The Return of Swamp Thing

In 1989, seven years after the failure of Swamp Thing, eccentric producer Benjamin Melniker got his wish to make a second Swamp Thing movie. As you can tell from the poster, The Return of Swamp Thing decided to take a much more silly tone than the first one. The poster also had the audacity to claim Swamp Thing as "America's favorite super hero" in the same year Tim Burton's Batman was released.

But despite the radical change in tone, this movie does officially count as a sequel. Jim Wynorski is the new director, but the top billed actor is once again Louis Jourdan, who played the villain Antone Arcane in the last movie. And although Arcane was clearly killed in the last movie, the filmmakers decided he was good enough to bring back. Or possibly its because Swamp Thing doesn't have any good villains — I don't know, I haven't read any Swamp Thing. Also returning in this film is  Dick Durock as Swamp Thing. But this time, his costume looks a lot better. Even better than it looks in that crappy poster. Other than those two actors, the entire cast has changed, which makes sense because almost everyone died in the last movie except for Swamp Thing's girlfriend, Alice Cable. She isn't mentioned at all here, and Swamp Thing's new romantic interest is Abigail Arcane, Dr. Arcane's stepdaughter, played by Heather Locklear.

The movie starts with a group of federal investigators wading through the swamp. It's initially unclear what they're doing, but I think they were looking for moonshiners. Anyway, this scene was a huge improvement over the first movie already because it takes place at night, and the water is waist-deep instead of knee-deep. Some of these investigators are kinda goofy, but I wouldn't say anything is particularly funny at this point. They start to get lost and separated and one by one come across what appears to be an alligator, but is actually a leach-man monster. It's still obviously a guy in a suit, very reminiscent of Power Rangers, but it looks a lot better than the first movie. And again I think a lot of that has to do with the smart decision to have this take place at night, in deeper water, and with plenty of fog around. I can't imagine that this movie had a bigger budget than the first, but they seemed to use their money better. Well, anyway, Swamp Thing eventually comes forward and saves one of the guys. And Swamp Thing looks great. His first costume was so cheap and terrible. Now, for once, he actually looks like a plant man. He has tons of vines and bushes and things growing on him and a more expressive face. He's also a bit bigger, and actually looks like he could be a hero this time. Last movie tried to be too much like the Creature from the Black Lagoon, but this time he's clearly a superhero. And I think that could work. Unfortunately, this movie had to ruin everything by making it a comedy.

After a strong opening scene, we cut to a montage of images from Swamp Thing comic books set to Creedence Clearwater Revival's "Born on a Bayou." I like CCR as much as the next guy, but they really have no business being in a scary, dark superhero mystery. The inclusion of the comic book art is also rather perplexing. It's almost like the filmmakers felt obligated to demonstrate that this character existed in another medium. I think it's OK for superhero movies to remind the audience of the original source material, but not so blatantly. In this case, if some kid watching this for the first time was interested in one of those Alan Moore covers and went out and bought the comic, he'd be extremely disappointed with this movie. By directly showing some very serious, interesting, critically-acclaimed work and then making a spoof of it, these filmmakers only set themselves up for failure. Which is exactly what happened. According to Wikipedia, The Return of Swamp Thing made just a little more than $192,000.

Once John Fogerty is done singing, we leave the dark swamps of the South to head to the bright sunshine of Southern California. There we meet Abigail Arcane, a botanist who loves plants more than people. She carries on deep conversations with her plants, revealing that she's lost another boyfriend, and her current psychiatrist says the same thing her previous four said, which is that she won't have any healthy relationships until she resolves her issues with her stepfather. Apparently she blames him for not giving her mother a proper funeral, or if he did, then not inviting Abigail to it. I have no idea how that could possibly happen, but whatever. Anyway, Abigail decides she needs to visit her father in person — this is too important for a phone call. So she hastily leaves, telling her assistant to talk to the plants every day, read the sports section to them — they especially like the Lakers — and always keep the TV on.

