Back to the Jazz

It has been awhile since my last post. A lot has happened since my last post. I took about a 10 day vacation back home to Utah, and just got back to the "Great White North."

While I was in Utah, I went to the last regular season game against Phoenix with my brother Todd. That was a depressing game. It had a playoff feel early, with so much at stake. However, the best part of that game was my ice cold coke and the pre-game introductions. After that, well, it's not even worth talking about. I actually wrote a huge post after that game, and expressed a lot of anger. I decided to sleep on it before I posted it, and that was a good decision. When I read it the next morning, it was so pessimistic and negative, I deleted it.


We started the playoffs on the road, in Denver, without Andrei Kirlenko. During the game Memo Okur tore his achilles. One of the funniest things I've heard, was as Kyrylo Fesenko and Kosta Koufas were helping Memo back to the locker room, Jake leans over to me and says, "They're going back to see which one of them is most eligible for a foot transplant." Ha ha. We almost pulled off a win too. JR Smith had other plans and Melo was unstoppable. Who shoots 18 for 25 from the field? Jeez.

Game 2 was easily the best game of the playoffs so far (besides maybe Pierces game-winner tonight). Without Memo and AK the Jazz played great D and stole a barn-burner to tie it up at 1-1. The best part was that it finally seemed like the ref's weren't afraid to call fouls on the "stars". I heard some Denver fans on an espn article complaining that CJ Miles stepped out of bounds (and he did, I saw a picture). The ref's missed it. However, Carmelo stepped out of bounds in the 3rd quarter driving baseline and it ended in an and 1. Things even out. Denver fans should be mad that Carmelo got a reaching foul 70 feet from the hoop, when he had 5 fouls. (PS-D-Will had 33 and 14, the most ever for a player on the road in the playoffs in 43 years. Last person to do that was Oscar Robertson.)

Game 3 was actually boring due to the Jazz D making the Nuggets look like the Washington Wizards. It seems like the Nuggets thought they were going to win the series by default once Memo went down. They played awful. They ended with more turnovers than assists. Deron Williams had more assists than the entire Nuggets team. It feels pretty good to be up 2-1. I'm sticking to my prediction of Jazz in 6.

Deron Williams was 1 point shy in game 3 of becoming the 2nd player EVER in the history of the NBA, to start the first 3 games of a series with 25 points and 10 assists. The other player?...Michael Jordan. That would have been pretty sweet.

In other news, a lot of Jazz fans are upset that Sloan did not win the Coach of the Year award. My feeling now is that this award has become the "overachieving team award" so Sloan really has no chance. He's too consistent and he's a Hall of Fame coach. That is much better than COY. Look at the last several winners of the award and you'll see that they are not the same names you would consider the best coaches in the league. Oh well, we all know Jerry Sloan could care less, so why do we?

Random Trivia for you:
-Name the 3 players in the history of the NBA that have had a triple double with 0 turnovers. No Googling it. (Is Googling a word?) Here is a hint: 2 Jazz players, and 1 Rockets player.
Sean