, who's we're talking about
Speaker 4: Jalen Williams who plays for OKAC, who's developed quickly in
Speaker 4: the NBA as a very good main guy on a team,
Speaker 4: on a winning team, who makes winning plays. But you
Speaker 4: haven't seen that from Cody Williams. Kante George has played
Speaker 4: somewhat okay in spurts for the Jazz. Again, for me,
Speaker 4: it seems like they're trying to put a round peg
Speaker 4: in a square hole with him. I don't think he's
Speaker 4: a point guard. They seem like they're trying to make
Speaker 4: him one, or they believe he can be one. I
Speaker 4: think he can be more more of a small scoring
Speaker 4: two ala Jordan Clarkson, and then you can cheat with
Speaker 4: them in games and little spurts by putting him at
Speaker 4: one when you have other matchups that you want to
Speaker 4: take advantage of. But having a steady diet of him
Speaker 4: or a steady diet of like the other young kid.
Speaker 4: They've got a collier who also had four turnovers last
Speaker 4: night in limited minutes. I mean, this is this is
Speaker 4: what they've set up to do, and they're willing to
Speaker 4: live with the pain of it. The interesting thing is
Speaker 4: going to be how they can keep selling that to
Speaker 4: the fans to say, hey, hey, give us time, give
Speaker 4: us time, give us time. You know you're gonna see
Speaker 4: some improvement, because at some point the clock is ticking
Speaker 4: and you have to see some improvement. You're not asking
Speaker 4: them to go from a thirty win team to a
Speaker 4: fifty six win team overnight, but you have to see
Speaker 4: some improvement in the way they play. And so far
Speaker 4: through this experiment, it's it's very hard to hang your
Speaker 4: hat on anything that you can say, yeah, there's the
Speaker 4: incremental improvements we're looking for.
Speaker 2: Well, and there's also a fine line between young players
Speaker 2: learning tough lessons and learning bad habits and suddenly this
Speaker 2: is who you are because I can remember, you know,
Speaker 2: when Kevin O'Connor, when Booze left for Chicago trade exception
Speaker 2: Minnesota bringing Al Jefferson and that's when Paul Millsap went
Speaker 2: from a bench player to a starter. And look, that
Speaker 2: team was never going to win the trophy, but it
Speaker 2: was competitive and it was a playoff team, and I
Speaker 2: can remember I was on air at that time talking
Speaker 2: about well, yeah, like, there's nothing wrong with making the playoffs.
Speaker 2: There's nothing wrong with maximizing your good, Yes, is there
Speaker 2: a little bit of a dynamic when you're going to
Speaker 2: be in the middle. Yeah, and at some point you
Speaker 2: probably do have to break it down in the name
Speaker 2: of building it back up, like Dennis did. But what's
Speaker 2: the danger of seven players under the age of twenty three,
Speaker 2: who at this point really only know pro basketball is
Speaker 2: getting their heads kicked in every night? Like, what's the
Speaker 2: danger in taking this approach?