We then cut to Dr. Arcane, who is surprisingly still alive and human again. It's also surprising to learn that he once had a wife, since in both these movies, he's constantly surrounded by beautiful women. He's also surrounded by the usual idiotic Rambo-type goons, who he's tasked with finding Swamp Thing. But this time, Arcane also has a couple of actual scientists with him, Dr. Rochelle and Dr. Lana Zurrell, played by Sarah Douglas, who was Ursa in Superman II. Apparently these two doctors found Arcane shortly after his fight with Swamp Thing, and he just happened to still be alive. The doctors saved him and restored his humanity, but his health is rapidly deteriorating, so they are experimenting on other people, trying to find a long-term cure for their boss. We actually get to see a couple of their monstrous experiments, including a grotesque half-man, half-elephant thing. The first movie definitely suffered from a lack of monsters, and this movie has a lot more, which is great. Unfortunately, only the leech monster got to go out and fight people, while the rest of the monsters just sat around in cages.

This is where things start to get messy from a story-telling point. We just cut around from scene to scene in mid-conversation. I was surprised to see some people start talking, then be shown someone else halfway across the country, then suddenly return to those same people still talking about the same thing. I guess this is what you call poor film editing. All I know is this is a poorly made film — worse than the first one in certain technical aspects. I wish we could combine the best parts of both the movies and end up with a half-decent Swamp Thing flick.

Well anyway, Abby arrives at Arcane's house, and he is excited to see her because there's a chance her blood could contain the same genetic properties that her mom's did that restored Arcane. But first he needs to test her blood, which requires him coming up with an overly complex plan to acquire some of her blood. He graciously welcomes his stepdaughter into his home, then immediately sends her upstairs to change for dinner.

We then cut to the most annoying, worthless characters of the whole movie. A fat white kid and a skinny black kid. The black kid constantly bosses the white kid around, and they're always up to no good. We first see them looking at porn while their parents are out playing bingo. There's then a knock at the door, which they assume is their parents. If it was their parents, I don't know why they'd bother knocking, but I guess we needed this bit to set up the "funny" scene of showing the kids slowly scrambling to try to hide their porn. They could have easily pushed all the magazines under the couch, but they instead decide to put a couple under the couch, some under the rug, some under the chair cushion, all while calling out to the knocking, "In a minute! Almost there!" Finally, after what feels like forever, they answer the door to the leech monster. They then close the door and let out what was supposed to be a comedic scream. Again, I'm not sure why the mindless monster bothered to patiently knock at the door while it took the kids 10 minutes to hide their dirty magazines, but what do I know?

Luckily for the kids, Swamp Thing shows up in time to save them, although he does destroy their trailer park in the process. The fight ends with the leech monster catching fire and running into the swamp. It's an exact ripoff of the best part of the first movie — when Alec Holland caught fire — but it's not nearly as impressive. Well, the cops soon show up, Swamp Thing disappears, and the kids decide not to tell the newspaper reporters about him because they want to take a picture of him first and sell it for $10,000.

We then see Dr. Arcane reading the paper about the event, and although Swamp Thing was explicitly not mentioned, he knows it was him. Arcane then finally has that dinner with his stepdaughter, so either the newspapers down there are incredibly fast and got out an evening edition, or he waited to do anything with his guest until the next day. Well anyway, at the dinner, he proves his love for his dead wife by giving Abby a ring he says belonged to her mother. If Abby was as close to her mom as was implied, she should have recognized the ring. But logic doesn't apply to this movie, as evident by Abby's desire to immediately put on the ring of her dead mother. Of course, Arcane rigged the ring to cut her, which gives him the necessary blood sample. Apparently this cut was quite traumatic, and Abigail decides to run away right there and then, in nothing but her fancy little dress that she will continue to wear for the rest of the movie.

