Bostjan Nachbar ?

I respect David Locke. He's a numbers guy, and you can really tell that he is more than just a numbers guy. He's also a Jazz fan. Mr. Locke is humble enough to admit that he's far from a professional scout (E.g. this); but he's a lot closer to the game than many of us are. If you don't know who this guy is, he's a radio personality for KFan 1320 -- a local sports talk radio station that broadcasts out of Utah, and can be heard on the web here.

With a keen eye looking towards the not-so-immediate future (of 2010), Mr. Locke postulates about the availability of Bostjan (Boki) Nachbar.

"Harpring's contract expires in 2010 when the Nets are trying to clear space it would be interesting to know if they would be willing to do a sign and trade with Nachbar." (Locke, 2008)

Honestly, Nachbar may very well be an adequate replacement for our own Matty Harpring; however, Harpring gets by with his scrappiness -- Nachbar (whom I've seen play only a few times) does not appear to have that same tenacity. We've seen relatively productive European players wilt in our system. After all, the much maligned Gordan Giricek was a guy who used to score 14 ppg, get 5 rpg, 2.5 apg and over 1 spg if given the opportunity.

As it stands, Matt Harpring (for all of his faults) is going to be making over $6 million dollars a season, for the rest of his contract. I'd love to get him off the books, though I seriously doubt that would happen. Harpring appears to be ingrained into the culture of this team, and you know that Larry H. Miller is not going to trade him and his wife (a local physician, I think OB/GYN, but I'm not a stalker or anything) out of the Utah Jazz family. I can only hope for a reduction of his minutes per game (MPG) as the Jazz front office and coaches devise a much more domestic solution to (at least) the production issues as the years go by.

At some stage our young guns will need more playing time, why not at the expense of Harpring? He should be mentoring more now, while guys like Ronnie Brewer, Morris Almond, C.J. Miles (if still on the team), Kyle Korver (younger than Harpring) get more burn. If we wanted to really go crazy, and play some European 3/4 hybrid some of Harpring's minutes -- why not Andrei Kirilenko? He can play more than 30 mpg, he's a good defender (unlike Harpring), and he's making the max. Why not play him more and watch his stats (*cough* touches *cough*) and happiness increase? Additionally, if anyone forgot, AK-47 shot 38% from three last season. Empirically, he is improving still . . . but his mpg is too low to realize it in some ways.

The last thing I want to do is add more swingmen to our team, as it stands right now our core rotation will only increase in size as our younger guys get better. I think I have to see what Locke is suggesting here; however, it's just not the way that I would go.

Boki is interesting, but I'd rather play Brewer at the three for the 5-10 mpg that Harpring will eventually lose over the next 2 seasons.