Monson: No snow job -- Real Salt Lake skates to victory for the first time in...
Sandy Mike Petke had said all the right things, most of them, anyway. He had shanked a couple of verbal shots off into the tall grass, sure, saying stuff like Saturday night’s game against Vancouver —...
View ArticleMonson: Jimmer Fredette really is basketball's 'Lonely Master'
There are a whole lot of respected basketball experts who think Jimmer Fredette has been balling out exactly where he should be — some 6,500 miles from the United States, in Shanghai. There, at least,...
View ArticleMonson: The Jazz now seek a reward worthy of the effort to earn it
The Jazz worked for their reward this season, a reward that rattled around their brains nearly every day, every game, every minute, from the opening of camp until their final regular-season victory...
View ArticleMonson: The Jazz and their arena are lit up again
What once was taken for granted around here as a normal part of spring — going to the NBA playoffs — had become scarce. An arena whose best moments had come in May and June of years gone by — packed...
View ArticleMonson: Dear Lord, let the Utes find a quarterback soon
After the blocking and tackling, the passing and catching, the running and sweating stopped in the Red-White spring game at Rice-Eccles Stadium on Saturday afternoon, it all came down to what it...
View ArticleMonson: Kalani Sitake is quietly picking up the trash at BYU
During a vacation last week, Kalani Sitake was visiting Disneyland, battling through crowds, buying $17 hamburgers and $8 ice cream cones, grinning and grimacing, finding fistfuls of so-called...
View ArticleMonson: Jazz have one key to advance in the playoffs -- Rudy Gobert's health
The Jazz are dead without Rudy Gobert. You can curse the Fates for it, and you should, because it’s unfair and competitively cruel. That makes the conclusion no less true. Game 1 was exceptional for...
View ArticleMonson: The Jazz need Rodney Hood to produce to advance past Clippers
If we’re going to go ahead and assume the Jazz have a chance to win their first-round series with the Clippers — Rudy Gobert’s not walking through that door anytime soon — then, let’s also go ahead...
View ArticleMonson: Gordon Hayward's all-time great playoff performance ruined
So, as it turns out, the Jazz, to quote Miracle Max, are only partly dead. Not all the way dead. With Rudy Gobert out, only mostly dead. Even with an all-time performance from Gordon Hayward, who...
View ArticleMonson: Those damn yanked-knees are killing the Jazz
When Rudy Gobert fell to the court seconds into his first playoff game then started crawling up the floor when he couldn’t stand on account of a damaged knee, the Staples Center crowd looked on in...
View ArticleMonson: With Gobert back, the battle is just beginning
News broke a little less than an hour before tipoff that Rudy Gobert was going to play in Game 4 on Sunday night. And Vivint Smart Home Arena was a happy place. A bit scared, a bit apprehensive about...
View ArticleMonson: Quin Snyder is the NBA's coach of the year -- and much more
Quin Snyder is a smart, passionate man. Nobody doubts that. He should be the NBA’s coach of the year. That’s where doubt floods into the picture. But this column blows four freeway exits past advocacy...
View ArticleMonson: Jazz now are thiiiiiiiiiiiis close to something extraordinary
Los Angeles Set against what had become the most important game of the season — Game 5 of the Jazz-Clippers playoff series — there were questions to answer at Staples Center on Tuesday night. Big...
View ArticleMonson: The Jazz's secret to winning isn't what you might think it is
Los Angeles After everything was done here Tuesday night in Game 5, the scoring, the missing, the boarding, the bumping, the bumbling, the rumbling, the dropping the anchor out, and, most...
View ArticleMonson: Two rarities -- honesty and acumen -- helped lead the Jazz to current...
Dennis Lindsey asked everybody to go ahead and fire away. They were assembled there and he was sitting in front of them on a postseason panel, not just facing the music, rather asking the volume to be...
View ArticleMonson: Now it's the Jazz's turn to feel desperation in the series
The Jazz had their matriculation from playoff neophytes to playoff veterans stymied late Friday night, their graduation to another level shunted by Chris Paul and his Clippers in a foundation-rattling...
View ArticleMonson: In Game 7, Jazz look for diamonds among the stones
After the Jazz’s loss in Game 6, a swing and miss at closing out the Clippers on Friday night in their first-round playoff series, the mood around the team was a bit sullen and, yet, surprisingly …...
View ArticleMonson: A different look at Quin Snyder -- through the eyes of a neighbor
Ryan Rosoff stepped out onto the boardwalk Sunday night at Rehoboth Beach, the resort town where he now lives in Delaware, wearing a Gordon Hayward jersey. Although he has no deep connection to Utah,...
View ArticleMonson: This Jazz-Warriors series has an eerily familiar look to it
The Jazz facing the Warriors in the Western Conference semifinals is similar to another semifinal playoff series — the Jazz playing the then-mighty Los Angeles Lakers in 1988. And the current Jazz, if...
View ArticleMonson: Good news -- Jazz can play better; bad news -- so can the Warriors
With the intention around here of at least watching the Jazz continue to evolve — they played better in Game 2 than they did in Game 1 — through this semifinal playoff series, as they face the team...
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