Redrafting the Jazz: 2009

I have been cursed by a witch to repeatedly travel back through time to relive every NBA draft. Fortunately, her spell sends me directly to the Utah Jazz war room on draft night and all the executives magically know I’m from the future and will do whatever I say. Unfortunately, the curse prevents me from seeing how my advice altered the future, as I am sent back to the previous year as soon as draft night ends.

June 25, 2009 – Madison Square Garden, New York City

Previous season:

The Jazz underperformed in 2008-09, limping along to a 48-34 record and getting knocked out of the first round by the Lakers in five games. Injuries limited Carlos Boozer to just 37 games, and when he did play, it was at a level far below his usual All-Star self. And he wasn’t the only one playing below his potential. Two of Utah’s highest-paid players — Andrei Kirilenko and Matt Harpring — were little more than shells of their former selves. I only bring up the money because that was a major concern for the Jazz this year. They were over the salary cap and had no intentions of paying the luxury tax. This severely limited everything the team tried to do this year. Which, I suppose we could say, made this draft all the more important.

The draft:

This was the year of the point guard, with 11 point guards being taken in the first round (Minnesota bizarrely drafted three of them). Utah also joined in on the fun, taking VCU’s Eric Maynor with the 20th pick.

The Jazz then used the 50th pick on Michigan State’s Goran Suton, a center from Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Analysis:

Deron Williams played in 68 games in 2008-09, and the Jazz quickly learned that Ronnie Price was not an adequate fill-in. So it makes sense that Utah would take a point guard here. Unfortunately, Eric Maynor never got much of a chance to develop with the Jazz. After just 26 games, Utah traded Maynor and Harpring to Oklahoma City for the draft rights to Peter Fehse, a German center who never made it to the NBA. Harpring had suffered a career-ending injury and the cash-strapped Jazz didn’t want to pay his substantial salary. The Thunder had the cap space to absorb Harpring’s contract, but they demanded a valuable young asset as compensation. 

At the time, it really felt like the Jazz robbed themselves of Maynor’s potential, but in hindsight, I don’t think they missed out on too much. Maynor never developed into a great player, partly due to an ACL tear he sustained in Oklahoma City. He bounced around the league before ultimately dropping out in 2014.

So now the question is should I even bother trying to find a better replacement for Maynor. Would Utah have traded whomever was drafted at this spot to dump off Harpring’s contract? Well, for the sake of argument, let’s pretend that’s not the case, and that I can find someone that will impress Jerry Sloan so much in the first 26 games that he’ll demand the Jazz dump off Ronnie Price instead. 

And the best guy I can think of to fill that role is Patrick Beverley. He was named to the All-Defensive First Team once and the Second Team twice. He was also the inaugural winner of the Hustle Award, for whatever that’s worth. But what I’m getting at is I think his defense would have endeared him in Sloan’s eyes, and he probably could have even played alongside Deron Williams in smaller lineups.

Now for Goran Suton. He was cut during preseason and never made it on with another NBA team. So we can definitely do better. But I have another dilemma here. Two important Jazz players were undrafted rookies from this class: Wesley Matthews and Joe Ingles. Matthews did join the Jazz in 2009 and was elevated to the starting lineup after Kevin O’Connor dumped Ronnie Brewer off in another cash-saving move. But then O’Connor refused to match the offer Portland made him, and he went off to have a very productive career away from the Jazz. I don’t see how any of that would have changed if the Jazz did draft Matthews instead of Suton.

Ingles eventually became one of the most important — and beloved — players on the Jazz. But he didn’t join the NBA until 2014. Were those years playing overseas crucial to his development? If I brought him in as a second-round pick in 2009, would he have been absolutely terrible and suffered the same fate as Suton? Or would Sloan have seen what Quin Snyder saw in Ingles, and the Jazz could have enjoyed a younger, more energetic Ingles five years earlier? There’s no way to know. But I think it’s worth taking a chance on him.

My advice:

1. Use the 20th pick on Patrick Beverley.

2. Use the 50th pick on Joe Ingles.

This was a really tough draft for me. Because even as I make this advice, I know in the back of my mind that O’Connor will likely send Beverley to the Thunder and Sloan would cut Ingles in the preseason and then Portland would still snag Matthews the next year. But maybe, just maybe, that dire scenario won’t happen and I would have actually been able to help the Jazz.

Watchmen #9: More nostalgia and some filler

After spending most of last issue showing the dangers of spending too much time living in the past, Moore focuses this issue on the dangers of avoiding the past. Unfortunately, he didn’t have quite enough material and once again had to rely on a fair amount of filler to reach that high page count.

