Top 3 Stories of the Day: Jazz bring back Georges Niang | Utah Mammoth are lawyering up | ESPN is…
It’s time to break down the biggest stories of the day. This is the top three stories of the day on kslsports.com. Ah 975 the KSL sports zone. Jacob Band 975 the KSL Sports Zone. Big thanks to PK for hanging out for the first segment. It’s time for the top three stories at kslports.com brought to you by J. Brooks. Cherish your loved ones with Jbrooks Jewelers. experience the their expertly crafted engagement rings made from the finest materials at Jbrooks Jewelers. Find them online, jbrooksjwelers.com. Two locations up and down the Wasatch Front. Christian, where are we starting? Number one, welcome back, gorgeous gorgeous. Uh George Nang back with the Utah Jazz. This was surprising. We are in the ultimate dead period of the NBA. August, early September really kick it off. There just not usually a lot of news and the Jazz have surprisingly been busy the last week and a half. they, you know, unveiled their new court. You’ve got Eurob Basket coming up at the end of the month and now you’ve got George Nang returning to Utah, joining the long line of players who have made multiple stints with the Jazz and I’m sure I’m forgetting several, but Howard Eley, John Karate, oh man, lots that have even more than that that have come back and played second and third, probably not third stint, but definitely second stints with jazz. And Jeremiah Jensen put out an excellent list. Okay. On Twitter. Yeah. You want me to read it? It’s a It’s a longer list than you would think. John Crowy, uh, Thor Bailey. Thoroughly. Yeah. Uh, Kyle Corver, Raja Bell, Greg Oster, Tag, Tom Boswell, Blue Edwards, Howard Eley, Rich Kelly, James Donaldson, Derek Favors, Mo Williams, George Ning, and Andy Tullson. Okay. Did Ty Corbin only do one stint with the Jazz? He wasn’t on that list. He probably only played one stint with the Jazz. Uh, yes, he did. So, oh, this is his coaching. Um, so maybe he did. Uh yeah, it’s not I mean, look, this happens with every team. This isn’t unique to the Jazz, but those players certainly were were memorable of guys who left and returned and uh had success and ended up being kind of Jazz guys. And I’ll be curious how long George is here. You know, he’s only on a one-year deal, 8 million bucks. Jazz pick up a couple of second round picks and they were a little bit devoid of second rounders after some of the business they’ve done this off season. They traded three on draft night to move up from 21 to 18 to get Walt Clayton. They traded another one to move off of Colin Ston’s contract, which I thought was very weird. But they have since recouped a pick in the John Collins trade. Uh they got a second rounder from the Clippers and then they got two more in this trade. As I mentioned in the last segment, it’s the most favorable in 2027 of the Celtics and Magic, which probably won’t be a very good pick, but we don’t know what the Celtics are actually going to look like in 2027. They’re going to be bad this year, uh, with everybody out, at least, you know, reasonably bad. They still probably compete for the playoffs in the East. 2027 might be a totally different year. I think, you know, Jason Tatum will be back, but he’s coming off the injury. We’ll see what he ends up looking like. And then a second rounder, more favorable between the Celtics and the Cavaliers in 2031. And we’ll see if the Cavs are any good at that point. They’ve given up a lot of their draft capital. They’ll be post Donovan Mitchell, I would imagine, at that point. And we’ll see where Evan Moy, etc., etc. Well, then at the end of the day, it’s just good business. I mean, you trade away R.J. Lewis, who was ultimately an undrafted free agent and he didn’t play in summer league. So maybe probably wasn’t going to play this year, right? And maybe Well, maybe the whole plan was like to hold him out. So to because he was a name value player, so if you play him, maybe he loses some trade value or his trade value is affected. So ultimately, I mean, yeah, they didn’t even use a draft pick on him and they turned that into two second round picks. Yeah, that’s true. And now the Jazz can flip George Nang whenever they want to. I I don’t know, you know. So, here’s the thing. The Jazz roster now sits at 15 players with guaranteed contracts, which is the most you can have on opening night, not counting your two-way deals. And the Jazz only have one player on a two-way contract right now, and that’s Elijah Harkless. But, so you’ve got 15 players on guaranteed contracts plus the non-G guaranteed deal of KJ Martin. I think the obvious answer here is that you’re probably going to buy out Kevin Love. He’s going to be gone probably in the next little bit, and then he will find the next team to sign with. And actually, it’ll be in the inverse order. He will find the next team to sign with. He will tell the Jazz, the Jazz will buy him out for whatever he’s going to sign with his next team. And the Jazz will save a little bit of money. It’s what happened with Jordan Clarkson and the Knicks. That’s what I would expect to happen with Kevin Love. And then if they wanted to keep both George Nyang and KJ Martin, they have the ability. I don’t know if they’re going to keep KJ Martin or not. Um, you know, again, his contract guarantee date isn’t until January. So, basically, he’s on the roster as long as they want to have him. They can wave him and not pay any penalties for it. and sounds like George is gonna play. Sounds like George will come back and be on this roster. According to Tony Jones from the Athletic, he said uh that the two sides have spoken and expects