15 September 2009

Greg Ostertag making a comeback?


There have been rumblings all summer that former Jazz man Greg Ostertag wants to play in the NBA again. And now, here is some proof:

Greg Ostertag is looking to make a return to the NBA.

The former Jazz center, who retired from the game three years ago, was invited to work out for the Trail Blazers last week.

"I just miss it," Ostertag told the Journal-World.

"Watching the playoffs last year got me excited. My wife said, 'Why not go try it again?' One day I said, 'What the heck. I'll get in shape and get back on the court and give it a try.'

"I've got nothing to lose."

Well shoot, if that's not great motivation for getting back into pro basketball, I don't know what is.

Greg was a consistently frustrating player for Utah. At 7 feet, 2 inches, he was definitely big enough to clog the lane. If that's all he was capable of, then I think us fans would have been okay with him. But the guy showed flashes.

I remember a game he had against Sacramento in the 1990-something playoffs. Greg went for 25 points, 14 rebounds and 7 blocks (estimate based on a game I watched 15 years ago and cannot find a link for). He could do stuff like that, but then the next game he'd go back to being Terrible Greg who could rebound fairly well and couldn't score worth beans.

In celebration of the news that Ostertag wants to return to the NBA, the guys at Basketbawful posted a highlight video of Ostertag being dunked on:




The sad thing is that I like how he's actually challenging these shots. After a few years of Boozer and Okur, even Ostertag looks good on defense. Gotta fix that, Jazz.

2 comments:

Josh said...

Don't even think about it Tag. And don't come back to the Jazz.

Matt Gibb said...

2 things: 1. if he gets in shape for a return it will be the first time he's been in shape. 2. I think the game you're referring to was the game of May 8, 1998, in which he had 16-9-6 blocks. Any hoop stat you can think of is on basketball-reference.com, it's a great website.