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In the interest of keeping EnergySolutions Arena filled and generating enough money to help cover one of the NBA's highest payrolls, the Jazz have conceived of a Ticket Buddy program to share seats sold via a season ticket.
They may be on to something, even beyond the innovative marketing strategy that rivals the Salt Lake Bees' landmark achievement of staging five fireworks shows in a stretch of 15 home games this month --- what, no fireworks for Tuesday, July 21?
Besides the potential marriages, business deals and golf partnerships that are sure to develop when former strangers become Ticket Buddies, there's an on-court application that could benefit the team, in much the same way as a system of specialized roles once enabled Kyle Korver's mother to score 74 points in a game.
It's all about job-sharing, and it worked for Laine Korver, who played strictly offense in the old days of six-on-six Iowa girls basketball. So besides suggesting subcategories of the 43 home games (including two preseason contests) for Ticket Buddies to divide between them -- such as the nights during the season when Carlos Boozer is fully engaged in playing defense (12) and the times when coach Jerry Sloan is using descriptions that city folk can understand in his postgame analysis (10) -- I have devised the ultimate Jazz Buddy approach to winning basketball.
Rather than adding players, as some observers have prescribed, I believe the Jazz simply need to
1. Combining Kyle Korver's shooting stroke with Ronnie Brewer's athletic ability to create a genuine shooting guard who can also work inside and defend most other shooting guards.
2. Blending Boozer's offensive game, including his mid-range jump shot and ability to finish around the basket with either hand, with Paul Millsap's knack for offensive rebounding in building an awesome, if still undersized, power forward.
3. Mixing Boozer's Duke-educated mind with Millsap's genuineness to produce intelligent quotes you can actually believe.
4. Pairing Deron Williams' limitless determination with ... sorry, no match here. Ticket Buddies will have guess in which games D-Will be resting for more than 10 minutes.
5. Fusing the professionalism and toughness of the Matt Harpring of old -- as opposed to the old Matt Harpring -- with the youth of C.J. Miles into a serviceable small forward.
6. Throwing together Mehmet Okur's unusual three-point shooting (watch those toes on the line, Memo) ability for a center with anything resembling a traditional big man's inside presence, ideally from Kyrylo Fesenko in his third NBA season.
7. Substituting Fesenko's fun-loving personality and entertaining quotes for Andrei Kirilenko's lost approach to the game that once joyfully filled stat sheets and notebooks before he turned workmanlike and dour.
8. Combining Kirilenko's diverse skills with free agent Ronnie Price's hustle and pure love of the game, beyond any contract provisions.
9. The offensive firepower of the Jazz starters with the defensive tenacity of ... somebody? Anybody?
OK, I never said the Ticket Buddy method would solve everything, did I?
But it can produce some positive results, I'm sure. Those smiling, happy faces on the billboards can't be wrong.
