Paul Millsap, the longtime hard hat wearing forward for the Utah Jazz, has decided to sign with the Atlanta Hawks for a 2 year deal, worth $19 million dollars.

I'm happy that Paul will be going to a team where he will a) start, b) be able to play without looking behind his shoulder, and c) be a bit closer to home. Playing in the Eastern Conference will be nice for him as he will be the right size to beast on their power forwards; and hopefully, he'll get to show more of his expanded floor game there. It will be liberating to play without our stiff offense, but I think some of who he is right now is a product of our system, the players he learned from (Carlos Boozer, Andrei Kirilenko to name two), and the coaches he has played for (Jerry Sloan, and Tyrone Corbin).

While Paul will be gone, he will always be a Utah Jazz player, because there's just so much of the Utah Jazz in him. He will be missed, but this is a situation for him that is better than what he would have had with our team next year.

For his career here he has played 540 games in the regular season, and 14,821 total minutes. He also battled in the playoffs for us in 48 games and 1,090 more minutes. He leaves Salt Lake City with career averages of 12.4 ppg, 7.0 rpg, 1.8 apg, 1.1 spg, and 1.0 bpg. He shot 51.6 fg%, and while his efficiency went down the last few years, he was asked to do much much more. Great player, great Jazzman.

And once again, we wish him the best going forward.