This is an interesting attempt to show what it would look like for someone to be teleported.

I don’t think the effect works very well within the limitations of the comic book medium. But I do appreciate Dave Gibbons trying something new.

This is kind of funny, but mostly horrifying. A god-like being has spontaneously teleported a woman to another planet (mostly against her will), and completely forgot that she needs oxygen to breathe. How is Laurie supposed to convince him to save humanity when he is this far removed from the human race?

The god of Mars has constructed a cathedral to himself, bizarrely using pink glass to pay homage to his first true love — watchmaking. Gibbons perfectly captures the awe-inspiring absurdity of this world.

We long to see Laurie take a stand here — to openly defy Dr. Manhattan and the predestination he espouses. But, predictably, Laurie once again falls into doing exactly what the people around her told her to do. She ends up climbing Dr. Manhattan’s stairs, just as she helped Dan break out Rorschach, and just as she became the Silk Spectre in the first place.

The reflected face in the snow globe is another experiment of Gibbons’ that I don’t think works in a comic book. A valiant effort, but not for me.

It is understandable that the memory Laurie clings to as her “first” was a rare moment of solitude, as much of the rest of her life would be deprived of that secret and enchanted feeling.

Dr. Manhattan may experience the past, present and future simultaneously, and he may be removed from humanity to the point of forgetting about the necessity of oxygen, but he still has a little bit of human in him that is susceptible to jealousy and occasionally engaging in a little revisionist history.

This image took up two-thirds of the page. It’s nice, but it seems to me like Moore was running out of things to say.

I’m not sure why Laurie is so shocked to see Dr. Manhattan conjure water out of nothing. Hasn’t she seen enough of his powers to not be amazed anymore?

For all the Hollis Mason fans out there, let me present that time he casually asked a 16-year-old girl if she’d read a book about her mother’s attempted rape. Yes, even the most likable, admirable character in this story is fundamentally flawed.

One of the great tragedies of Laurie’s story is how at a young age she saw first-hand the horrific effects of a life spent being a “superhero.”  But she was unable to break free of the life her mother laid out for her.

I want to show this panel to all the developers who insist on building in the Utah desert. Do we have to fill up every available spot of land? Can’t we just let the empty desert be an empty desert?

A landscape worthy of Spaceman Spiff. Yes, this is another needlessly massive panel eating up more space for this sparse story. But at least it’s pretty filler.

Man, teenage Laurie was horny! After spending a solid 10 minutes ogling Dr. Manhattan, she immediately starts flirting with the incredibly creepy Comedian.

Sally’s “not long enough” comment is interesting here. By the time of Eddie’s murder, it will have been long enough and she will look back on him with a sad fondness.

Another horrifying aspect of Dr. Manhattan’s passivity is the fact that he knows there’s an ominous gap in his future, but he doesn’t care to investigate it. He just accepts it as part of his otherworldly existence.

Fun fact: Olympus Mons doesn’t actually look like that. It’s so big, and its slope is so gradual, that the curvature of Mars prevents you from seeing it from the surface. Also, if you were on top it, you wouldn’t realize you were on a 13-mile high volcano because the top is so enormously wide.

Most of these artistic transitions work. But some of them, like this one, are a bit cheesy.

Finally! Laurie shows a little backbone! Unfortunately, this was the scene she referred to as “acting like an idiot.” But she was completely in the right here, especially considering Eddie’s wildly inappropriate behavior at this party.

It seems like Eddie genuinely regretted what he did to Sally. But before you feel too bad for him, remember the story of that gruesome scar. He murdered a woman that was pregnant with his child. So his “only once” line can’t carry very much weight.

Another spectacular image by Gibbons and colorist John Higgins. I really haven’t been giving Higgins the credit he deserves, but his work is truly astounding.

Believe it or not, Dr. Manhattan actually becomes a fairly decent therapist here. I love the line, “You’re deliberately shutting out understanding.”

This was a powerful reveal. Maybe a little more drawn out than I would like, but still effective. And I think Gibbons did a great job with the reflected face in the perfume bottle.

There was no logical reason for Dr. Manhattan’s cathedral to shatter like this. It was strong enough to support Laurie’s weight no problem. A little bottle of perfume shouldn’t bring it down. I guess Dr. Manhattan chose to destroy it for symbolic purposes.

