TEAM DREAMS 2017: JAZZ HANDS
Just four years ago, when vertical was the thing to be and Roy Hibbert the man to fear, Indiana Pacers coach Frank Vogel had his star players, George Hill, Paul George, and Hibbert, stand side by side at training camp, their arms outstretched.
“I just wanted to illustrate what enormous length we have,” he later explained.
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It’s one of the NBA’s oldest, corniest jokes. The team named the Jazz plays not in New Orleans but instead in Salt Lake City. How ironic! It’s low-hanging fruit, and it erases the Mormon Tabernacle Choir’s jazzier numbers. We don’t have to live like this.
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Ever since the Maginot line, essentialists have derided French defenses. But even as verticality has given way to switchability, a towering Frenchman has staked his claim to the title of the league’s best defender. Rudy Gobert, aka The Stifle Tower, cares not for your essentialisms and trends. His Maginot Line is “‘magine no scoring!”
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What’s longer than George Hill, Paul George, and Roy Hibbert?
Ricky Rubio, Derrick Favors, and Rudy Gobert! (And Thabo Sefalosha, and Donovan Mitchell, and Alec Burks, and Ekpe Udoh…)
Picture these Jazzmen, arms outstretched, awaiting you as you bring the ball down the court. Scary!
Now picture those same funhouse arms outstretched, but at their ends, the massive hands vibrate strangely.
JAZZ HANDS
What strange currents course through these fearsome men! What disruptions to the surrounding air! Those few passes and shots the Jazzmen don’t deflect are wildly diverted by the swirling currents.
Do you still joke about the Utah Jazz?
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When the ball comes back at you, it’s at the yo-yo hand of the maestro Rubio. Your Jazzman is minstrelsy, Billy Crystal. Retrograde trash. Ricky’s his own, new Jazzman. Still a visionary, but he’s rough now, mistakenly dubbed Rocky by a fansite. He’s seen things. His beard has seen things. His bun has seen things. The Lion and the cub on his arm? Seen things.
And on the floor, Ricky sees everything.
You say spacing is king, but what’s a king to a god?
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Hand down, man down? More like HANDS SHAKIN', MAN SHAKEN
Salt Lake is just another name for your puddle of tears.
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🎶 🎶 🎶 🎶 🎶 🎶 🎶 🎶 🎶 🎶 🎶 🎶
Those are jazz notes, fools! Hear them long after the PA’s been shut down, long after the hands have ceased their rhythmic quiver. The tinnitus of your vanquishing, the funereal hymn, the drumbeat of dirt on the lid of your coffin. If you had bothered to look up from your open casket, you’d have recognized those pallbearers, large mitts providing a subtle celebratory flutter. Even in death you can’t escape the Jazz hands.
