SLC Dunk

Dear Jazz fans,

I get the feeling there is frustration building in you. Every time you see the Jazz get blown out while making no effort to give the young guys playing time—well it just gets stronger and stronger.

I believe this is simply because you don't understand our team goals. It's my fault, of course. I've been less than forthcoming and honest in this way, with all my "we're not rebuilding, we're contending" and "can't establish a losing atmosphere" nonsense.

So it's time to be honest, here are our real goals for this Utah Jazz team.

1. Make Big Al the league's only 20-20-40 guy. That's twenty points per game off twenty shots and forty minutes. This is our number 1 goal. Everything else is secondary. But we're good at thinking outside the box —we've found innovative ways to accomplish the rest of the goals and keeping the real vision in mind.
2. Destroy Gordon Hayward's confidence. There's this beautiful message when we kept Raja in the lineup benched Favors (who had played well, but didn't get the ball enough or minutes to show what he can do). It showed that the kids will be benched for the slightest perceived mistakes, but vets will never be pulled and the kids have no power to earn their playing time back. So now Hayward has FINALLY had an off-night, and Josh Howard was delightfully mediocre. Just a couple more of these games, and we can pull Hayward from the starting lineup for Howard and crush his spirit forever. It will be a beautiful thing to see. Kind of like watching a puppy die.
3. Help Alec Burks develop bad habits. He's a natural scorer. By keeping him on the bench, for no reason at all, except the final two minutes of garbage time we do a couple of magical things: 1) make him hate his coaches, which will hopefully make him uncoachable, and 2) make him so desperate to score that he abandons all thought of teammates, game plane, etc. when he finally gets in and just goes to get his own stats. We truly believe we can make him the next Ricky Buckets.
4. Kill Derrick Favors' defensive instincts. The more we yank him for a single foul, the more passive he'll become on the defensive end until he loses all natural inclination to stop guys. We haven't had a starting post-man play defense in almost ten years, and it sure as hell isn't going to happen now—not on my watch.
5. Keep Enes Kanter Raw. His main problem is that he hasn't played in two years. Our solution is to keep not playing him as much as possible. Sure we'll give hime 10 minutes per game, but that will help us make an extremely talented young guy think he's nothing better than the KOOF.
6. Help Josh Howard earn a big contract next year. Sure he's not in our long-term plans, but by giving him big minutes for no reason we get a big tax deduction via our secret subsidiary charity organization—the Earn Josh Howard a Big 2012-13 Paycheck Foundation. All our ticket sales and Josh Howard jersey sells are now 100% tax deductible. How does this not help everyone?
7. Keep Jeremy Evans out of sight. He's a fan favorite. He's fun to watch play. He may be able to develop into a decent rotation player, a good 7th or 8th man who hustles and makes big plays from off the bench. But damn it, not if I have anything to say about it.
8. Make sure we never know if CJ could become a consistent player. It's simple: if he could have consistent minutes and a consistent role, we'd figure him out. But who doesn't love a good mystery?
9. Average fewer assists as a team than Deron Williams does by himself. Forget the "lead the league in assists" thing. That was Sloan's way. We want a different one. That's why we start Devin Harris. Unfortunately Gordon Hayward is doing his damndest to sabotage this goal. But thankfully we'll be able to bench him for Josh "I'm a one-on-one hero" Howard pretty soon. All we need is a few more delicious bouts of mediocrity from Howard combined with an increasingly anxious Hayward missing shots.
10. Help Raja earn his salary. Unbeknownst to you, his contract stipulates BOTH his total pay and an hourly wage. In order for us to pay the promised amount, we have to make sure he gets enough minutes that the math works out.
11. Make sure our young, talented team of tomorrow never gets confidence or development. Think about it. If the kids were given the keys to the team, told we believe in you, we're going to stick with you through all the knocks and mistakes—and then we kept our word, kept teaching them, giving them encouragement, telling them over and over that mistakes are okay as long as they learn from them, as long as they better themselves by them—and then they started getting better, pulling off more and more victories over better and better teams—holy hell, they'd reach their potential. The 76'ers game could have been step one. We can't have this happen. We want them to know any mistake will bench them, that they will never get more minutes than less talented vets—no matter how hard they work, how hard they try, or how well they perform in their limited playing time. We want this beautiful feeling of hopelessness to sink in until they mutiny. Then we can trade them for nothing and keep the course.
12. Make the Jazz well-known as a place for washed-up vets to get playing time and earn a big paycheck next year. Yes, Josh Howard will be gone next year. But his success guarantees that we get such interest from our target demographic that we can literally pick and choose from 10-13 year vets who haven't played well in at least five years. It guarantees our ability to maintain the team's current level of success.
13. Lose in the most unwatchable way possible. And you thought I never thought of the fans. What if the Jazz lost every game by 15, but you got to see flashes of brilliance and athleticism from the young kids destined to get better and better? You'd still enjoy the games. That can't happen. We want to lose in the most soul-crushing way—by getting blown out thanks to black-hole play, disgusting iso basketball, horrible defense, and no effort whatsoever coming from vets who have peaked and are destined to maintain this level of suck for the next few years (Al, Harris, Sap) or declining dudes who will only get worse (Howard, Tinsley, Raja). Yes, we want the Utah Jazz to be both the worst and most unwatchable team in the NBA—not only this year, but for the foreseeable future.

If you want to imagine the future of Jazz fans, then imagine this: a foot stamping on a human face. Forever.

Now that you know our goals, maybe you can appreciate what we are accomplishing more.Oh, and keep buying those tickets and memorabilia.

With love,

KOC