I am really surprised that Moore and Gibbons chose an extreme zoom out in this moment. Dr. Manhattan has just realized that human life is a miracle and worth preserving — perhaps the most significant realization he’s ever had. But instead of closing in on these two individuals in this powerful, emotional moment, the comic keeps pulling away until they’re tiny specks.

Yes, there is a smiley face on Mars. Actually, there’s a couple of them, but this, the Galle crater, is the most prominent. Granted, it doesn’t look this clean and orderly, but it was really neat that Moore and Gibbons were able to use it in Watchmen.

The comic keeps on zooming out from this point until Mars and even the sun are just tiny, imperceptible dots in the cold, uncaring vastness of space. It’s an interesting juxtaposition to Dr. Manhattan tenderly telling Laurie to dry her eyes and rejoice in the miracle of life. Was Moore trying to say that Dr. Manhattan’s revelation was wrong? That he should have stayed away and given up on life? I don’t get it.

The supplemental material is pages from Sally’s old scrapbook — a collection of literal scraps of paper that anything to do with the Silk Spectre, no matter how unflattering the coverage. There really isn’t anything significant here — just another reminder of how shallow Sally was.

Sally openly mocked Captain Metropolis’ over-the-top cheesiness, yet she still agreed to join the Minutemen merely for the publicity. She primarily used her role as a “superhero” to become a celebrity. At least, as much of a celebrity as she could muster.

To show just how desperate Sally was for any attention whatsoever, she even preserved an incredibly negative review of the movie about her life. Normal people don’t do this. But in Moore’s world, the only who would become superheroes are the mentally unstable.

We do end on a thoughtful and heartbreaking look at the complicated emotions of so many victims of sexual assault. Part of me wishes we had more on that topic, but the other part says we got just enough here. Moore is exploring a lot of ideas in this story, and we don’t need too many diversions away from the main plot.

Redrafting the Jazz: 2010

I have been cursed by a witch to repeatedly travel back through time to relive every NBA draft. Fortunately, her spell sends me directly to the Utah Jazz war room on draft night and all the executives magically know I’m from the future and will do whatever I say. Unfortunately, the curse prevents me from seeing how my advice altered the future, as I am sent back to the previous year as soon as draft night ends.

June 24, 2010 – Madison Square Garden, New York City

Previous season:

In Jerry Sloan’s final full season as head coach, the Jazz achieved a 53-29 and reached the second round of the playoffs. However, they were swept by the Lakers in that series, due in part to the career-altering injury sustained by Mehmet Okur. On paper, this was a really decent roster with Deron Williams, Carlos Boozer, Andrei Kirilenko and the emerging Paul Millsap demanding more and more playing time off the bench. But I suppose we all should have seen this as the beginning of the end. After the Jazz struck gold with the undrafted rookie Wesley Matthews, they traded away starter Ronnie Brewer to make room. This did not sit well with Williams, who was good friends with Brewer. And we all know how well the disgruntled Deron saga went in 2011. Ironically, the Jazz didn’t even bother keeping Matthews the following offseason, having caused all that disruption for nothing.

The draft:

Thanks to a 2004 trade involving Tom Gugliotta and Keon Clark, the Jazz owned the Knicks’ first-round pick, which turned out to be No. 9 overall. Utah drafted Gordon Hayward, fresh off Butler’s exciting Cinderella run in the NCAA Tournament.

The Jazz did not own their own pick (No. 23), due to a 2007 trade that sent Gordan Giricek to Philadelphia for Kyle Korver. That pick was used on Trevor Booker, who ironically ended up playing two seasons for the Jazz in 2014 and 2015.

With the 55th pick, Utah drafted an athletic forward from Western Kentucky named Jeremy Evans.

Analysis:

Gordon Hayward was actually a pretty good pick for the Jazz. He developed into becoming the best player on the team and even reached the All-Star game in 2017. The only problem is the guy who was taken immediately after him just happened to be the best player in the draft. Fresno State’s Paul George has been to eight All-Star games, has won six All-NBA honors and four All-Defensive awards. Plus, he plays the same position as Hayward, so this is a complete no-brainer.

The Jazz tried really hard to develop Jeremy Evans into something worthwhile. But after five seasons, the only memorable thing he accomplished was winning the dunk contest. So I recommend taking a different Jeremy with this pick — Harvard point guard Jeremy Lin. True, Linsanity was rather short-lived, but Lin did have a handful of fairly decent seasons, which is much more than can be said about Evans. In any case, I’m sure Lin would have been an upgrade over Sundiata Gaines.

