Remember that infamous line Captain Barbossa utters to Elizabeth Swann in Pirates of the Caribbean, after she informs him that she doesn’t believe in ghost stories, anymore?
“You best start believing in ghost stories …,” he says. “You’re in one!”
Don’t know how anybody out there feels about believing in curses.
But the Jazz are afflicted by one.
And somebody needs to do something about it soon.
Somebody needs to do something right now.
Somebody needs to take the curse off.
Forget the doctors. Forget the trainers. Forget the food scientists. Forget the physical therapists. Forget the strength and conditioning coaches. Forget modern medical practitioners of every sort.
The Jazz have tried all that. They’ve done everything they can to keep their players well conditioned, well fed, well cared for, well attended to. They’ve put money where it logically needs to go to solve the problem. They’ve hired some of the best professionals in the business to keep their players fit and healthy and available.
It has not worked.
The latest evidence: Thabo Sefolosha possibly being out for the season with an MCL injury in his right knee. Surgery is now very probably in his future.
He’s got a starring role in an ongoing chapter in the Jazz classic Gone With the Bend.
He’s damaged and he’s in good company.
There’s Dante Exum, who’s missing a second season of his three-and-a-half-year NBA career. Rudy Gobert has missed major stretches of this season and others with knee injuries, and is awaiting word on when he can return. Joe Johnson has missed time. Rodney Hood has missed time. Derrick Favors has missed time. Raul Neto has missed time.
This has been going on for three years now.
Just sayin’: Somebody, something put the whammy on these guys. Follow-up question: Can someone un-whammy them?
Are locusts and frogs and bloodsucking insects and diseased cattle and snakes and boils and flaming hail and water turned to blood and dead fish and darkness far behind? Is the east wind a’blowing?
Did somebody around here raid King Tut’s tomb?
Are the Jazz paying now for two decades of otherworldly indestructible ironman health for Karl and John?
Darn near everybody who matters is getting hurt, with ligaments tearing, joints swelling and bodies limping.
Ask Alec Burks about it, he’s an expert. Is there anything before his current span of good fortune he hasn’t broken or sprained or strained or stretched or bruised or gouged or pulled or tweaked?
The Jazz won 51 games a year ago, and advanced to the second round of the playoffs, and they would have won more games — remember George Hill and his assortment of hurts? Favors and his pains? Hood and his issues? — had it not been for the fact that, at times, the team looked like a freakin’ triage tent. From broken fingers to busted toes.
Hood missed 23 games and was compromised in many others. Favors was out for 31 games. And, yeah, Burks? Don’t ask. The guys who weren’t hurt on the court were finding themselves bent over with everything from the flu to gastric distress to food poisoning.
It ain’t right. Something’s not right.
And the year before that, the Jazz were blowing knees and ankles and shoulders and all kinds of body parts all over the hardwood.
I’ve never seen anything like it. Have you?
You haven’t, and rarely has anyone else.
“We have to keep going, keep competing,” Quin Snyder has said.
“We have to overcome, not complain,” Dennis Lindsey has said.
But how?
Not by trusting modern medicine.
They need to break the spell.
They need to drink a bottle of Dr. Goode’s feel-good juice.
They need to imbibe some gooey gizzard guts.
How about this: Somebody has to chase down a person or persons well connected to a power beyond this earthly realm — a shaman, a medicine man, a priest, a rabbi, an elder, anybody of any persuasion who can change the vibe here, who can do something tangible about it. Someone has to swoop in and save the day.
How about cutting a lemon in half in the hour just after sunrise directly following a night when there’s a full moon? Sprinkle sea salt on each half and sweep it around, chasing off the bad auras.
Or getting some crystals and purifying them with sunlight. And then chanting some chants of positive energy.
Maybe they could light a candle, burn some sage every night for a week, raising their vibrational frequency and wrapping it in the power of green. Fellas, see the green. Green is the color of good healing.
Or harvest some spell-breaking herbs — maybe some basil or jasmine or mugwort or peppermint and toss it around and sing the words to the Beatles song Revolution No. 9 backward.
I dunno.
Somebody do something. Anything.
The Jazz need some help.
Without it, they could end up with another extremely talented high lottery pick in June.
On second thought, maybe hold off on that curse-breaking until the season is over.
GORDON MONSON hosts “The Big Show” with Spence Checketts weekdays from 3-7 p.m. on 97.5 FM and 1280 AM The Zone.
Follow @GordonMonson