Not much to say about tonight's game other than if the Jazz still can't win given the following, then I don't know what to say:
Granted, all of our trouble against the TWolves came in December when we we're playing our best ball. The Jazz are a much better team now and shouldn't have a problem tonight. I like how they took care of things against the Wizards and expect no less tonight.
The greatest play of DeShawn Stevenson's career (via SBN). I have no idea what song is playing and what it is at the end though.
If Ronnie Price plays tonight (GTD), maybe he'll have a huge game given the luck of the Irish. The Jazz will be in the greens tonight and of course he wears #17.
In addition, we might have our replacement or Ronnie Brewer's chocolate milk commercial,
"My wife asked me the other day, do I need to drink more milk?" Price said. "I told her, 'You know what? Maybe so.'"
"I'm Ronnie Price. When I need the extra energy to dunk over guys a foot taller than me, I drink chocolate milk. Ahhh."
You can almost set your clock to it... Memo in his post-baby return is well above his season averages. In the last 8 games, he's putting up 18 & 8 while shooting 54% from the field and 37% from the arc. The only problem with having a post-baby bump is that gestation is 9 months so at one point or another it's going to interfere with the season. I guess if he's going to have the post-baby bump, now is the best time to have it.
And just like that, Korver shot 27% from three to finish out the season.
Maybe it's just because it's St. Patrick's Day and I'm looking for it more but I've hit a lot of 17s today. The SLC Dunk tourney challenge group has 17 entries as of now. When I was looking up Ronnie Price information, Siler's article mentioned that he had missed 17 games (up to that point).
The Jazz are 3-1 (no game in 2005) over the past 5 years when playing on the 17th. Korver has been hot on the 17th in his two such games with the Jazz going for 15 & 17. Man, it's almost like the numbers on LOST.
I don't know if you can overstate the impact the Wesley Matthews has had on the team. He's shooting 56% in march including 60% from three and shooting 90% from the free throw line. Overall he's shooting 48.5% from the field, 39% from the arc, and 80% on free throws.
It makes me wonder where he would be right now had we not had the injuries early in the season to Miles and Korver. He likely wouldn't have been signed given the luxury tax situation. So would he have gone to the DLeague? Would he be on another team right now while we were lamenting how well he was playing?
The latest NBA Jam trailer (ht BDL). Deron and Boozer make an appearance at about the :35 mark. Breakin' ankles. Also, was there any other game that had more cheat codes than the original NBA Jam?
Because you can never have too many brackets, here's Deron's group that he's created on ESPN.com. Though, if it's his group, shouldn't he have an entry? Right now there's only 13.
I also created a group just for SLC Dunkers right here. So join both.
So my math was a little off yesterday. It should have read that the Jazz only have 16 games left, not 18. After last night, it's now 15. The Nuggets also have 15 left after last night's loss to the Rockets. So sitting just two games back, the Jazz would need to go 13-2 and the Nuggets to finish 10-4. I still don't think it's likely that we overtake them, but Denver's loss last night gives me a little false hope.
A plea from Deron to start playing on Sundays?
It’s been tough on us, but that’s part of the 82-game season. If we start playing on Sundays, we might be able to get a couple games spread out.
We all know why the Jazz don't play games at home on Sunday and that's because of the owner's LDS beliefs. When they request days off with the league before the schedule is made, the Jazz always request Sundays off.
This year, they only have three games on a Sunday and ofcourse they're all away games. The other argument is that since there's a majority of LDS people in Utah, that having Sunday games wouldn't be profitable for the Jazz as they're not as likely to sell seats to those games outside of season ticket sales. That might still be the case.
Without getting too much into religion, just because there's still a majority of LDS members in the market doesn't necessarily mean that they're all actively practicing LDS. And let's face it, even the active LDS members are watching basketball/football/baseball on Sundays. In addition, the percentage of LDS people in the state is dropping. Also, I believe that in Salt Lake County, or at least in Salt Lake City, there's even less of a majority, if there's one at all. So there's probably a good chance that the Jazz are still going to be able to sell tickets to a few Sunday games. It can't be any worse than a Monday night game against a team like the Wizards.
Maybe another thing to consider is that none of the Jazz players are LDS. None of this is to say that you have to be LDS to consider Sunday a sacred day. I'm guessing though that playing on Sundays isn't a big deal for them. Maybe Deron could buy the remaining tickets that aren't sold for Sunday games and give them to charity?
Religous implications aside, does it help the Jazz to play some Sunday games at home? If the team could guarantee to be profitable on Sunday home games, would they do it? What would be the potential backlash? Would they lose sponsors and advertisers? Those might be some of the biggest reasons that they don't do Sunday games.
