Boozer good to go, and childish behavior
LOS ANGELES – Before the play Charlotte in a preseason game today at the Staples Center here, a few lingering leftovers …
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Jazz point guard Deron Williams suggested he didn’t need Saturday’s 20-point, eight-rebound effort to alleviate any worries about whether or not power forward Carlos Boozer will be ready for the regular season.
“I never had any worries at all,” Williams said after Saturday’s exhibition road loss to the Los Angeles Clippers. “He’s healthy. He’s a professional.”
Boozer had averaged just 8.5 points and 5.5 boards in four preseason games going into Saturday.
“I felt good out there,” he said afterward.
“I’ve been ready,” added Boozer, who suggested there is no need to read too much into what is done – or not done – early in an eight-game exhibition season. “I like the preseason – but I like the regular season more. I think we all do.”
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The Jazz are playing Charlotte in the early game of today’s Preseason Shootout at Staples because they lost Saturday and the Bobcats lost Saturday’s nightcap to the Los Angeles Lakers.
Win or lose Saturday, incidentally, the Lakers were locked into playing tonight’s late game – because they rule the Staples Centers, and the Clippers are put up with just because they manage to come up with the rent money.
Tickets to the two two-games-a-day sessions get fans into both games – a two-for-the-price-of-one preseason promotion, even though fans this weekend seem as if they couldn’t care less about any game that does not involve the Lakers.
Only a few hundred – 500 or so – were on hand for the first half of Saturday’s Jazz-Clippers game, and odds are there will be even fewer when Utah and Charlotte gets under way today.
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From the it-doesn’t-get-much-more-juvenile department, also known as blatant hazing, the Jazz are making their rookies tote little-girl backbacks/suitcases just about everywhere they go.
Point Eric Maynor’s features Disney Princesses including Snow White and Cinderella, and the wording “We Love to Sparkle.”
Second-season big Kosta Koufos – according to NBA immaturity rules, a rookie until he plays his first regular-season game during his sophomore year in the league – picked a Jonas Brothers bag, though some of the vets think he’s getting off too easy.
One Jazz rookie was in a hotel elevator the other day, and an actual little girl thought he looked so weird with the pink suitcase she was too scared to walk in.
There has been no talk, by the way, of perhaps donating the bags to charity and instead actually behaving like the professional adults they’re supposed to be.
Other NBA teams are similarly hazing their rookies this season, by the way, and doing in some form or another is a longstanding league tradition – but the Jazz, who usually have their rookies tote actual luggage for the vets or make donut/bagel runs, having never in recent years stooped to such childish behavior.
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