Abby immediately runs across some moonshiners who naturally try to rape her. But luckily Swamp Thing saves the day. She immediately falls in love with him and he gives her the abbreviated version of his origin. And we actually see the cool scene where Alec Holland caught on fire in the first movie. So not only did this movie poorly re-create the flaming man scene, but then they also replayed the original. Whatever. I'm quite annoyed with everything right now, so let's get through this end quickly.

Swamp Thing and Abby are madly in love, but quite sad that they can't have sex, so he pulls a celery stalk off his waist, bites it, and gives it to her. When she bites it, we get a very strange hallucination of her making out with a human Swamp Thing. They're then found by the boys who want to take a picture with Swamp Thing. While they're posing,  Abby gets kidnapped by Arcane's men, who then blow Swamp Thing up with a grenade.

There's then a poorly developed subplot of Lana, one of Arcane's doctors/current lover, turning against him for absolutely no reason whatsoever. But illogical actions are the norm here, just as is Lana's decision to take a bath, but never get in the tub. But that had to happen so they could show Swamp Thing ooze in through the tub faucet and reform himself in the tub. It would have been a cool scene if it had a better setup.

Well, some stuff happens, I guess, and we finally get to the climax. Arcane kills Abby by draining her life energy to save himself, but it didn't fully work because Lana sabotaged the experiment. So he kills her, then Swamp Thing finally makes his way down to the secret lab to battle ... not Arcane, but the other doctor who has turned into a very cheap and crappy looking monster. He's completely the same, but now has a big head, which flops around a lot whenever he gets punched. They really should have used the better-looking leech monster at the end of the movie.

Swamp Thing naturally defeats the big-headed monster, but unnaturally initiates the self destruct sequence in the lab. Why does it ... oh, never mind! Arcane somehow had a door fall on him, so he just sits there and shrugs while Swamp Thing leaves with Abby's body. The house then blows up and Swamp Thing revives his girlfriend. For some reason, a little flower grows on her foot, and she resolves to spend the rest of her life in the swamp with the giant plant monster. The idiot kids then take a bunch of pictures of this final scene, but halfway through the credits, we learn that they didn't have any film. Oh those kids whose names I never bothered to learn!

Ugh. That became painful at the end. Usually I love writing about bad movies, but this one was tough because it had plenty of potential to be a decent movie. The suit looked great, and this director showed a great willingness to keep all the action at night and use more monsters. But then they had to kill all that potential by trying to make it a spoofy comedy. By itself, I should probably give this movie a zero, but since it was actually better than the original, I will give it a mercy point.

Final score: 1

Swamp Thing

When you look at the list of early superhero movies, there are a couple of obvious choices like Superman and Batman, but then there are a few completely random ones like Howard the Duck and Swamp Thing. And those two oddballs really only got made because a couple of rich, eccentric people wanted to make those movies, not caring about how popular or profitable those characters could be. Howard the Duck took flight because of George Lucas, and Swamp Thing rose from the bog of obscurity thanks to Benjiman Melniker, a rich, eccentric lawyer who bought the movie rights to his two favorite comic book characters — Batman and Swamp Thing. Batman was the much better choice, but it took forever to get it going. Swamp Thing, however, was able to be made in the early year of 1982 because it had a budget of only $3 million.

Wes Craven was brought in to write the script and direct Swamp Thing. Craven was known for his horror films, but he didn't become really famous until Nightmare on Elm Street and Scream a few years later. Since he had writing and directing duties, it is safe to assign most of the blame of this movie to Craven. I did hear that he was frustrated with the increasingly dwindling budget, but that doesn't excuse this movie for not making a lick of sense. I do have to admit, however, that this movie was at its best when it acted like a horror film. But this movie suffered from not knowing if it wanted to be a horror, superhero, action, romantic or tragic film. It was all over the map in terms of tone and genre. It also borrows heavily from Creature of the Black Lagoon, Star Wars and Rambo. It kind of tried to be everything and ended up nothing. And that's basically what this movie made in the box office. According to Wikipedia, the worldwide gross was less than $300,000.

