Tuesday, March 31, 2009

Where Have You Gone AK47?


The Simon and Garfunkel classic hit "Mrs. Robinson" has a line in it that calls out Joe DiMaggio for leaving the game of baseball too early. DiMaggio left the game at the peak of his career in order to retain the image of himself... "being on top". I guess not everyone can be at their best forever, or at least "all the time".

"Where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio
A nation turns its lonely eyes to you (Woo, woo, woo)
What's that you say, Mrs. Robinson
Joltin' Joe has left and gone away"


In like manner, while Andrei Kirilenko isn't Jazz nations' best player, oftentimes he's considered one of the most important. With the way he's been playing now, you could easily replace DiMaggio's name (in that song) with Andrei Kirilenko's, and wonder to yourself... "Where have you gone, AK47? Jazz nation turns its lonely eyes to you..." I wonder what's happened to Andrei's game? In a time of great need, AK47 is disappearing rather than re-asserting.

Over the course of the last 15 games, Andrei has only scored in double figures 4 times. Through March, AK's scoring numbers have fallen 4 points (from 12 to 8 ppg), his rebounds and assists seem rather ordinary (3.4 rpg & 2.1 apg) and most alarming... his blocks and steals per game are down to 0.6 and 0.2 respectively (perhaps an all-time low!).

AK... where have you gone? It seems like your season ending swoon has begun to hit us again. Is it because Boozer is back? There's just not enough room for the 3 of you (Booz, AK and Millsap)? Clearly, you just don't belong on the perimeter. You seemed so content and effective in the 6th man role, coming off the bench. However now, you're not even relevent to changing a game. Where have you gone AK47?

3 comments:

Orlando said...

Bring Andrei back in with the starters. I'm done with the CJ Miles experiment.

Draft Guru said...

I think you're probably right. Time for a line-up change!

The Golden Griff said...

I love CJ Miles