NBA thoughts for April

ESPN photo

Some of what's been bouncing around my head the last few weeks:

-For starters, Grantland's Zach Lowe is my new favorite NBA writer. This guy rocks, and it seems like he watches every game, every night. His use of stats combined with strategy makes him a must read, whether he's analyzing the league's recent trend towards complex defense and how offenses are coping, or perfectly understanding what it is about the Jazz that makes them so unlikable to their fans these days. If you like basketball, you'll like Lowe.

-About the aforementioned Jazz, I really only care about this team to the extent that Hayward, Favors and Kanter are improving. Jefferson does not play defense and cannot be the focal point of a championship-contending team. Mo Williams is a shoot-first point guard who, likewise, will never be a starter on a championship team. In fact, let's break the team down, player by player.

1. Jefferson: Defense is terrible. Offense not nearly enough to offset it.

2. Mo Williams: Shooting guard in a point guard's body.

3. Marvin Williams: Useless to the extreme. Can't shoot, can't drive, doesn't pass, doesn't really defend well.

4. Kanter: Legitimate stud who can barely break 15 minutes per game. Given starter's minutes, he's dominated. 

5. Favors: Offense is raw, defense is light years ahead of Jefferson. Favors enforces his will on others in the paint, and the league is taking notice. Only 21, I expect him to get much better.

6. Hayward: Somehow he makes tall and lurpy work. Nice shooting stroke from 3, defends like a maniac, passes and rebounds reasonably well, and is fun to watch on the fast break. I don't know if he'll ever be a 20-5-5 kinda guy, but it wouldn't shock me.

7. Evans: Amazing athletically, utterly lost on defense and offense. I believe better coaching could turn him into an often solid, sometimes dominant guy. 

8. Tinsley: Often terrible, sometimes good. Never getting any better than he is now.

9. Millsap: An amazing 6th Man of the Year candidate if he came off the bench. He is best used dominating other teams' second units. Starting, his effectiveness is lessened. 

10. Foye: Broke the Jazz record for 3-pointers in a season this year, and he's actually shooting better from the 3-point line than on field goals overall for 2012-2013. Gotta keep him around if just for that, but I wish he gave the Jazz anything else in his 27 minutes per game.

11. Burks: Has shown some flashes, but I'm not sold he'll be a solid NBA player just yet. Lately can't even seem to get time on the floor at all.

12. Carroll: Fantastic Adam Keefe. Hustle, energy, garbage points, he gives the Jazz all of it. Gotta keep him around just because every team needs a Keefe. 

13: Earl Watson: A fine backup point guard. Keep the ship steady, don't turn the ball over, don't do anything crazy. I can take him or leave him.

So, to sum up, I'd like the Jazz to keep Kanter, Favors, Hayward, Millsap (as a sixth man), Foye, Carroll and maybe Burks and Evans. That gives the Jazz a few of roster spots to fill, though this summer's free agent class is pretty sparse. 

What I'd like to see is the Jazz jettison Jefferson, keep Millsap around as long as he agrees to come off the bench, and start the youth movement for real. Start Kanter, Favors and Hayward. Give Evans a lot of minutes, while focusing on teaching him where to be and why. I guess start Foye at the 2, then find a journeyman point guard who is pass-first and can shoot reasonably well. I'd like to see Jose Calderon or Shawn Livingston. If NBA history has taught us anything, an elite, high-paid point guard is no guarantee of a championship. 

Ideally, Kanter and Favors turn into a dominant 1-2 punch in the paint, much like Memphis have in Gasol and Randolph (pre injury), with Foye and Hayward raining threes and an established point guard directing traffic. I'd watch that team. Sure, they'd probably be in the lottery next year, but if they can turn that pick into a solid player, I'll take it along with the player development we'd see.

-It's the Heat's championship to lose this summer. LeBron is playing as well as anyone in the last 15 years, and the team as a whole is on the same page and really clicking, both on offense and defense. I can't see anyone beating them four times in seven games.

-That the Lakers are fighting desperately for their playoff lives is pretty great. Just a few months after assembling their vaunted Super Team of Kobe, Dwight, Pau and Nash, they are facing a likely first-round drubbing at the hands of the Thunder. Reasons:

1. Dwight has been hurt most of the season, and is clearly not the guy he was in Orlando when he was winning Defensive Player of the Year awards. 