The movie started off oddly with a few paragraphs of text basically telling us the origin of Swamp Thing. This confused and intrigued me. It would be a pretty bold move to contain the entire origin just in the text and start the movie running with Swamp Thing fully realized. But that didn't happen. The first half hour of this movie showed us everything that those introductory paragraphs told us. Unfortunately, those paragraphs kept things rather vague, leaving out some nice details that were quite confusing and muddled when the actual movie began.

We follow the story of Alice Cable, played by Adrienne Barbeau, who reminds me a lot of Sigourney Weaver (it would have been awesome had she been here instead). Cable has been flown in to a mysterious research facility in the middle of the swamp. She's from Washington, and her job is to shut down(?) this project run by Alec Holland because its facing a lot of security issues and staff members keep leaving. I don't know, I'm mostly guessing here. Nobody really knew what Alice was supposed to do, and she sure didn't know what anyone was doing out there nor who anyone was. Eventually she meets Alec Holland, who explains that he has put an animal nucleus in the cell of a plant, and he hopes to create stronger, more aggressive plants that can survive in the desert and such. He also briefly mentions a rival scientist named Anton Arcane, who hopes this research can lead to immortality.

Well, Alec and Alice instantly fall in love with each other because they're the stars of the film. Luckily it doesn't take long for Alec to make a breakthrough in his research. He creates a glowing green formula that makes plants instantly grow. Just then, a bunch of men, who look like they're straight from Vietnam, break into the lab and start killing everybody. Then the chief of security randomly rips off a mask to reveal himself to be Arcane. This was such a cheesy effect — they had the first actor start to peel some plastic off his face, then they did a quick cut to the second actor holding a mask in his hand. It was such a horrible effect and it made absolutely no sense. Why did Arcane have to disguise himself with what would have been an extremely realistic mask? And how long did he pretend to be that other guy?

Anyway, a fight breaks out, and Alice somehow manages to secure Alec's all-important final journal. Alec, meanwhile, gets pushed into a big vat of his new formula and somehow catches on fire. Completely covered in flames, he runs through the lab and jumps into the swamp, and everybody assumes he's dead. This was actually the best part of the movie. A stunning, haunting visual with a fiery figure running out into the dark, foggy night. Unfortunately, everything went downhill from there.

Alice is somehow able to hide all through the night, but then is found in the morning. Arcane instructed his men to burn the lab and kill all survivors. But when they find Alice, they decide to not use their guns or knives and instead drown Alice in the swamp. Well, this is the perfect opportunity for Swamp Thing to show up and save the day. And he looks awful. Just completely terrible. Never once did he not look like a guy in a suit. And to make things worse, the guy in the suit (Dick Durock) was a completely different actor than the guy who played Alec Holland (Ray Wise). Wes Craven may have complained about his shrinking budget, but he also reportedly wasted a lot of it by filming every scene with Wise in the suit first, then reshooting everything with Durock. Apparently Wise wasn't tall enough. But that still doesn't excuse how awful the suit looks. Since it needed to spend a lot of time in water, it had to be waterproof. But this made it look like a scuba suit or raincoat. They haphazardly threw a few vines on him when they really needed to cover him completely in seaweed. They also made the mistake of filming every single scene in the day. The swamp looked great at night with the fog and everything, plus it would have helped disguise how awful this suit looked.

