Kris Humphries visited EnergySolutions Arena long enough Saturday to revive the issues of his time as a Jazzman, invoking these questions:
Was he the worst first-round draft pick in team history?
Was he part of the worst trade the Jazz ever made?
Was he the owner of the worst nickname I ever gave a Utah athlete in print?
The answer in each case is a qualified yes, which raises some follow-up questions, going forward:
Sure you want the Jazz to have another lottery pick in June?
Sure you want the Jazz to make a trade next month?
How much do I hope nobody remembers my "Junior Mailman" label for him?
Humphries, who was recently acquired by New Jersey and may well make history as a member of the NBA's worst team ever, always will have a place in Jazz lore as the franchise's first lottery pick.
The Nets like him a lot; of course, they're 3-40 after a 116-83 loss to the Jazz, so anybody can look decent in this context.
"Kris has been great," said coach Kiki Vandeweghe. "He's played with a lot of energy."
Humphries posted 10 points and five rebounds against the Jazz, just below his averages through six games after coming from Dallas in a trade.
"It's an opportunity to more minutes than I was playing before," Humphries said. "It's an opportunity to learn a lot from a tough situation, and get out of it."
Or try to, anyway. As hopeless as the Nets appear, Humphries is making something of himself, which was never the case with the Jazz.
"Man, I was real young [19] when I was here, so it's been a process," he said.
The Jazz took him before knowing they would be able to sign free agents Carlos Boozer and Mehmet Okur later that summer in 2004, so Humphries never really had a chance to play consistently or succeed in Utah. At least with the Nets, his fourth NBA team in six seasons, he's becoming established enough to fulfill some of the promise that made him draftable at No. 14.
"I think he's a talented kid ... [who] eventually can do a lot of things out there," Boozer said.
Arriving as a 6-foot-9 power forward who wore No. 32 as a Minnesota freshman, Humphries naturally evoked comparisons to Karl Malone. Such talk became especially irresistible after his first post-draft interview, when Humphries referred to the "city of Utah," just as the Mailman did.
Obviously, that's where the likeness ended. Humphries lasted two unproductive seasons in Utah before being traded to Toronto for former BYU center Rafael Araujo.
Araujo played in only 28 games for the Jazz and never appeared in the NBA again (he's now playing in his native Brazil). Humphries is still in the league, so that hardly was much of a deal for the Jazz.
Just the same, "I've never had a player that I've coached that I hoped they'd fail," Jerry Sloan said. "I always say if players can do something to make themselves better, that shows a lot about who they are."
In recent history, the Jazz also have traded first-round picks DeShawn Stevenson, Raul Lopez, Curtis Borchardt, Kirk Snyder and Eric Maynor, while losing Sasha Pavlovic to expansion and not re-signing Morris Almond. Still on the roster: Andrei Kirilenko, Deron Williams, Ronnie Brewer and Kosta Koufos.
In the team's defense, only Williams was taken higher than No. 14.
So the caution here is that even if the pick the Jazz will get from the New York Knicks falls into the lottery, nothing guarantees it will be particularly valuable, or well utilized. In a league where Kris Humphries and Rafael Araujo can be lottery picks and Paul Millsap lasts until the middle of the second round, who knows what's really worth having?