like George expects George to be here and and be in the be in the Jazz rotation in some regard. That would give the Jazz when it comes to veterans, Lowry Markin, Kyle Anderson and George Niang, which you know, Lowry’s good enough to help you win. I don’t think Kyle or uh or George Nang are really gonna add wins, but I do think they help you operate. And I think that’s really important when we’re talking about, you know, developing young Jazz players. And actually, I think on the court is probably more important than off the court. And we talked about, you know, Patty Mills being here and pups can’t raise pups and what Patty Mills could do. Problem is, Patty really couldn’t play. If you want Ace Bailey to evolve and develop as an NBA player, I think he needs to play basketball that resembles what an NBA team does. And when you’re just putting rosters out there that can’t compete in the slightest, and most importantly don’t have any spacing, so it doesn’t even reflect a real NBA offense, I think that gets really difficult. And that applies to Keonte, that applies to Cody Williams, that applies to Taylor Hendricks, all of these young guys that they’re trying to grow. So by putting an experienced player in George Niang who knows how to space the floor just does his one job just go out there and open up the court so it’s easier for these guys to play. That’s beneficial uh because then you get Ace Bailey not facing a double team randomly you know that he shouldn’t be facing at any point. Same with a Taylor Hendris or a Bryce Sensiba. Give these guys room to play on the court and make mistakes but also do things right. And if they just don’t have any spacing it’s going to look like summer league. That’s why summer league is really hard to really pull anything from. The play is so junked up. It’s so messy because most of the guys can’t shoot that uh you end up with with showings like what we saw from Isaiah Collier where he just simply couldn’t play. And by the way, what you’re talking about is a lot of what happened last year when they had to sit a lot of the veteran players in order to lose games. you saw a lot of just shenanigans and just putting guys out there and running around and not really playing actual Jazz basketball. And while we can look at Walker Kesler shooting threes as a bit of a charade, the Jazz actually needed some of the spacing. Like the idea was, hey, how do we actually space the floor a little bit better? Um, so these guys have room to operate. So I do think that’s where George can help. He will come in, he will play. He’s still an elite shooter over 40% last year on five attempts and at the trade deadline I think you can probably move him if you have to and you get another second round pick. So eventually or essentially the idea would be that you turn this into three second rounders. You worried about him taking minutes from some of these young guys? No, I think the Jazz have so many minutes to play and to to use. You know, the back court will be Isaiah Collier, Keonte George, Wald Clayton. Both Keonte George and and Walt Clayton can play the two as well. Ace Bailey can play the two and the three. So, there’s room there. Bryce Sensib probably a two or a three. There’s room there. you know, if he plays 25 minutes a night, somebody’s, you know, technically, yes, that will lead into somebody’s minutes. But when everybody only plays 65 games a year anymore, I think there’s there’s time for everybody. And you know what? If you just have to sit George, you just sit George. It’s just not that big of a deal. I get it. He he wants to get his next contract. I don’t think what happens with him this year with the Jazz would end his his career. I don’t think there’s a point where a team would say, “No, they didn’t play well for the Jazz last year. We don’t think he has any value unless he comes out and starts shooting 15% from three out of nowhere.” Unless he Yes, absolutely. Gets injured or can’t do anything anymore, but his game was pretty simple and it’s valuable what he does. So, uh, good to have George back. I think Jazz will be happy to have a veteran. Even though the funny thing is he no one on this Jazz roster was here when he last played. This is a he didn’t play for Will Hardy. He doesn’t know the front office other than Justin Xanic. And he didn’t play with any of these guys on the court before George Nyang. And even still, Walker Kesler is the longest tenure jazz man on this roster. Hell, even the Delta Center is going to look different. Delta Center is going to be different. We have a hockey team since he has left, and that was not that long ago. All right, what’s number two? Number two, Ben, speaking of hockey, the Utah Mammoth are lawyering up. Uh, another lawsuit over the name. This is from Cole Bagley at kslports.com. Uh, just months after their highly anticipated name reveal, the Utah Mammoth have engaged in a lawsuit against Mammoth Hockey LLC in an attempt to resolve a trademark dispute. Now, this lawsuit is kind of strange because the Utah Mammoth, the hockey team, has levied this lawsuit against Mammoth Hockey LLC because Mammoth Hockey is kind of hanging a sword over the head of the Utah Mammoth, saying like, “We think you’re infringing on our rights. We think it’s going to hurt our business, and we’re not really telling you when we’re going to do anything about it, but we can, but we’re not going to tell you when we’re going to do anything about it.” And now the Utah Mammoth, the hockey team is saying, “We got to settle this. We got to figure this out. We got to solve it. You can’t just continue to play these games and wait or and threaten us essentially. We