Pre-season

First of all, thanks for reading this. I hope this place could gather a group of Jazz fans in Hong Kong, Asia or even in the world. Having said that, enthusiastic NBA fans are more than welcome.

Back to the main theme - Utha Jazz, starts the pre-season by beating Lakers (hope it bodes well :P ). I had a glance on that, and looks like Jazz becomes a better team than last year. Our bench depth can easily make others envy.

I want to highlight a few points here,

Ronnie Brewer gained 13 pounds (should be, and hopefully mostly muscles) this year. He is getting fitter and even if his skills do not have a leap, he could do a lot of damages by constantly attacking the rims.

CJ Miles apparently has become more mature. If Brewer is not in top form, CJ Miles can replace him, with the same style of playing, though honestly he can't attack the rim and run backdoor as effective as Brewer.

Kuofos, Fesenko will fight the back-up Centre place with veteran Collins. I can't see much of Kuofos yet because after he hits his very first shot, he hurt his hamstring and not even show up in the second game vs Suns. Fesenko did not impress Sloan since the start of the training camp. However, Sloan did say some good things about him after the loss vs Suns. But...he said something immature that make me think he may not have the mental strength to compete in the NBA level yet. Here are what he said after his 12-min match-up with Shaq,

"It was really hard, I realize that I am not big, I am not strong. I am small girl compared to Shaq. So I have a lot of work to do - I have a lot of work to do - and I need to start right now if I want to make the team, at least this year." - small girl...come on, may be you should use a better word... it is not humble, it is not a respect to Shaq, it just shows you are not mentally ready...

"One time after I push him in the back, he look at me and this look I will see probably in my nightmares."- nightmares...how can you compete in NBA when you are scared by a look of Shaq...

I hope this is just a poor choice of word and a lack of media interview training for him. But I do admit that he is a hardworking player, and looks like he also knows how to pass the ball around.

Anyway, back to the point, Fesenko is the 2nd year player, hopefully will get more mins than Kuofos because Sloan really seldom uses rookie. (I am not completely sure this time though because Sloan did praise him pretty much during the training camp) At the end of the day, perhaps Sloan will still keep using Collins for the first 20% of the season and play it by ear.

Key message is, our bench is really strong.

Two more notes,

Brevin Knight does not impress me yet, however, strongly believe that he is better than Jason Hart.

By the way, I am not a big fans of Boozer because I think his soft defense was the main reason for our losses in playoffs in last two seasons.

That's about it for this post, hope could share more with everyone soon. Stay tuned.