From Deseret News archives:
Sonics also slow to retire jersey
But the Jazz's ESA opponent Saturday night, the Seattle Sonics, also took their time retiring the No. 24 of their all-time scoring and rebounding leader, Spencer Haywood, finally doing it in late February.
Ironically, Haywood was on the Jazz roster when they moved to Salt Lake City from New Orleans in 1979, but he balked at coming to Utah, said the Jazz's general manager at the time, Frank Layden, and the Jazz traded Haywood to the Los Angeles Lakers for Dantley before the 1979-80 season on Sept. 13.
Haywood scored 24.9 points and rebounded 12.1 times a game in five seasons for the Sonics and had career numbers of 19.2 and 9.3 over 12 NBA seasons. He also wore No. 24 in his season (1978-79) with the New Orleans Jazz, during which he scored 24.0 points in 34 games.
In eight Jazz seasons, Dantley averaged 29.6 points and 6.2 rebounds and still leads the team with that 29.6 average, 4.2 better than Karl Malone.
BANNER: The Jazz raised their 2006-07 Northwest Division championship banner to the rafters prior to Saturday's game. It's Utah's ninth division or conference banner.
ANDREI INJURED: Forward Andrei Kirilenko will be out with a left-thumb fracture until he can grip the ball and catch and shoot well enough. That's thought that it might be a week or two. Kirilenko fractured the distal phalanx of the left thumb in the first half at Sacramento Friday. He injured the right thumb at San Antonio March 30 but was able to play again quickly.
Rookie Ronnie Brewer started in Kirilenko's place Saturday night against the Sonics in EnergySolutions Arena. Brewer hadn't played (coach's decision) in four games, since March 28 when he scored four points in 14 minutes in an ESA win over Minnesota.
Point guard Deron Williams strained his left groin muscle in the first half at Sacramento Friday but started Saturday's game against Seattle.
T-SHIRTS: Former Jazz guard DeShawn Stevenson, now with the Washington Wizards, had 3,000 T-shirts printed up with "I Can't Feel My Face" printed in white on the front of the black shirts and his own No. 2 on the back, according to Washington Post writer Dan Steinberg, who doesn't understand it either. Steinberg said Stevenson has the slogan written on some of his shoes, too. Stevenson told him, "Just at the house a lot of people have been asking me about it, everybody's always asking me what that means, so I thought I'd make T-shirts so everybody knows what it is, so they'd stop asking me."
E-mail: lham@desnews.com