The next half hour or so of this movie is an extremely long and excruciatingly boring series of chase scenes. Many of these early superhero movies (like Howard the Duck) struggled to convincingly shoot any real action scenes, so they often resulted to simple chase scenes. And that's all we got here. Over and over again. Alice is caught by the bad guys, then saved by Swamp Thing (who actually kills a lot of people in this movie, but luckily Arcane has an infinite supply of men), and then the whole process repeats itself. At one point, Alice manages to get to a phone to call her supervisor, but it turns out he was Arcane all along! Wait ... so Arcane sent Alice to shut down Holland's lab and then he broke in anyway ... but then he disguised himself as the chief of security ... but then ... Oh, never mind! I can't start to apply logic to this movie? I mean, this is the movie where Swamp Thing constantly calls Alice by her last name, Cable, even though he's apparently madly in love with her.

Anyway, Alice comes across the most worthless and worst-acted character here — a black boy named Jude. He does absolutely nothing in this movie, and then is killed by Arcane's men. But then Swamp Thing brings him back to life. Sure, why not? I've never read any Swamp Thing stories, so I have no idea what his powers are supposed to be like. Anyway, the endless chase scenes continue with Arcane's men reporting to their boss how strong and smart Swamp Thing is. They had to say that because never once during this movie did he do anything that made him look particularly smart or strong. Well, I guess he did absorb a few gunshots, but that made sense since he's supposed to be made of plants and shooting a plant doesn't really do anything to it.

Well, the chase scenes finally end when Swamp Thing gets his arm cut off, and a whole bunch of guys throw a net over him and Alice. They are taken to Arcane's mansion, where he uses Holland's missing journal to make his own version of the formula. He first tests it on one of his goons, Bruno, but it oddly turns him into a strange little midget. This was actually the freakiest scene of the movie, when the henchmen starting gasping, gurgling and screaming during the transformation. Director Wes Craven definitely showed some brilliance in brief little moments, but sadly this movie fell apart as a whole. So yeah, Arcane, for some reason, decides to put Bruno in the prison cell with Swamp Thing and Alice. Arcane demands to know why the formula didn't work, but Swamp Thing said it did work. The formula amplifies what your essence already is. Sure it does! Because nobody said anything remotely like that until this moment! So since Alec Holland loved the swamp so much, he became a swamp monster. And as Arcane says, since Bruno's essence was stupidity, he turned into a stupid little worthless monster. But Bruno actually doesn't become stupid. If anything, he acts smarter after his transformation and helps our heroes escape.

So Arcane leaves our heroes to give himself the formula, believing it will amplify his own genius. Alice then tells Swamp Thing that he thrives off the sun (more of an assumption than observation) and she tells him to reach for the sunlight. He does, and is able to regrow his arm, and with the help of Bruno, they all escape. Arcane, however, turned into a really stupid-looking wolf-warthog-monster-thing that actually makes the Power Ranger villains look good. Arcane then grabs a sword because ... well, I guess he really wanted to use that sword that's been hanging on his wall. He then chases after Swamp Thing and Alice and engages in the final showdown in the swamp. It is a very slow and terrible fight. It was two guys wearing cheap costumes that they could barely move in standing in knee-deep water, which only made it even harder for them to move. At one especially odd  part, Alice jumps in front of Swamp Thing, apparently to protect him. Umm, he's an indestructible plant monster. You should hide behind him. Naturally, Arcane kills her, but then Swamp Thing kills Arcane and then revives Alice.

The movie ends with Alice telling Swamp Thing that he can continue his research, but he says, "With these hands?" She says, "I'll be your hands!" But he says, "No. You need to heal and go tell our story. And I need to protect the swamp." Every thing he said makes no sense. Alice needs to heal? You just healed her! She's fine! Alice needs to tell their story? Tell who? And why? Who would believe her? And you need to protect the swamp? From who? What danger is it currently under? Sure, Arcane and his Rambo impersonators were running around making a mess, but they're gone now. What is Swamp Thing going to do? Well, we'll find out in the low-budget Return of Swamp Thing, which came out seven years later.

Final score: 0

Jimmer is free!