I took a random sampling of other teams to see how many Sunday games they play.
Team, # Sunday Games, Home Game, Away Games
Spurs, 11, 4, 7
Bucks, 5, 3, 2
Jazz, 3, 0, 3
Hawks, 7, 4, 3
Raptors, 19, 15, 4 (heathens!)
Lakers, 16, 12, 4
Bobcats, 4, 1, 3
Hornets, 10, 2, 8
The big teams like LA, Boston, Orlando, and Cleveland are going to have a lot of Sunday games given that they're almost always on ABC. Toronto surprised me with the number of games they play on Sunday. The Bobcats are almost like the Jazz, they have just one game at home on Sunday. Maybe because they're in the Bible belt?
So is there an advantage to playing some games at home on Sunday? Maybe a bit. I would like to see some statitician work out some numbers on it. I might do it later if I have some time. This portion of the downbeat went on for a lot longer than I thought it would. I hope this leads to a good discussion.
Ultimately, the decision is going to be the Millers'. I'm not advocating either way, but if they want to have no home Sunday games, that's fine. On the other hand, when you get into a business such as the NBA, Sundays kind of come with the territory. If having a couple of Sundays games would help the players like Deron mentioned, you might have to consider.
So here's a poll, should the Jazz have some home games on Sunday?
See the light at the end of the tunnel? That's the end of the regular season that's coming quickly. 18 games is about 1/5 of the season but I guarantee that it's going to feel like 5.
What's done is done and while we would like to have some of the early season games back to play again, the Jazz can only control what's left. If they're to have any shot at getting the three seed, then they have to take care of games like tonight against the Wizards. There can't be any games like the Warriors debacle last season and they certainly can't give up any more at home.
The Wizards have lost 7 in a row and it may have been 10 without a stop and a win in New Jersey. Of course they've shaken everything up at the trade deadline, sending Caron Butler and Antawn Jamison out of town.
This is a game the Jazz should and need to win. They'll be without AK and Price tonight but Memo will give it a go according to Siler.
Here are the standings if we just take the games since the beginning of the year,
DEN 25-9 .735
OKC 25-10 .714
UTH 24-10 .706
LAL 23-12 .657
DAL 23-12 .657
PHX 20-14 .588
SAS 20-14 .588
POR 20-15 .571
MEM 20-16 .555
I think given the Lakers easier schedule to start the year and the Jazz fans desire to erase Oct-December from the history books, we should just go with this.
As for the rest of the season, the Jazz have 18 games left and only 8 of those on the road. With the exception of the game @ LA, all of those are winnable. The question is what are the Jazz going to do over the remaining 18? If this season is any indication, they could go 16-2, 10-8, or 8-10. Like I've said before though, the Jazz really don't have an excuse not to finish out the season strong. The remaing schedule is the easiest they've had in recent years.
If they were to go 16-2 to close out the season, Denver would have to choke down the stretch for the Jazz to win the division. Denver only has 16 games left which means they would have to go 10-6 (11-5 does us no good as they hold the tiebreaker). Do they have six losses left? They do have a five-game road trip @NY, @BOS, @TOR, @ORL, and @DAL. They also have remaining away games against Houston, OKC, and PHX. THey have some tough home games against the Bucks, Lakers, Grizz, and Spurs. So it's not impossible that they could stumble, but I don't think it's likely. They're a very good team and a legitimate threat to knock off the Lakers.
Othyus jeffers got picked up for another 10-day contract. He's not likely to see many minutes given that he didn't even get PT against OKC when we were short on players. So if he's going to get signed for the rest of the season, he'll have to make the team in practice.
Right now, I'm not sure there's a better option out there for the Jazz. Larry Hughes got signed over the weekend. Is there really a player out there that the Jazz can sign that would be an upgrade? Given that whoever it is, they're not going to get much court time. If anything though, I'd like to see what Jeffers can do at least on defense. They say that he can guard guards and power forwards. The offense might take a bit to learn, but the defense is something that can be picked up pretty quickly.
I have to say, I watched my first national college basketball games over the weekend and it makes me salivate for Evan Turner, Cousins, Wall, and the like. I've said it before, but the fact that we even have a slim chance at landing one of these types of players makes me drool. I'd like to thank to Dallas Mavericks for getting taken behind the woodshed by the Knicks. Thanks a lot.
Do you realize that if we were to land Turner, that we could have two pirates, Wesley and a relative of Bill Turner?
When did we turn into whiney Bs when we don't get a call? It's one thing to complain, but I counted at least a couple of times when Deron's man got up court because DWill was crying to the officials. First, if you're going to complain, it shouldn't be when the action is still going on. Second, at what point do you think that it's going to help for future calls?