My advice:

1. Use the No. 9 pick on Paul George.

2. Use the No. 55 pick on Jeremy Lin.

I’m not going to kid myself into think the George acquisition would have prevented any of the turmoil of 2011. But I do think he would have risen to the challenge of being the go-to guy much faster and abler than Hayward. Unless Tyrone Corbin would have found a way to taint his career … Ugh. Well, I can never know exactly how my changes play out — all I can do is offer the best advice in the moment!

Watchmen #8: The danger of nostalgia

I think Alan Moore hit a turning point at the end of issue #7. He had finished setting everything up and had thoroughly shown us how frustrating and unlikable all these characters are. I also suspect he began to feel just how joyless the act of deconstruction can be. Perhaps he yearned for a nostalgic return to simple action and adventure. Of course, Watchmen can’t be that simple. Moore will give us plenty of action and adventure here, but he’ll present it as a tragedy, not a celebration.

We open with Hollis calling Sally for the first time in years, partly to gossip about Dan and Laurie, partly to wax nostalgically about the “good ol’ days.”  Naturally, Sally owns a bottle of Adrian’s Nostalgia perfume to further drive home the point.

Ironically, it’s Sally who advises Hollis to stop living in the past, when she’s perhaps more guilty of doing this than anyone else. She spends her days being waited on hand and foot, alternating between complaining and fondly reminiscing. Sally doesn’t contribute to anything or help anybody in any way — trapped in the gilded cage of nostalgia.

Bernard is feeling a little nostalgic, too, as today would have been his anniversary with his late wife. But he’s mostly preoccupied with the stunning news that Rorschach was a regular costumer of his. Immediately after sagely observing that many people miss what “happens under the waterline,” Bernard casts a hasty, and incorrect, judgment on Dr. Malcolm Long. As usual, our intrepid newsstand man is just a tad slow to learn the lessons he teaches.

Dan has returned to full superhero mode, quickly proving that he’s a much more effective detective than Rorschach. Just a little research on his computer begins to uncover this vast conspiracy. Unfortunately, Dan still naïvely believes Rorschach actually learned something useful during his joke of an investigation.

Most importantly, Dan has the ability to think much bigger than Rorschach. This isn’t a simple plot to kill superheroes. This is somebody spending years to get Dr. Manhattan off planet to cause Armageddon. And even the wishy-washy Laurie can’t say no to stopping Armageddon.

Rorschach, meanwhile, is preparing for the imminent attempt on his life by … staring blankly into space. I might say he’s meditating, but he really doesn’t strike me as the meditating type. He’s not a complete idiot — he can see how easily his guards can be called off — but I’d think he should be doing exercises or something in that cell.

I still find it hard to believe that Rorschach’s therapist would quit after just a handful of sessions with him. But then again, that’s probably due to me reading this book in the 2020s and not the 1980s.

Hey, look! It’s one of our detective buddies who I wish played a bigger part in the story! And I’m really glad that Moore acknowledged how reckless it was of Dan to stand next to Adrian Veidt and Dr. Manhattan at Eddie Blake’s funeral.

Steven Fine is a good detective who figured out Dan is Nite Owl pretty easily. Unfortunately, he didn’t devote much time to solving Eddie’s murder, thereby completely missing the much larger picture.

Speaking of the bigger picture, I love how Moore uses the shlubby copyboy Seymour to show the audience the most important thing of the story. But we’re not suspecting anything noteworthy coming from this far-right tabloid, much less this random background character with a smiley face shirt. It’s a neat way to hide the truth in plain sight.

Moore finally gives us a glimpse of the true threat. I still wish we had more information on the creation of this monster, but I understand it’s a delicate balancing act between leaving your audience in suspense and inadvertently revealing too much too soon.

The most logical explanation for the police’s ineptitude with protecting Rorschach has to be complicity. They didn’t want to kill him themselves, and figured it’d be clean and neat for him to be killed during a prison riot. Of course, if Moore had been writing this story today, the more realistic outcome would have been the police simply shooting him on the spot during the arrest attempt.

You’ve gotta love these shots. Nite Owl is back in full swing, more inspirational than any hero this side of Dr. Manhattan.

Oh look, here’s Moore making Rorschach look cool again. Unfortunately, a certain movie will unnecessarily exaggerate this scene.

See, a simple sliced throat. That’s graphic and horrifying enough. No need to go bigger and bloodier. I do plan to review the Watchmen movie one day, but it’s going to be a while. Suffice it to say, I think this scene alone demonstrates everything wrong with Zack Snyder’s vision of this story.