It finally happened. After nearly three years of languishing away in possibly the worst team for him, The Jimmer has been freed at last. Although I do find it odd that the same franchise that was able to trade for Rudy Gay this season was unable to trade Jimmer. But a buyout works out fine here, and I actually am very excited to see if he'll get to play alongside Derrick Rose next year. Yeah, it's the Bulls, who should never be forgiven for their sins committed against the Jazz, but I actually kind of like this version with Tom Thibodeau and Rose when he's healthy. They play defense hard and always compete, and are generally a fun team to watch — even with Carlos Boozer.

I covered the BYU men's basketball team during the first half of Jimmer's junior year. He was a star on the team, but not the star. He was a very solid point guard, and we were happy to have him. But senior Jonathan Tavernari felt like he should be the star, and he certainly acted like it. I was astounded by his complete arrogance during interviews and games. He was such a tremendous ball hog, and not even that good of a shooter. In BYU's first loss that year, Tavernari went 1-for-11 from the field at Utah State. Finally Dave Rose benched Tavernari, which ignited a 15-game winning streak and really helped Jimmer take control of the team.

At that time, he was still known as Jimmer Fredette, and he was able to walk around in public in obscurity. I also worked at the BYU Creamery on Ninth East, and often served ice cream to the basketball players when they came in for practice. I was amazed, though, that none of my coworkers knew who Jimmer was. Of course, most of them were girls who had no interest in sports, but still. This was our starting point guard, and he was actually pretty good. As an ice cream scooper, I always tried to treat the customers professionally, i.e., like normal people — even the handful of apostles who visited while I was there. But with Jimmer, I had to let him know that I knew who he was and respected what he did. I didn't ask for an autograph or anything (I was covering the team for The Daily Universe then); I just empathized with him about losing to Utah State (which was the team's only loss that semester). Jimmer took my playful comments in good humor and was very nice and respectful. In fact, in my limited exposure with Jimmer, I never saw him act anyway but respectful.

Anyway, with Tavernari on the bench, Jimmer continued to improve and progress. He put together a couple of 20-point games and a 33-point game against Nevada. And then it happened. The semester ended and I was unable to continue covering the basketball team. So I kind of missed Jimmer's big game at Arizona over Christmas break. Jimmer hit nine 3-pointers, scored 49 points and added nine assists and seven rebounds for good measure. Suddenly he was a somebody among BYU fans. And I noticed that people at the Creamery began asking him for autographs. But I don't think anybody considered him a superstar at that point — just a good player who could occasionally get hot.

Well that season wrapped up with a loss to Kansas State in the second round of the NCAA Tournament. But us BYU fans were thrilled with that. BYU rarely makes it to the Tournament and hadn't even won a game there for a long, long time. On an interesting note, Kansas State guard Jacob Pullen single-handedly destroyed BYU with 34 points in that game, and I thought for sure he'd be in the NBA. But he never got drafted and has spent all his time overseas. Speaking of the Draft, there was some talk that Jimmer would try to go to the NBA after his junior season. I thought he'd be a second-rounder at best, and apparently so did he, as he pulled out from the Draft and rejoined BYU for his senior year. Now that we knew what he could do, expectations were very high.

It soon became commonplace for Jimmer to score 30 his senior year, and he became, without question, the most popular athlete on campus (it really helped that the football team was rather lackluster then). Jimmer stopped coming to the Creamery, and I began to hear stories about how it became difficult for him to go anywhere in Provo. Things really didn't start to get crazy until the Utah game. True, the Utes were in a down year, but beating the rivals on their home floor is still pretty fun. And scoring 47 points while you're doing it is even better. One of Jimmer's most memorable moments came right before halftime of that game, when he beat the buzzer to make a half court shot like it was nothing.

Jimmermania had officially begun. And it only grew exponentially with each game. Scoring anything less than 40 was an off night for The Jimmer. Here are some highlights: 42 at Colorado State, 43 the next game against No. 4 San Diego State, and a career-high 52 against New Mexico in the Mountain West Conference Tournament. That last one was particularly impressive for me because New Mexico had beaten BYU twice that season, and in that game Jimmer only shot one free throw. Everybody remembers his deep 3-pointers, but he made quite a living at the line, making 16 free throws in several games.

