Saturday, August 29, 2009

Battle of the Backup Bigs

In recent news, the Jazz decided to keep the rights to their 2009 2nd Round draft pick, Goran Suton, and allow him to come to fall camp and battle for a roster spot with the Jazz. It may be a long shot for Suton to make the team, since the Jazz already have 13 players under contract and $82 million in salary promised to those 13. Yet, if the Jazz wanted to keep a cheap 14th man (and someone to battle in practice) then Suton would probably be that guy. He could be the best option we have (or Collins?) to play that "last man on the bench" role. Perhaps he could be better than this photogenic stud, Kyrylo Fesenko (pictured nicely in my blog) if he ever proves himself in camp.

In other news, Fesenko's agent disputes the fact that Fes had a "falling out" with his head coach while playing for the national team in his native land. "He had a family thing to attend to and the team was playing some younger players, so it was kind of mutually agreed upon," Lash said. "... And just with his schedule, wanting to get back here and getting ready for the (NBA) season, it was something we had kind of spoken about ahead of time." Is that bogus or what?

Fes missed playing for the Summer League Jazz team because he felt it was SOOO important to play for his national team in Europe. Over the course of that all-important summertime event, Fes played in only 20 minutes for the first two games, logged only nine minutes in the third game, didn't get off the bench in the fourth contest and wasn't even with the team for the final outings against Estonia and the Czech Republic. Yeah... mighty Estonia & the Czech! His best game was a 13-point, seven-rebound outing against Hungary. Yippee!

Through this unimpressive, lackluster set of games, Fesenko's agent still believes he has lots to offer to the Jazz... "Fes brings something to that team that I think there's a void there — and that's just interior presence on the defensive end and rebounding," Lash said. "He's as big as it gets." Well... there's no doubt about the fact that he's BIG. But he just may not be talented, motivated or aggressive enough.

If only our third (Memo being the fourth) of our foreign bigs can somehow get healthy and contribute next season, then maybe we can improve (somewhat) from within. Kosta Koufos, from Ohio via Greece, has got to make a difference for the Jazz next season, because I can assure you... I don't foresee Fesenko or Suton giving us anything but bench time next year. And yet, I suppose that it's not even expected from them either way.

4 comments:

Pasty Gangsta said...

It's Kosta or bust this year. If Fes can't get along with a soft European coach in summer play he's definitely not going to see eye-to-eye with Jerry during the NBA season.

And Suton over Collins for the third spot, no contest.

Orlando said...

What is this talk of Collins? Isn't he retired? Where have I been?

Teo said...

Kosta has been playing quite well in prep for greece, let's see how he does in the european championship (starting monday).
I think he will be just fine if he gets some playing time, the kid needs to get games under his belt.

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