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Rainn Wilson + Dwight Howard = Awesome

NBA season just weeks away? Color me excited.

In other news, the Jazz played the Derrick Rose-less Chicago Bulls in London yesterday. I caught most of the game. Here's how it went.

1. The Jazz hang tough early.

2. The Bulls take a lead into halftime.

3. The lead is around 10-15 points in the third quarter.

4. The Jazz mount a furious rally to actually take the lead near the end and

5. Ultimately fall short.

I've seen that show before. Boozer and Okur still do stuff that make me shake my head in sadness. If this team doesn't make a major change or two soon, I may be done with this team. Deron Williams and Paul Millsap are my only reasons for watching the Jazz for now.

Here is an interesting trade idea from one of my favorite NBA posters on cougarboard.com:

Utah trades Carlos Boozer, $2 M

Sacramento trades Kevin Martin

Why Sacramento makes the trade

For some reason, they're ready to turn the offense over to Tyreke Evans, so Martin's importance to them went way down when Evans was drafted. A 20/10 forward is a far better pairing with Evans than a 20 ppg SG. They've mentioned actually playing Jason Thompson at C, and he makes an almost perfect compliment to Boozer at PF. He's a good fit there, so they likely try to re-sign Boozer. If he walks, they're okay with that because it'd put them way under the cap in a huge free agency year. They won't make the playoffs again, so they will also be adding another lottery pick to the team. The $2M is to make up for the difference between the salaries, which still fall within acceptable trade allowances.

Why Utah makes the trade

Martin is a piece the Jazz have missed, well, forever. He's increased his ppg every year he's been in the league. His 3pt% has gone up each year he's been in the league. Two years in a row he's hit 40% of his 3's, he hits 85% of his FT's, and maybe most important he gets to the line a lot. He doesn't cure all the ills of the team, but he fills two hugely important holes: more outside shooting and a guy that can create opportunities to get to the line outside of the offense. Put Martin in the Jazz scheme with Williams at PG, and I think, even if his production doesn't go up, his offensive efficiency will. Having Okur, Martin, and Williams on the court at the same time also adds significant value to Brewer, Millsap, and AK, allowing what they do well to become more available. The $2 M spent would have gone to Boozer anyway, but they end up saving $2 M in luxury tax because of Martin's lower cap figure.

Get rid of Booz, add a high scoring SG, the fanbase gets energized, the advertisers get motivated, and hopefully the team creates more post season revenue. The team lets Korver and Price's contract expire. Then say the Knicks pick is top #7, and the Jazz potentially land someone like Greg Monroe out of Georgetown or Ed Davis out of Carolina. The future would look like this:

C - Okur, Koufos, Tomic
PF - Millsap, Monroe
SF - Brewer, AK
SG - Martin, Miles
PG - Williams, Maynor

Not bad. As he mentioned, the trade doesn't do much to address our interior defensive woes, but it'd get me watching. Kevin Martin would fill a need the Jazz have had since Jeff Hornacek retired.

But I get the feeling the Jazz will end up doing nothing and then lose Boozer at the end of the season without getting anything in return for him.

Prove me wrong, guys.

Smartphone conundrum

I have been mildly interested in purchasing a smartphone for over a year now. The ability to consolidate a phone, music/video player and contacts/calendar manager into one device is very attractive.

During the last 18 months or so, I've looked at Blackberry, Apple, Palm and Google, but none of them are perfect for me and it's kinda driving me crazy. I did have an iPod Touch for a few months (before breaking it to the point that it's now just a music player), and gained some insight into how Apple does its thing. Mandi has owned a Blackberry Pearl for over a year, so that's given me a look at Blackberry's style (though in fairness, the Pearl in a couple years old).

Here's the rundown of my criteria:

1. I am on T-Mobile. Technically, my contract is up and I can bail whenever I want, but we're on a family plan and Mandi's contract isn't done until next summer. Hence, I'd like to stick on T-Mobile, but if I can get a hacked phone to work on their network, I might be okay with that.

2. I think I prefer a physical keyboard, even though my thumbs are fat and it's hard. The touch keyboard on the iPod was difficult to manage and I didn't like having to look at the screen while typing.