Unfortunately, I was unable to attend any of these games in person because I was working as a copy editor for The Daily Universe. But the benefit of that meant I was able to write a lot of fun Jimmer headlines and design amazing Jimmer packages. It was a cruel tradeoff, but I was always filled with a bit of pride to see the newspaper racks empty when Jimmer was on the cover. One of our great covers simply had Jimmer's head fill up the whole page with the words "We Love Jimmer!" below. We put a dotted line with a pair of scissors around his head, and to my surprise, a lot of fans actually did cut out Jimmer's head and use that to make their own signs. During this time, I was also serving an internship with the Deseret News, and got to work on the sports desk every Friday and Saturday night. That meant that I was working seven nights a week for a whole semester, and it nearly killed me, but the excitement of Jimmermania kept me going. I almost felt a little guilty sometimes for giving a good Jimmer headline to the Deseret News and not The Daily Universe, or vice versa, but it all worked out in the end. But it all worked out in the end. It was at the DesNews where I helped decided that Jimmermania should be one word. My biggest headline regret was shooting down "Fredette about it" at the Universe. But then ESPN used that same headline, so I was glad nobody could accuse us of copying.

Sadly, all the excitement and fun and high hopes of the greatest team in BYU history was crushed when leading rebounder Brandon Davies was suspended for an Honor Code violation. I can't blame Davies or BYU for the situation — everybody did what needed to be done — but the timing couldn't have been any worse. The Cougars did manage to reach the Sweet 16 for the first time since Danny Ainge, but they sadly fell to Florida in overtime. The loss of Davies really hurt me in this game, because it seemed like BYU could have won in regulation if they would have made one last defensive rebound. But Davies was able to rejoin BYU the next year, had a pretty decent career, and is currently on the bench of the tanking 76ers.

Well, Jimmermania ended sadly, but he did gain national recognition and won every major college basketball award there is. Unfortunately, there is no reward in college basketball that commands as much respect as the Heisman. The Wooden or the AP Player of the Year just don't sound as impressive. Anyway, building up to the NBA Draft was especially exciting since the Jazz had the 3rd and 12th picks, which were perfectly in Jimmer range. I got to cover Jimmer working out for the Jazz, which was pretty much a disastrous media circus nightmare for me. I guess the TV people got their way and insisted we interview Jimmer on the court. There were a million people there and we all had to shove and fight our way toward him, hoping that our recorders could catch his words. It was an unpleasant experience, and not one I'd like to repeat too soon. But Jimmer was very impressive during that chaotic interview. He stood tall, spoke loudly and clearly, and even joked a little bit. By contrast, Kemba Walker was also there for the workout, and he sat slunched over, seemed disinterested, and sounded (as one reporter put it) like a dog with peanut butter stuck on the roof of its mouth.

Well, the Draft soon approached, and I got the sense that Kevin O'Connor wanted nothing to do with Jimmer. But in a fun little piece for the Universe, I still optimistically predicted the Jazz would take him at No. 12. The first three picks went just like everybody thought they would, with Kyrie Irving going to the Cavs, Derrick Williams to the T-Wolves, and Enes Kanter to the Jazz. Things got shaken up a little bit after that, and then Jimmer was taken at No. 10 by the Milwaukee Bucks. But it was immediately announced that he was drafted for the Sacramento Kings. It took all night for the Kings, Bucks and Bobcats to finalize their complicated trade, but it ended up with the Kings surprisingly trading up in the Draft to grab Jimmer by paying the price of Bismack Biyombo and Beno Udrih. Meanwhile, Kevin O'Connor likely breathed a sigh of relief and happily drafted Alec Burks. It's not that Jimmer would have been a bad fit in Utah, but most likely the fans' adoration of him would have put a lot of pressure on the coach who didn't play him or the general manager who didn't draft him. But nobody expected O'Connor to waste the third pick on Jimmer, so he was able to avoid some criticism on that front.