Speaker 4: Well, the one of the dangers is that you get
Speaker 4: used to it, and there is there's not a lot
Speaker 4: of accountability for what the end result is. In other words,
Speaker 4: you know, I make mistakes, I throw the ball out
Speaker 4: of bounds, I have five turnovers, I have three of them,
Speaker 4: or or what we would term unforced turnovers. They were
Speaker 4: just bad decisions. And then the next day you go
Speaker 4: back out and you start doing it again, and there's
Speaker 4: no account of there's no you know, accountability that says
Speaker 4: your you know, your your your limits, your minutes are
Speaker 4: gonna be limited, or you're not going to get as
Speaker 4: many opportunities, or you're gonna have to go to the
Speaker 4: G League, or you know, whatever whatever it is, and
Speaker 4: so those things. At some point, you have a certain
Speaker 4: level of professional pride that has to come into play
Speaker 4: where where you don't accept that from yourself as a player,
Speaker 4: and you determined for yourself, I've got to get better,
Speaker 4: I've got to figure this out. Or the other part
Speaker 4: of it, Spence, is that maybe everyone finds out at
Speaker 4: some point, oh maybe he's not good enough to do this,
Speaker 4: and maybe we have to look at Plan B or
Speaker 4: Plan C or whatever it's going to be because we
Speaker 4: didn't make the right decision in this regard, if that's
Speaker 4: if that's what it comes to, but making the same
Speaker 4: mistake over and over again and not correcting it and
Speaker 4: not being held accountable for it in some regard, it's
Speaker 4: just it's tough to watch. It's tough to understand how
Speaker 4: a team gets in these positions. But look, SPSSI, the
Speaker 4: Jazz aren't the only team. There are a lot of
Speaker 4: teams that deal with this from year to year, and
Speaker 4: a lot of teams that keep wallowing around. The interesting
Speaker 4: thing is going to be how long they stick with
Speaker 4: their game plan and do they really believe in what
Speaker 4: they've set up to do to be able to stick
Speaker 4: with it and work through it. Because these are as
Speaker 4: we've mentioned before, these are the low times for the
Speaker 4: Jazz and these are the growing pains, and you know,
Speaker 4: can it get worse?
Speaker 3: I don't know. Maybe maybe it can get worse.
Speaker 4: You know, obviously it certainly can get better, and it
Speaker 4: needs to get better. But how how long that takes
Speaker 4: to happen and how you go about doing it is
Speaker 4: going to be interesting. The last night, the second quarter,
Speaker 4: the Jazz come out of the of their their their
Speaker 4: time out and their their second uh. Their starting line
Speaker 4: up for the beginning of the second quarter, mckaylik U Banks, Sensible,
Speaker 4: juw Zang Collier, stop it. That's that's the Star starting
Speaker 4: five in the NBA game last night. That's supposed to
Speaker 4: be the starting five for the Stars G League team
Speaker 4: on Saturday night. I mean, come on, are you kidding me?
Speaker 4: And then I didn't understand this part Spence, and again,
Speaker 4: maybe they were working on something. Sometimes coaches do this
Speaker 4: near the end of games that are out of hand.
Speaker 4: I understand if that was the mindset. I think they
Speaker 4: were playing a zone for a couple a couple of possessions.
Speaker 4: Maybe that's what they were kind of live working. But
Speaker 4: five minutes left in the game, they're down twenty seven,
Speaker 4: and they put in their starting five. They put in
Speaker 4: you know, Collins Kessler Market in Sexton, George. They're in
Speaker 4: there with five minutes to go on the court down
Speaker 4: twenty seven. You know, if you're running a developmental thing,
Speaker 4: I don't know. Maybe they were, they were trying to
Speaker 4: do the thing with the zone defense or trying to
Speaker 4: see how these I don't know.
Speaker 3: But that's all part of it. But it's hard.
Speaker 4: It's hard to explain to fans who are paying money
Speaker 4: that you know, we're just we're just practicing with this
Speaker 4: stuff now and we're asking you to pay full price,
Speaker 4: you know, to uh to watch that live. That's uh
Speaker 4: that that's a tough sell that they've gotten away with
Speaker 4: so far, and it's gonna be interesting to see how
Speaker 4: long it goes on for before there's some you know,
Speaker 4: kind of pushback from fans to saying, hey, when when
Speaker 4: are we getting better? When when is this gonna happen?
Speaker 4: You know, what do you got for me? You know,
Speaker 4: because I'm investing my time and money in you, but
Speaker 4: I don't I don't see what I'm getting out of it.
Speaker 3: You know, that's gonna be the interesting part.
Speaker 4: If you're a jazz fan and and if you're at
Speaker 4: the jazz, uh front office and the ownership group.