That's one of the biggest reasons I hate other players like LeBron and Kobe and the like because they're whining after every call. Frankly, (breaks out cheese doodles) it's embarassing. Let us fans whine, that's our job.
Looks like the Jazz are drawing big locally on FSN. It looks like it didn't start out well though in the beginning of the season,
"We have been consistent in our [ratings] delivery, but earlier in the season, we were getting some concerns from some advertisers because the ratings weren’t there," said Chris Baum, senior vice president of broadcasting for the Jazz. "But we have started to grow our ratings dramatically in February,"
I'm guessing with Boozer still on the team, college football still going on, and the overall poor play of the Jazz had something to do with that. It looks like things are back on track though.
"Our ratings are now back to our glory days when we had John Stockton and Karl Malone," Baum said. "And February in Utah is cold."
It would be interesting to see how this year has compared to year's past when there was KJZZ as well.
We will have plenty of time to talk about this guy later.
We are sort of coasting into the end of the regular season and at this point, all we can do is hope that our team doesn't limp their collective way to the finish line. In a couple of months we will have a lot to talk about including the playoffs and who the Jazz should draft with the number one overall pick. But right now there isn't much to talk about other than x's and o's and the occasional great game or big letdown to an inferior team.
So let's talk about the impending offseason for a bit, not because we are casting the season aside, but because there really isn't anything sexier to discuss. Today's topic is the impending free agency of Carlos Boozer and why Jazz fans just need to start getting used to the fact that Carlos Boozer is making his last run in a Jazz uniform.
No AK, no Memo, no Price, no problem, right? The Thunder were going to be tough enough as it was even with everyone.
According to Locke, CJ will start for AK and Millsap will take Memo's place. That's going to be a pretty thin rotation with just Korver on the bench that's part of the regular rotation. We're going to see some odd combinations on the floor tonight.
So we'll see Gaines tonight, maybe even vs. Maynor. Deron might be going 40+ minutes though, let's hope he's wearing the wrist brace. And we're in trouble if the Jazz start getting into foul trouble as well.
If we're going to pull out a win, we're going to have to have season-best type games from everyone. Oh, and don't be surprised if Durant goes for 50.
See what happens when you knock a beer out of a fan's hands? Milwaukee gets angry over the wasted brew.
The Jazz had quite few non-calls that they should have but the Bucks flat out took this game. Utah is one of the best offensive teams in the league and the buck stopped in Milwaukee.
So to answer the question in the preview, the immovable object wins tonight. Had the Jazz not have to play from behind for most of the night, they might have had enough to steal this game in the fourth. You can't keep playing from behind like that and expect to win them all. It's nice to know that they can come back like they have so many times, but when you run into a team like the Bucks that are just as hot, the odds are going to be against you.
Despite the poor play from the Jazz tonight, that they had a chance to win this game was remarkable. They finally took the lead late in the fourth on Deron's second free-throw and Boozer's dunk on the next possession pushed the lead to three, 78-75. The Jazz had the chance to push the lead to six, but CJ Miles and Korver couldn't connect on their three-point attempts.
After that, the Bucks took over getting back to back turnovers from Deron and Boozer on consecutive possessions which resulted in points on the other end. That put Milwaukee up four, 84-80.
Even then, the Jazz fought back with a Korver jumper and then Memo blocking Jennings on the other end. CJ Miles then calmly made two free-throws to tie it up. The Jazz got some D on Bogut on the following trip down the court for the Bucks, but someone didn't box out, and Ersan Ilyasova was able to get the easy put-back.
With one more shot to tie it up or win, the Jazz ran a play for a Memo three thatwasthisclose to going in, but rimmed out and that was essentially the game.
All the credit should go to Milwaukee in this one. They held the Jazz to just 87 points when Utah had been putting up that number by the third quarter in recent contests. The Bucks, and namely Andrew Bogut, frustrated the interior offense of the Jazz all night long.
Who knows, maybe if even one three ball falls for the Jazz, we're talking about them pulling out another win. Maybe if someone else other than Memo or Boozer contributed offensively, we're talking about how we stole one. Maybe if AK hadn't hurt his calf, there would have been an AKWSUA moment.
I didn't expect the hot three-point shooting for the Jazz to continue at the same pace, I just didn't expect for it to even out in one game.
No loss is good, but this loss to the Bucks isn't like the loss to the Clippers or the Kings. The Bucks are a very good defensive team.
So off to the OKC on Sunday. That's going to probably be a tougher game than this. They're a great defensive team as well and Durant can drop 30 on you before breakfast. So they're going to have to do what Matthews' mom used to tell Wesley about losses and that's forget about them at midnight and go on to the next one (according to her on 1320 KFAN when she was sitting with Locke).
