Basketbawful

Thursday, January 26, 2006

I hate to say I told them so -- oh, who am I kidding? I love saying I told them so -- but I warned the Jazz that the Mehmet Okur chat was going to fail. The Utah organization continues to ignore me, no matter how many fruit baskets and Hello Kitty stickers I send them. Why won't Jerry Sloan just forgive me for sleeping with his daughter? We shared a forever love. I just don't understand.

Anyway, I read the transcript. Mehmet was asked a total of 17 questions, almost 33 percent of which came from Istanbul, Turkey. (And you're not fooling anyone Ehmet, Emir, Enis, and Ecg...we know you're all the same person. Probably Mehmet's little brother.) A quick demographic study showed that only seven of the questions came from within the United States, and only one came from Utah (thanks for your support, Jazz fans). I appreciate the fact that Mehmet's from somewhere that's not the United States, and he probably has slightly less of an American following than Tab soda, but I still think it's pretty shameful that he probably had to pay his overseas family members to ask him questions over the Internet. Still, it wasn't a complete waste of tme. I discovered several fun-filled Mehmet facts, including:

Instanbul is his favorite place in the world.
Hedo Turkoglu and also Andrei Kirilenko are his best friends.
He wears number 13 to "prove to people that No. 13 is NOT an unlucky number."
His favorite food is McDonalds.
He listens to Turkish music and hip-hop.
Toni Kukoc is his idol.

Okay, I've changed my mind. It was a complete and utter waste of my time. But at least no one asked him to comment on Kobe's 81 points, so I guess I was wrong about that one. However, he was asked the awkward question about whether he was going to make the All-Star Team, which naturally received the standard "All I'm worried about is helping the team win games, not personal accolades" response that we all know is total crap. Thanks for all the fun, Mehmet!

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