The Kings, meanwhile, seemed to make a pretty stupid trade at the time. Udrih was coming off a career year and Biyombo had a ton of potential. Plus, Sacramento had to take on John Salmons' unfavorable contract. But at the end of the day, it all became a wash. Udrih only played with the Bucks for a season and a half before being traded to Orlando. He then signed with New York before getting cut and recently signed with the Grizzlies (Memphis was rumored to be interested in Jimmer, but they chose Udrih instead). Biyombo has not had a particularly stellar career in Charlotte, and Salmons actually didn't hurt Sacramento that much because he was included in the Rudy Gay trade. So, almost three years later, I can't call that trade for Jimmer bad or good. I will call it unnecessary, though. Sacramento already had a ton of shoot-first, pass-never guards on their roster, leaving little to no room for Jimmer.

I was devastated for Jimmer. Not only did Sacramento have a terrible roster, but the whole organization was/is a complete mess. Their owners were bankrupt and almost moved the team to Seattle. Luckily they found some new owners and a little bit of stability, but how stable are you really when Shaquille O'Neal is one of your owners? Jimmer's first coach, Paul Westphal, seemed to like him and played him big minutes in the preseason. But Westphal got into a fight with notorious head case DeMarcus Cousins, and was fired only seven games into the season. After all, decent to mediocre coaches are easy to find, but players as big and strong as Cousins are not. So even though he acts like a complete jerk and idiot at times, the Kings are hanging on to him tooth and nail. Unfortunately, all this meant bad news for Jimmer. The new coach, Keith Smart, just never played him for whatever reason. Yeah, he's not as athletic as the other guys, and his defense is pretty terrible, but is he that much worse than the other players on the Kings roster? Here are Jimmer's stats through his first three years:

Season   Games   MPG   FG%   3FG%   FT%  PPG
2011-12     61        18.6     .386      .361       .833     7.6
2012-13     69        14.0     .421      .417       .859     7.2
2013-14     41        11.3     .475      .493       .895     5.9

So his minutes per game have steadily declined while his shooting percentages have steadily risen. Jimmer actually leads the NBA in 3-point percentage right now. I do want to put a disclaimer on those stats, though. The improved shooting is most likely due to the decreased competition Jimmer regularly faces. He usually only plays in the garbage minutes, when the game is already decided and both teams have the scrubs in. Nobody in those minutes are particularly good, and they're usually not trying very hard, not wanting to get hurt or too sweaty in a 20-point contest. So the defenders Jimmer has been facing more recently have likely been rather lackluster. I don't mean to discount anything Jimmer's done, I think it is still very impressive, but I want to help encourage some critical analysis of statistics. Most people work under the assumption that every minute of every NBA game is identical and an accurate indicator of a player's abilities. But anybody who watches the NBA has to admit that certain games and parts of games don't matter as much and are not played at the same intensity as the highest level of NBA games are. This is why I hate the per-36-minute stat. It is a little better than the completely nonsensical per-48-minute stat, but it still artificially increases most bench players' production. Sometimes they're just not able to play with as much energy for a longer period of time, and sometimes they do worse when they play against starters instead of bench players.

Anyway, what I'm trying to say (if I'm saying anything at all) is that I love Jimmer and I think he's a great player who has never really had a chance to prove himself. He doesn't have a lot of games with Chicago this year, but they will make the playoffs, giving Jimmer some good experience at that level. Hopefully Derrick Rose will be back next year and Jimmer will be there with him and turn into a major contributor on a contender. I would have loved to see him on San Antonio or Oklahoma City, but Chicago has a lot of potential, as well. Hopefully Jimmer will be able to resurrect Jimmermania and not become the next Adam Morrison.