2. Nash is also hurt, and struggling in an offense where he doesn't dominate the ball. Without the Phoenix witch doctors to cure his ailments, and playing with someone who also needs to dominate the ball, I don't see Nash improving with the Lakers any time soon. If ever.

3. Pau is a head case. Mere weeks after killing it in the Olympics for his native country of Spain, abusing Team USA down low and being a man among boys, he's only played 46 games this season and is being told to put his big boy pants on by Kobe, I don't think the Lakers can expect much out of him anytime soon.

4. Kobe has stopped playing defense. Lowe has outlined this impressively well.

Either way, the Lakers kinda stink and I am enjoying it immensely. 

That's it. I plan on doing an NBA Playoff Preview once the matchups are set. Until then, go young, Jazz, and die in a fire, Lakers.

Leave Watterson alone!

For those who are unfamiliar

Salon.com posted a feature discussing Bill Watterson a couple days ago. As I've mentioned before, Calvin and Hobbes is a major influence in my life, so any time I can read about it or its creator, I'm there. The feature's author, Liv Combe, focuses on Watterson's decision to avoid the public eye almost entirely since he ended C&H in 1995.

The term “recluse” seems like a dirty word, a slur — “private” or “introverted” seem much fairer ways to describe someone than a word that suggests agoraphobia — but that’s how many would describe artists ranging from Emily Dickinson to Marcel Proust, Harper Lee to J.D. Salinger.

I'd been aware that Watterson doesn't ever give interviews, doesn't go to comic conventions, doesn't license his intellectual property to movie studios or toy manufacturers. But I'd never really thought about what that meant for him.

Watterson's sense of principle and integrity is such that the image of the tens of millions of dollars he would earn by selling out was overshadowed by the idea of allowing others, motivated solely by greed, to be involved in the creative process for Calvin and Hobbes.

“I’m convinced that licensing would sell out the soul of ‘Calvin and Hobbes,’” Watterson said in the same article. “The world of a comic strip is much more fragile that most people realize. Once you’ve given up its integrity, that’s it. I want to make sure that never happens.”

Some fans do not quite understand this, or are unaware of it, and will drive past his home, or try to find him at a library he probably frequents. However, this documentary film maker is completely on board and didn't even attempt to contact Watterson in making a film about the strip.

How rare an individual is Bill Watterson? I have to say I greatly admire his lack of greed, his foresight, and his ability to stick to his guns decades after making a difficult decision. If you have time, I recommend reading the commencement address he gave to his alma mater, Kenyon, back in 1990.

Finally, an online comment someone made about the feature:

It says a great deal about the morality and obsessions of our times that we treat as odd a man who, in an age of attention and cash mega-whores, has staunchly maintained his ethical stance and only wishes to be left alone to enjoy his life out of the spotlight.

Well said. Fight on, Bill.

January thoughts

- BYU's 2012 football season felt like a failure. To have an excellent defense (Oregon State and Notre Dame notwithstanding) and a terrible offense was very frustrating. It often seemed the team was a decent quarterback and a mediocre offensive line away from 10 wins, but when James Lark is probably your best quarterback and the O-line is dealt six season-ending injuries, reality sets in. Here's hoping the big boys up front can put together a good year in 2013, and Taysom Hill develops his arm. I think Hill can be a lesser version of Colin Kaepernick or Johnny Manizel when all is said and done.

Oh, and Kyle Van Noy is ridiculous.

-Speaking of those guys, holy cow are they the best running quarterbacks I've ever seen. Amazing speed and quickness, but their ability to complete long passes is really what makes defenses throw up their hands in  frustration.



-BYU basketball is simply not great this year. Good, not great. Brandon Davies is a disappointment, frankly, as his weaknesses in strength and speed have not improved much at all over last season. And Tyler Haws, while able to drop 40, has consistency issues to the point that he went 0-9 against Gonzaga earlier this week. When these two are your best players, fans really shouldn't make any plans for the Final Four. Or Final 64.

-The gun control debate rages on. I believe gun ownership is like car ownership. Both are tools which can be used for good purposes or destructive, murderous ones. But as long as someone isn't mentally imbalanced and passes a few tests, they can drive a car. The same should go for using a gun.

-The Jazz need to trade Al Jefferson as an expiring contract. His defense is soft and his offense is not dominant, as against great teams he folds quickly. Shooting 5-14 last night against the Lakers, when 90% of his shots are within 10 feet of the hoop is embarrassing. He doesn't rebound and he's a black hole on offense. The Jazz are better without him. If they can turn him into a piece they need before losing him for nothing this summer, I'll be ecstatic.