From certain angles, Nite Owl’s airship is breathtakingly amazing. But from other angles — especially when we can see the people inside — it looks downright cheesy and ridiculous. Moore and Gibbons never let us forget how embarrassingly absurd these “heroes” are.

If you’re cheering for the guy who’s cracking lame jokes after brutally murdering someone, you’re doing it wrong.

Horror, madness, sordid, violent. That’s Rorschach. Not someone to be celebrated. Not someone to be glorified.

It is a little strange how Big Figure is suddenly left all alone here. He apparently had enough clout to intimidate Rorschach’s guard. And he had to send prisoners away who all wanted a piece of Rorschach. Where did they all go? Why did he only have two men with him?

Dan and Laurie are both bothered by the level of violence Rorschach immerses himself in, but not that much. Don’t forget what they did to those punks in the alley. Here they are casually making jokes, despite the pandemonium around them. Not to mention their obliviousness to Rorschach killing a man just feet away from them.

It’s pretty funny how Rorschach is still clinging to his mask killer conspiracy, despite the fact that he could have easily been killed during his arrest or even in his cell. He’s not really given too much introspection.

Don’t let anyone tell you that Dr. Manhattan doesn’t have a sense of humor. This is one of the funniest panels in the whole series.

I’m glad that Moore admitted this was a deus ex machina moment. Dr. Manhattan knew he’d be having a conversation with Laurie on Mars, so he decided to go to Earth to pick her up. But he only had that conversation with her because he randomly decided to go get her. I’m torn on this. Part of me wishes Moore had a better reason for Dr. Manhattan to return to the story. The other part of me loves how random this was, following Dr. Manhattan’s bizarre logic.

Our poor detective ended up causing the very thing he was hoping to avoid. If he hadn’t told Dan he knew he was Nite Owl, Dan might not have had that sense of urgency to prompt him to actually break Rorschach out of prison. Steve’s mistake is similar to Adrian’s, but on a much smaller scale.

And now we return to the theme of nostalgia. Bernard is one of the few people here willing to acknowledge the bleakness of the past. While most everyone else in this story is looking back on old times with fondness, Bernard remembers just how quickly an angry mob can turn ugly and hurt the innocent.

The mariner finally returns home, but is unable to celebrate this monumental achievement or appreciate the beautiful sunset behind him. Perhaps Adrian, too, just needed to pause and look at the good he’s accomplished.

And now Hollis Mason falls victim to an angry mob. Yes, they were all likely high on drugs, but they were ultimately protesting against an unjust system, where the guilty parties are rarely held accountable. Hollis had nothing to do with breaking Rorschach out of jail, but he did directly inspire Dan to pick up the Nite Owl mantel. And, more importantly, he helped build up the rather insane world of costumed vigilantes. The nostalgia of his crime-fighting days was so powerful, it prevented him from ever fully moving on from it — or questioning whether he actually was doing the right thing. It is fitting, therefore, that he is ultimately killed by the symbol of his past.

This sad, shocking ending is unfortunately tainted by this kid’s horribly unnatural dialogue. “Hello, Mr. Mason? Remember us? We’re the lovable trick-or-treaters who visited you last year on Halloween! It’s Halloween again tonight, so we’ve decided to come say trick-or-treat again!”

The supplemental material is a proof copy of the New Frontiersman. I love the attention to detail with the margin notes and tape marks. But I do have to wonder where those mugshots of the Comedian, Rorschach and Nite Owl came from.

If anyone has any doubts about the nature of this tabloid, here it is actually defending the Ku Klux Klan. You really can’t stoop much lower than that. And just a reminder: this is Rorschach’s favorite paper.

This is a wonderfully funny political cartoon. It reminds me of The Onion, complete with the sobbing Statue of Liberty.

Once again, Moore buries some of the most important information in the back of the easily shippable supplemental material. Here is a detailed accounting of all the people Adrian kidnapped to create his monster, including the startling revelation that he stole the head of a boy believed to have psychic powers. Was this kid actually a psychic? Through eight issues of this story, we’d been led to believe that Dr. Manhattan was the only super-powered individual on the planet. The implication that there might have been somebody in this world with psychic powers is a huge deal, and should have been explored further. It really feels like a cheat for Moore to suddenly wave his hand and say, “Oh, by the way, psychics exist in this world, too.” But in a way, it kind of feels like Moore returning to that nostalgic world of wacky superhero stories.