Estimated read time: 4-5 minutes
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I grew up playing a lot of sports.
Practice everyday (sometimes twice) required a lot of dressing and undressing in the locker room. You develop a certain level of comfort of being partially clad or leafless.
If you are embarrassed by the sight of skin, you won't last long in the locker room. You will die of shame.
I'm sure a psychologist has an explanation that is either entirely absurd or completely true about an athletes' comfortableness with his body.
I've seen athletes stretching in the middle of the locker room al fresco (and other behavior that will forever remain part of the locker room code).
As a sports producer I've spent a lot of time in the locker room.
The point I'm trying to make is... I'm not easily embarrassed.
But several years after high school graduation, I was told a story, that unfortunately for me became my most embarrassing moment.
I'll set it up a little. Think of the scene from "Jerry McGuire". Jerry goes into the locker room to talk to Rod Tidwell in the classic "Help me, help you." scene. Tidwell, comes out of the shower, refuses a towel because he likes to "air dry".I'm like Rod Tidwell (Cuba Gooding Jr.), when appropriate, I like to "air dry".
So late one night, in the lonely solitude of my basement, I was air drying after a shower and thought that I'd play a little Madden '94 on my Super Nintendo, au naturel.
Come to find out, my cheerleader girlfriend and some of her friends were out and about... um, how do I say it, peeping in various windows at an inappropriate hour.
Sometimes dating the homecoming queen is not the blessing you envision. This was fortunately, unbeknown to me, until several years later. But you can imagine my mortification when this little nugget of knowledge came to light.
This four game losing streak by the Jazz was almost that bad. Not quite, but close.
Embarrassment can go one of two ways. Let it eat you up inside and negatively affect you or you shrug it off and move forward.
"We just played bad." said team captain Deron Williams after losing to the 76ers. An ugly exclamation point to a 0-4 east coast road trip.
Center Al Jefferson recognized it as well, "The way we're playing right now is not good."
"It looks like a lack of effort." said Hall-of-Fame coach Jerry Sloan, "Their energy just doesn't look very good to me... I think we feel sorry for ourselves."
Starting two-guard Raja Bell was frank about the terrible losses. "To come out and get spanked the way we did, and we did get spanked, that doesn't feel so good."
On court demeanor and post game interviews clearly show that the Jazz are every bit as frustrated as fans. However, there's a lot of veteran players on this team that have seen a lot worse over their careers.
Monday at Jazz practice, Al Jefferson had the quote of the day, "We lost four games in a row. I have lost 18 games in a row, so this is nothing like what I have been through."
So we can "glass half full" or we can "glass half empty" this team.
Glass half empty guy says that Al is apathetic to a four game skid.
Glass half full guy says he realizes that it's an 82 game schedule with ups and downs.
I'm a baseball player at heart, so I'm naturally more patient with failure. A glass half full kind of guy. I haven't jumped off the Jazz bandwagon just yet.
Are there flaws in this team? Most certainly, but teams are never as good as they look at their best, nor are they as bad as they look at their worst.
Remember 2008?
The Houston Rockets won 22 games in a row without Yao Ming and with Tracy McGrady, Dikembe Mutombo and Rafer Alston?
22 games in a row. Best team in the league, right?
In the first round of the playoffs, with home-court advantage, they lost to the Jazz in six games.
Deron Williams said, "We just don't have any confidence as a team right now. Two of the best teams in the West (Lakers on Tuesday, Spurs on Wednesday) coming up for us after a horrible road trip, so hopefully we can get these two and right the ship."
Raja Bell hopes that he's seen the worst of it, "You hit rock bottom and when you do, you start to climb back to the top. So that's the only thing you can do now. If it gets worse, it gets worse, but you scratch and claw and try to get yourself out of it."
I think there's still some fight left in this team. You can't help it with bulldogs like Jerry Sloan and Deron Williams leading your team.
In my unscientific straw poll of friends and newsroom members, I'm one of the few voices to stand up for this team.
I hope I don't get embarrassed. Feel free to email me your most embarrassing moment (dnoriega@ksl.com). It's only fair.