And if they re-sign him this offseason? I'll be speechless.

-On that note, Coach Corbin needs to play Derrick Favors and Enes Kanter a lot more. They show flashes, and Kanter, especially seems to be improving. But this team is not great. Let's allow the kids to figure out how to play against real competition. This will either speed up their progress and make them focal points of the team, or eventually reveal they are busts and not worthy of their original draft status. Either outcome is fine with me. This limbo, however, is not.

-I'm watching the final season of Fringe, which is the only show I've ever followed live, from the pilot to the finale. Everything else I've ever started watching two or three or six seasons in, or lost interest after following it from the start. The weird thing is that Fringe isn't even super amazing. It has some good characters and interesting storytelling, but it definitely has some big weaknesses, as well. Go figure.

-I'm currently waiting on the remaining parts for a new computer I'm building to be delivered. It's my first build in eight years, so I'm pretty excited. I went middle of the road on parts; an i5 instead of an i7, a 1 terabtye hard drive instead of 2 or more, etc. Still will be a major upgrade over the $350 Compaq I bought in 2009. Woohoo!

-I attended Mandi's latest opera production last night with my sister Amy. It is Florencia en el Amazonas, a relatively new production that premiered in Houston in 1996. Modern opera has a reputation for being weird, and Florencia did not disappoint. The performances were mostly impressive, and the main storyline was interesting enough, but I felt like most of the characters were shallow and certain plot elements were lazily constructed. Overall, it is always good to get some culture, and the Utah Opera is a good place to get it.

-I have no idea who will win the Super Bowl. I've picked against the Ravens for their last two playoff games, but they manage to pull off wins despite having what I think are an overrated defense and quarterback. That said, Joe Flacco has shown he has the guts and ability to throw deep, and in today's NFL, that's something of a rarity. On the other end, the aforementioned Kaepernick is a marvel, but he's a second-year player and this is his first rodeo. I expect the aging, sneaky Ravens defense to account for his running and do enough to confuse him in the passing game to slow the 49er offense down. Baltimore 24, San Francisco 21.

Frustration

AP Photo/Michael Conroy

While I was right about the final outcome of this game, I was way off about some of my other predictions about this afternoon.

I said Notre Dame wouldn't be able to run on BYU. The Cougars gave up 270 yards on the ground for 6.3 yards a carry. Beyond that, Notre Dame had zero intention of passing the ball in the second half (three attempts through the air. THREE!) and BYU had no ability to stop them.

I said BYU would lose by 10 if the defense could play well. BYU's defense played about where I expected them to (just the other way around) and the offense was better that I expected.

I said the offense would struggle mightily, and for one half, I was wrong. 14 points in two quarters against an Irish defense that hadn't given up a touchdown since September is pretty great. Zero points in quarters three and four is not great. Williams played well, averaging 4.6 yards a carry, but didn't get many looks in the final quarter.

Other thoughts:

1. I am incredibly frustrated that after BYU's quarterback recruiting the last few years, we're left with fullback Riley Nelson as our starting QB. This is either insanely bad luck or bad coaching.

2. Despite the fact that it's not Riley's fault he's starting (probably), he is terrible. I counted four or five good passes from him today; the rest were pretty much garbage. The misses were way off (Hoffman running free in the Irish secondary in the fourth quarter) and most of the completions were not easy catches for the receivers. At least he took sacks today instead of throwing wounded ducks into triple coverage.

3. I'm tired of moral victories. BYU has a better fanbase than this. Getting 60,000 plus fans to every home game, getting great TV ratings for home games... we deserve more than a middling team. And if this keeps up in the long term, I expect fans to start jumping ship.

Thank goodness Utah isn't any good this year, either.

BYU at Notre Dame

Jonathan Daniel/Getty Images

It's hard to write about a game you're 100% convinced will be a loss for your team.

For the first time in what seems like 20 years, Notre Dame is legitimately a top-10 team, though there are some weaknesses in that facade.

A defense giving up under 10 points a game is definitely something to crow about, and the Fighting Irish's 8.7 points allowed per contest is enough to be ranked second in the nation this year. Their running game is also potent, gaining an average of 181 yards per game on the ground. It's been said for decades, to win a championship the game of football, you need a good defense and a solid run game. Notre Dame seems set here.