3. The phone needs wifi capability, a headphone jack and room for music and movies -- say, 8GB minimum.

4. An intuitive OS is pretty important. Not a deal-breaker, but important.

5. Battery life? Are any of these phones able to go a full day without a charge?

6. Price. I'm guessing I can get a phone cheaper if I switch carriers.

Let's get to it:

• Blackberry: There are several offerings from Blackberry that interest me. I really like the physical keyboard, so the latest Tour or Curve might work for me. They do have the touchscreen concept with the Storm. I'm not sold on their operating system, but to be honest I don't have much experience with it. The Tour and Curve are available on T-Mobile. Battery life a problem?
• Apple: I loved my iPod Touch while it was working. The lack of multi-tasking is a small concern, but nothing major. Only available on AT&T. Meh. Also, battery life is apparently a problem, and you cannot swap in a new battery, like you can with the Pre. Physical memory is fine. As the above image indicates, I'm worried about certain lacking features on the iPhone.
• Palm: I like what I've seen from the Pre. Intuitive OS and multitasking are good. 8GB of memory. Physical keyboard, and on Sprint. Headphone jack present. Battery life a concern here as well... as little as three hours with heavy use? Oh, and it's $79 at Walmart. The app store has very few programs at this time.
• Google: Right off the bat, Google makes me roll my eyes by not including a 3.5mm headphone jack. There's an all-in-one USB port at the bottom, which you must use for power, audio and USB syncing to a desktop. Lame. I am also annoyed that Google named their latest phone the MyTouch. Really, guys? However, the phone is on T-Mobile and has a nice OS with multitasking. The lMyTouch does not have a physical keyboard, and apparently the battery life is impressive.

Bottom line, none of these phones are perfect for me, and none of them are clearly better than the rest of the pack. If Google had a 3.5mm headphone jack, I'd probably go there, but as it is, that's a dealbreaker.

So for now it's my Razr and a mildly-functioning iPod. Come on, capitalism! Create a phone for me!

CSU @ BYU

What a roller-coaster season. Bigtime win, followed by boring blowout, followed by painful blowout. We've run the gamut of emotions and it's time to settle down for some meh games.

CSU is not a great team. While they beat Colorado in Boulder, they also barely squeaked out a 24-23 win at home versus Weber State. I think the Weber State game is more indicative of where the program is, personally.

The Cougars hung on for a 45-42 victory in Fort Collins last year. CSU QB Billy Farris threw for 251 yards, three touchdowns and no picks. Thankfully, he's graduated, but fifth-year quarterback Grant Stucker looked good against Colorado, so we'll see.

I see a fairly tight game in Provo tomorrow, with BYU winning by a touchdown or less. Final score will depend a lot on if the Ram defense has learned how to bait Hall into throwing picks and if our skill players can hang onto the ball.

Final prediction: BYU 31, Colorado State 28.

Basketball and summer

It was 34 degrees this morning in Idaho Falls. As I desperately cling to the last vestiges of summer, I find a lot of joy in this video from Dude Perfect, an organization devoted to helping Africa and making crazy basketball shots.

I honestly can't think of a more fun way to spend June through August.

Fare thee well, temperatures above 40 degrees.

Thoughts from the FSU beat down

For starters, I did not see FSU scoring 50+ on the Cougars. The reason I failed to forsee this detail is that no one mentioned that FSU's offensive line was NFL-caliber.

Those guys absolutely manhandled our defensive line and linebackers like nothing I've ever seen before. The quarterback had 15 seconds to pass on every pass play. The running backs had a free three or four yards of grass in front of them on every passing play. The FSU offense converted third down after third down after third down to the point that I felt like they'd convert them all.

And that was that. The game of football is won or lost in the trenches, and BYU was absolutely rolled in the trenches on Saturday.

Other factors that didn't really matter:

1. The Florida State defense held BYU and Max Hall to 21 points. They created multiple turnovers and picked Hall off three times. It appears they were able to instigate the game plan I was worried about.

2. Our kicking game was great! Bronco finally moved Riley Stephenson to kickoffs and every single one stayed in bounds. They also went 4-4 on extra points, so that's nice.

3. BYU cannot deal with mobile quarterbacks. Not a big surprise, but depressing to see that this is still the case.

That's it. Florida State enjoyed a huge, larger-than-everything-else-put-together advantage on the line and they won the game.

On to CSU!