want to make sure that stops.” Also, allegedly, the Mammoth Hockey LLC allegedly supported the Utah Mammoth name while that process was underway, but now that it’s official, like you said, they’re kind of threatening. Uh, this is from Cola as well. colleague says essentially the Utah Mammoth want to put an end to the mammoth hockeyy’s litigation threats and settle this matter before it really begins from the lawsuit quote the uncertainty created by the bag company’s actions which has persisted for months with no action as of yet has become untolerable I’m glad I’m not in this type of business you know uh I think there was another Jake and Ben show somewhere or like a podcast sometimes if I’ll go back and listen to a segment or something if you look up Jake and Ben I think something else can pop up it’s like down the list where the first one that shows up when you search for it. Don’t get us wrong, but uh there is like another name out there. I’m just really glad I’m not in legal. I’m glad I’m not in charge of naming these types of things because yeah, whatever whatever team name you have now, unfortunately, in the year 2025, there are lacrosse leagues, bowling leagues, hockey leagues, football leagues, you know, flag football leagues, basketball. The names are taken. All the names are bag companies, the names are going to be taken. drink companies, cooler companies, it’s all gone. Nothing’s available. Nothing’s going to be original unless you make up a name and you’re going to face a lawsuit as a result. I don’t think this is going to be a big deal. I uh I don’t think this will have the same effect obviously that the Yeti had where that was going to be the name and they lost it due to the the cooler company. That was a disaster. Yeah. I don’t think Ryan Smith is losing twice. No, not with this. No, I think the Mammoth thing and if you can go back and prove that they were cool with it at that point, it’s really hard to say, “Yeah, now you can bring the lawsuit.” All right, what’s number three? Number three, ESPN coming out yesterday allegedly acquiring the NFL network. Uh, yeah, this kind of started with the big conversation that they were buying the Red Zone. Uh, and the Red Zone channel has to be one of the a great inventions of the last 25 years and probably longer than that. I don’t know exactly how long they’ve been doing Red Zone, but it’s it’s a great way to watch football. And I would actually think the reason the NFL is such a nationwide sport. What I mean by that is it’s not while fans are fans of their team. I think it might be the league in which teams know the most about the rest of the fans are the most about the rest of the teams beyond their own team. Now, a there’s only 17 games, so it’s pretty easy to track what teams are doing as opposed to, you know, somebody’s playing every night in the NBA or in the NHL and sometimes they play double headers in baseball. It’s pretty easy to track football because it’s there’s a finite number of games, you don’t have to pay that much attention. But because you can watch every team simultaneously when you watch the red zone and you get familiar with who’s good, who’s the quarterback, who’s the running back, who are the receivers, who are the defensive players making plays because you see the highlights live in real time and it’s a great product. The red zone is an absolutely terrific product and so I think it’s really valuable and I understand why ESPN would try and get it. My hope would be that ESPN keeps their fingers off of it and doesn’t ruin it. Yeah, that can be dangerous. I saw, you know, some people speculating what that can mean as far as news if ESPN now owns part of that, how that is going to work. So, I think that is something that we’re going to learn going forward. Uh, but you know what? Nobody’s going broke investing in the NFL right now. So, if ESPN is trying to figure out how to stay afloat and where to make money, if you go and you add the NFL to your uh to your lineup in one any regard, it’s going to be beneficial for you. I was also wondering if this means Adam Shfter and Ian Rapaort have to fight to the death. That was my first thought. Yeah, because uh competitors Well, honestly, I mean, someone’s going to lose their job is probably the truth. Someone will go somewhere else. I I would think eventually they will split off. I know they will come in and be honory uh in the beginning, but I do think that they will start to separate those out because they don’t want to pay everybody and you want to focus in on one guy. you know, Shams and and uh Woge weren’t going to work together forever, and that was always going to be the case at Yahoo when they split up and then Woge leaves and Shams comes in. Um, this per USA Today, in addition to making more untold billions, the NFL effectively divests itself at the costs associated with in-house broadcasting. Concurrently, its product gains even wider distribution with new innovative benefits. NFL network will continue to broadcast seven games per season with ESPN reaping the benefits of that notably to its pending direct to consumer service. Uh you know the other aspect of this where Red Zone is so valuable is the fantasy football players like to watch Red Zone. So it’s a good product. Be interesting to see how ESPN handles it. All right. Oh boy, Mickey. He doesn’t lose. He’s been losing for a while, but this is a this is this is a not financially. No, not financially. Uh Scott Gerard is going to join us coming up at 11. Stick around. 975 the KSL Sports Zone.
• Top 3 Stories: Jazz bring back Georges Niang, Utah Mammoth are lawyering up, ESPN is acquiring the NFL Network.
