If you were to create a lottery draft order for the 14 best players in this year’s NBA playoffs, based only on the merits of their current level of postseason presence and play, what would it look like?
This is how I’d rank the top 14, in reverse order:
14) John Wall
Doesn’t shoot it well, but leads the playoffs, by nearly five dimes a game, in assists, averaging 13.3.
13) LaMarcus Aldridge
Offensive efficiency hasn’t been his strength going into Saturday night, making just 37 percent of hi...
Monson: NBA playoff draft order -- who would you pick and when?
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Monson: Utah was lucky to have Gene Fullmer as a native son
Forty thousand people lined the streets from Salt Lake City to West Jordan on a frigid January day in 1957 when Gene Fullmer returned home from New York City after beating middleweight world champion Sugar Ray Robinson in a convincing 15-round decision.
Only old-timers remember that now, but it was yesterday’s equivalent of the Jazz winning an NBA title or Utah and/or BYU winning a national football championship. It was big. A lot of fight experts considered Robinson the best boxer, pound for p...
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Monson: Warriors' Curry passed through Utah on his way to greatness -- and went unnoticed
Steph Curry may be the best basketball player on the planet, at least outside of any born in Akron, Ohio. Wait. Curry was born in Akron, too, just like … LeYou Know Who.
Either way, he’s handled his business in the NBA this season with an MVP-type performance for Golden State, most recently having dusted the New Orleans Pelicans in the first round of the playoffs. He leads all postseason scorers with an average of 34 points.
He’s a great shooter playing on a great team making a great run at the...
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Monson: Is BYU where NFL dreams go to die?
Loyalists and apologists can spin it any which way they'd like, but there is a dark fact hanging over BYU football that provides more evidence that the program's competitive goals, and the expectations of many of its fans, do not match its reality.
For the third year in the last five, BYU did not have a player selected in the NFL Draft.
That means something substantial.
It means the Cougars are lacking top-end talent.
That's not just my opinion. It's the opinion of talent evaluators who are pai...
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Monson: BYU football wants to win big? Relax the Honor Code
BYU is offering more money for cost of attendance than all but 10 percent of football programs around the country. Why?
It’s either because … a) hamburgers and clothes and video games and phones and computers and travel and fun in Provo cost more than they do in 90 percent of other college communities or … b) the Cougars’ program is eager/desperate to lure in the kinds of athletes it is missing out on, the ones necessary to make big-time football a winning proposition for the school.
The corre...
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Monson: Golf and guns, punches and pars don't mix
A hot news story came off a golf course in Connecticut the other day.
According to reports, 22-year-old Alejandro Baeza, angered by a group playing directly behind his own that was complaining about slow pace of play and such, overreacted a tad bit to that agitation by walking to his golf bag, grabbing a gun, tucking it into his shorts, then pulling his shirt up so the whining guys in the second group could see the weapon.
Apparently, this angry golfer needed a little more space.
Here’s the off...
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Monson: Deflategate has been way overblown
Maybe like Tom Brady’s footballs, I’m getting a little too soft.
But the NFL’s penalty handed down on Monday for the Patriots quarterback, and the Patriots themselves, for his and their involvement — wait, weren’t Robert Kraft and Bill Belichick exonerated? — in deflating footballs to the level of Brady’s liking in a postseason game they won by the count of 45-7 was over-the-top harsh. It seems the penalty was meant more for the rest of the teams in the league and for the public, and for public...
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Monson: Parents can learn from a man who played at Wimbledon
Seconds before the biggest moment of his career, Brad Pearce stood in a room with a small door that led out to one of sports’ most hallowed grounds, listening to the strict protocol he was supposed to follow en route.
The Royals will be in the Royal Box and you must stop and turn and bow and blah-blah-blah-blah-blah-blah-blah …
He heard nothing. Not a word.
As one of 37 Americans in the Open era to reach the quarterfinals at Wimbledon, the kid from Provo was nervous as hell. He intended to win,...
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Monson: Coaches who are egomaniacs and jerks, beware
The power given to coaches, as it pertains to and affects the players subjected to them, is and always has been a fascinating study, from the time of Knute Rockne straight through to Woody Hayes and Bob Knight and Mike Krzyzewski and Urban Meyer. Coaches often have seen themselves, see themselves, as generals who expect their wishes, their commands to be executed precisely and without question.
They are the kings of their realms, but … well, there is no but.
That’s what makes the case of Illino...
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Monson: Lady Luck can take a flyin' leap -- the Jazz have a plan
Maybe none of this will matter a whole lot.
But fortune went ahead, anyway, and gave the Jazz pretty much what they deserved on Tuesday night in the NBA draft lottery. Dennis Lindsey sat in his seat on the panel of 14 representatives from 14 teams, a sight that every year oddly resembles the set of a TV game show, Hollywood Squares style — you half-expect Wink Martindale or Gene Rayburn to step out on the stage at any moment, and waited for what the pingpong balls would give him and his Jazz.