Their passing game? Not so much. Sophomore quarterback Everett Golson has completed 58% of his passes for 968 yards, four touchdowns and three interceptions on the year. Translation: he doesn't throw a whole lot, and he's not super great when he does. But hey, with a running game and defense like this one backing him up, the coaches don't need a whole lot, right?

That's the good news for BYU. If there's one thing we think we know about this Cougar defense, it's that they can stop the run. The pass, not so much. But it's hard to consistently get off long runs against this front seven, especially if they aren't worrying as much about the quarterback.

Riley Nelson is set to start tomorrow, and that means a vaguely competent quarterbacking performance speckled with moments of horror. Freshman running back Jamaal Williams shows promise, but hasn't really had a breakout game yet. And against Irish linebacker Manti Te'o waiting for him, I don't expect a big day from Jamaal.

So onward to tomorrow, a game in which I expect BYU to lose by 30 if the defense can't pull it together, and a game BYU will lose by 10.

Go Cougars!

What a season

www.deseretnews.com

Six points scored against Boise State.

Six points scored against Utah State.

One is a loss, the other a win.

Freshman quarterback Taysom Hill cannot put the ball in the endzone against the Aggies, but ends up with a decent line and shows a lot of promise.

"Well, this season won't be one we talk about in years to come, but at least Taysom is getting a lot of reps in preparation for the years to come. These games will pay off immensely in 2013 and beyond," I thought.

Then? Hill is injured during a meaningless draw play at the very end of the Utah State game. It is reported that he needs knee surgery and will be out until next year.

So we're back to Riley and/or Lark playing at quarterback. Both are seniors, both have nothing to offer BYU in the years to come.

"Well, maybe Taysom will spend a lot of time working on his arm if he can't run as much, and maybe he'll come back next season a better passer. At least this defense will keep us in every game this year," I thought.

Then? Then Oregon State made BYU's secondary look silly en route to a 42-24 victory at LaVell Edwards Stadium today.

Backup Beaver QB Cody Vaz threw for 332 yards and three touchdowns, often finding wide open receivers for long gains. When Oregon State scored two quick touchdowns in the first quarter, mostly through the air, it became apparent that this defense is not as good as we believed. This defense merely had never seen a good passing attack until this afternoon.

So what are we left with? A good offense (apparently Riley is healthy enough to pass as a starting QB again) and a good defense. I no longer believe BYU will be in every game they play this season. I fully expect blowouts at the hands of Notre Dame and Georgia Tech, and San Jose State will give the Cougars a run for their money.

Disappointing.

Best two out of three?

Utah State quarterback Chuckie Keeton - USU athletics

BYU and Utah State have split the last two games between them. The Aggies blew out BYU in Logan two years ago, and BYU barely squeaked out a last-second win in Provo last year.

Aggie head coach Gary Anderson has done a great job elevating the football program to respectability, as last season showed. A close loss to Auburn and other assorted heartbreakers showed Utah State could hang with most teams in the NCAA.

This year, the Aggies 4-1, having lost a squeaker to Wisconsin in Madison, and beating up on Mountain West teams Colorado State and UNLV by large margins. They also beat Utah in Salt Lake City, which would normally be fairly impressive, except Utah stinks this season.

And BYU lost to this stinky Utah team a couple weeks ago, so there's that.

My thoughts about tonight's game:

1. The Aggie players care about this game. They see beating BYU as another step towards becoming a legitimate FBS team. They will be ready for this game, both mentally and physically.

2. QB Chuckie Keaton is a rich man's Riley Nelson. He's got 1281 passing yards on the season with 11 TD's, completing 68% of those throws. He's also got 206 yards rushing. He's no Troy Smith, but he's good enough to make defenses account for his arm and his legs. I believe, however, that BYU's defense will be up to the task. I don't expect to see Keaton running free all night.

3. Utah State's corners are vulnerable. If Hill (assuming he plays) can attack them and connect with Hoffman and Apo on a regular basis, this will make it a lot easier for Williams and company to run.

4. The Cougars' offensive line will have their hands full with the Aggies' front seven. Their run defense is stout, and even if Williams is the next Doak Walker winner at BYU, if he's not getting good running lanes from the line, it could be a long night. And if the Aggies are able to shut the Cougar running game down, I'm not sure either Hill or Nelson are able to win on their arm alone.

In the end, I see a close game. BYU 24, Utah State 21.