Street Wize News ( Raw &Unkutt )

The four players the Utah Jazz brought in for a workout on Tuesday may not make millions of dollars in guaranteed money.

In fact, it’s likely that the four players the Jazz will welcome to the Zions Bank Basketball Center won’t even be drafted.
But, it’s also highly likely that Jazz fans will remember this particular workout for quite some time, because of the people involved.

Westminster guard Michael Stockton, BYU guard Jackson Emery, and guards Brady Morningstar of Kansas and Mustapha Farrakhan of Virginia will not receive much notoriety from a national perspective, but it’s pretty certain that Stockton, son of Jazz Hall of Famer John, Emery and Farrakhan might.

The name Stockton is synonymous with success and statues and plaques around these parts, and somebody in the Jazz organization must be hoping that Michael is the second coming.

If he pans out, there’s a third Stockton (David, a sophomore guard at Gonzaga) in case the organization would like to bottle lightning and sell it at a warehouse in Utah County.

Michael is not the second coming of John, sadly. His numbers at tiny Westminster College in Salt Lake City were good (18.2 points per game) but he wasn’t facing Division I competition, either.

He doesn’t wear No. 12 like his dad, he doesn’t have the same bulldog mentality as his father, but he does have a pretty good jump shot like Pops.

And, he did achieve such numbers with a Stockton-like iron man’s fortitude in his senior year, averaging 33 minutes of play per game.

The one statistic Jazz fans are probably dying to read about are Michael’s assists; he averaged four per game at WC, which was good enough to lead the Griffins but not remotely close to John‘s output with the Jazz.

The best Michael can hope for, really, is a spot on the Jazz’ training camp roster, since the NBA cancelled its summer league due to a possible lockout.
Advertisement

If Stockton Part Deux gets that far, Michael will be forcing his way into a crowded roster filled with what will likely be a slew of young talent dealing with the same summer doldrums.

The solution in a plethora of words? All for one, and European basketball for all.

Same goes for Emery, a hard-working point guard who didn’t get Jimmer’s accolades, yet quietly did his thing and played hard-nosed defense.

Emery also led BYU in steals and shot over 42 percent from the field, giving even more cause to Jazz fans who think the state of Utah has some good basketball talent.

It won’t be the first year the Jazz have taken a look at their home grown stars, and it won’t be the last. But the chances of either player being drafted in the first two rounds is so slim that no draft board has either Stockton or Emery listed as a possibility.

As for Morningstar, the Kansas guard, he doesn’t come with any of the accolades accorded Stockton Part II or Emery, but he does have a long track record for being a consistent, though average performer at KU.

Morningstar can shoot from three-point land with the best of them, and he’ll need to if he has any shot at cracking any NBA team's roster.

Farrakhan is also bit of an anomaly, a four-year starter who was decidedly average his first three years at UVA before coming out of his shell in his senior year.

He is the kind of player the Jazz like, a studious type who focuses on all of the right things, and his grandfather is none other than the Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan himself.

That said, all the lineage in the world won’t get any of these four players drafted this June, but it wouldn’t be surprising at all to see any combination of the four playing this summer in a foreign land.