Speaker 2: Will end on a positive note because there's not a
Speaker 2: lot of positive things to talk about with this current
Speaker 2: iteration of the Jazz. But I will say Walker has
Speaker 2: been very good in the fifteen games he's played. He's
Speaker 2: at eleven points, eleven boards, nearly three block shots, his
Speaker 2: rim protection as elite. The opponent field goal percentage against
Speaker 2: him at the rim is not good, which is good
Speaker 2: for the Jazz. I want to see that free throw
Speaker 2: percentage job fifty eight percent from the free throw line,
Speaker 2: but seventy four percent from the floor. And just looking
Speaker 2: at him watching him play, he looks bigger, he looks stronger,
Speaker 2: and I think I would say he's been the main
Speaker 2: bright spot for me through fifteen games. I mean, one
Speaker 2: of the debates we keep having is who's going to
Speaker 2: be here when the Jazz are actually legitimately good and
Speaker 2: a serious team, serious about winning. Walker seems to have
Speaker 2: maybe played himself into that conversation throughout the first portion
Speaker 2: of the season.
Speaker 1: What have you seen from Walker? Kestler and I.
Speaker 3: Agree with you.
Speaker 4: And this is his third year, right, so at the
Speaker 4: beginning of his third year, he looks like he's developing
Speaker 4: into a comfort level where he understands what he can
Speaker 4: do and what they want him to do and not
Speaker 4: trying to do too much. Right, you know, he's averaging
Speaker 4: twenty nine minutes a game, averaging eleven points, ten rebounds,
Speaker 4: almost three blocks. If you were to say, hey, we
Speaker 4: would take that, we would take that for the next seven, eight,
Speaker 4: ten years and put that in our lineup and have
Speaker 4: our big man do that. Okay, we'll lock that in. Okay,
Speaker 4: Now we lock in. We've locked marketing in in Okay
Speaker 4: on a long term deal. So now we got two
Speaker 4: of those guys that we like that we're comfortable that
Speaker 4: they're they're gonna be those guys and those positions.
Speaker 3: Now we're trying to.
Speaker 4: Find out, you know, what the other ones are and
Speaker 4: where they're coming from.
Speaker 3: But I like what he's done.
Speaker 4: I like the fact that the game looks like it's
Speaker 4: slowed down a little bit for him, that he feels
Speaker 4: comfortable being on the spots that he's in and he's delivering,
Speaker 4: and he seems to me just to be playing a
Speaker 4: little more comfortably out there, which is what you want
Speaker 4: to see. And that's all part of the developmental process.
Speaker 4: What we saw on Rudy when Rudy made his incremental
Speaker 4: progression until it was fourth the year, Well you know
Speaker 4: when he when he started busting out, and maybe that's
Speaker 4: what's what's happening with Kessler.
Speaker 2: It's beeny great to see you, my friend. Did you
Speaker 2: have a favorite ride in Disneyland?
Speaker 3: Was? Hey, we went on. We went on It's a
Speaker 3: small world.
Speaker 1: That can't be your favorites.
Speaker 3: And we broke the ride.
Speaker 4: We were sitting there for fifteen minutes because they couldn't figure,
Speaker 4: and we're going, wait, manute. All these other rides are
Speaker 4: spinning and jumping and throwing you in the air and
Speaker 4: doing all this stuff. And we're on the slowest ride
Speaker 4: that you can be on, and the ride brakes and
Speaker 4: we're in limbo for for fifteen minutes. But you know, look,
Speaker 4: I spend my days of going through those things where
Speaker 4: they're throwing you around and jumping up and down and
Speaker 4: you're swinging you around or whatever. I used to enjoy those,
Speaker 4: but I'm like the fair weather fan going to the
Speaker 4: game right now.
Speaker 3: I can't do those anymore.
Speaker 4: I did them, but I realized, okay, I that's exactly right.
Speaker 2: Yes, it's as small as as a season Disney vet Smitty.
Speaker 1: It's a small world.
Speaker 2: Is the ride you take when you need a nap
Speaker 2: between all the other one.
Speaker 3: Thank you very much, Yes, there we go.
Speaker 1: Hey, great to see you, okay, I been great. Richard
Speaker 1: Smith forty years with the Jazz Front off