T...
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Monson: Utah's Andrew Bogut playing big for the Warriors
A couple of seasons back, Andrew Bogut was hopeful but frustrated, bemoaning the Golden State Warriors’ defensive struggles, calling them “horrendous.” He had fought through injury to return to the lineup, and just when that return was expected to jam up opposing offenses, the team morphed into a freeway onramp.
The Jazz made the Warriors’ difficulties worse, beating them up and down the floor and flat beating them at EnergySolutions Arena by the count of 115-101.
Bogut, whose No. 4 jersey hang...
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Monson: Jazz need possibilities to become realities
In talking with Dennis Lindsey, it’s plain to see the man has a plan.
He isn’t being specific, but he is laying out a general set of possibilities, tossing them around like a chef juggling shrimp over the grill at Benihana’s. Hopeful he remains as he checks through them that the progress the young Jazz made last season — they finished after the All-Star break with a 19-10 record and the best defense in the NBA — can be built upon, with new additions and with further individual and collective gro...
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Monson: Steph Curry is OK, we're all OK
Sometimes we forget how grueling and unforgiving basketball can be, how hard the floor is, how sharp the edges and elbows are, how high the rim is, how vulnerable the ligaments are, how exposed the head, neck and spine — stuff that’s difficult to repair, once damaged — can be.
And then, sometimes we are reminded.
As Steph Curry flipped through the air on Monday night, his legs taken out from beneath him as he soared and then fell upside down over and under Trevor Ariza in Game 4 of the Western ...
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Monson: How BYU can get into the Big 12 -- and find some peace
Here’s the truth about what BYU can do to make itself more attractive to the presidents of the Big 12, increasing its chances for inclusion in the conference and making its position more acceptable. Not just acceptable to those outside its community, but those inside it, too:
Soften the language in its honor code. Leave some parts out and administer the remaining parts with a little more kindness and understanding.
It wouldn’t be that difficult, and it would relieve problems moving forward, at ...
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Monson: Utah can beat the team formerly known as USC
Friday night’s USC-Utah game is a classic match between a team whose name is bigger than its actual game and a team whose name, at least according to the casual masses, isn’t as great as its game. And that kind of set-up often ends poorly for the marquee guys.
Utah is a program on the rise. Still relative Pac-12 neophytes, the Utes have gotten better each season, finding their footing and becoming a threat to any team they face. Flaws remain, the thing isn’t perfect, particularly on offense. Bu...
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Monson: BYU's potential pivot point comes against West Virginia
Landover, Md. • Kalani Sitake says his team, especially his offense, has to improve, all around.
Ty Detmer says his offensive line “hasn’t played terrible” — not exactly a ringing endorsement — and that he’s simplifying his game plan, dropping the whole thing down a couple of notches for a fifth-year senior quarterback who was supposed to be the heart and soul of the offense, an offense that languishes near the bottom of national rankings in multiple categories.
Taysom Hill says within the same ...
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Monson: BYU's adversity aside, can it win?
Landover, Md.
If this was any kind of audition or showcase for BYU’s Big 12 hopes … it was as crazy and undulating and exciting and, at times, troubled as the entire bid process has been, maybe more so. At the end, after the Cougars had whittled down a formerly lopsided game to 35-32, seen it fall away after a West Virginia interception and regained after a Mountaineer fumble, the whole thing at FedEx Field came down to a final possession.
Again.
You saw it. You’ve seen it in other games.
Thi...
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Monson: No BS -- the Jazz can be real, real good
Spoken expectations were tamped down on Monday by Jazz players who opened training camp by repeatedly cautioning themselves that they had not yet accomplished anything and that making the playoffs for the first time since just about anybody can remember would take focus, fortitude and function.
That part’s up to them.
Everyone else can clean knock themselves out.
And here’s why: The Jazz can be good, at last. Not just kind of good. Not just potentially good. Not just we’re-not-skipping-any-step...
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Monson: BYU's Great QB Divide rages on
The beautiful thing about sports is that it’s OK to disagree about stuff.
The whole idea that everybody has to walk in lockstep, that everyone must agree when it comes to the way they think about teams and games and outcomes and issues and strategies and starting lineups is bogus. We’re not talking about universal truths here. We’re not debating the meaning of life. We’re talking about who should win a game or who should make the playoffs or who should get the ball or who should line up under c...
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Monson: Utah did almost everything right -- and lost
Berkeley, Calif.
Somewhere the leather-skinned, buzzard-tough, bloody -knuckled, bust-you-in-the-chops-and-laugh-at-your-pain guys are crying, the Buddy Ryans, the Bud Grants, the Chuck Nolls, and the Fred Whittinghams.
Fred’s son — Kyle Whittingham — channeled those coaches on Saturday against high-flying Cal, utilizing a sound, old-school game plan, a plan that could have worked, would have worked, should have worked, but …
“Just came up one play short at the end,” Whittingham said.
The n...
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