Best series of the playoffs.  I just hope it hasn’t taken too much out of them for the upcoming series with Golden State.  It’s obvious that the Jazz were the best team in this series and deserved to win.  I thought the refs were good in this game, that is, they weren’t noticable.  There were questionable calls both ways, but for the most part they let them play.  Here are the main reason why the Jazz won:

1.  Carlos Boozer.  They had no answer for him at all tonight.  They had no answer for him the entire series.  He’s going to be huge for the GS series.
2.  Okur was back to his money self and hit huge threes in the fourth.  And despite a couple misses he was unphased.
3.  Deron Williams has played phenomenal, yet he’s been low-key the whole series.  He gets his 15 & 10 and makes the big plays to keep the Jazz in it like his follow up layup after his own missed shot.
4.  Yao was off all night.  Sure, he got his 29, but he was 9-20 from the field.  There’s no reason he shouldn’t have ruled the post.  Utah really had no one that could guard him, yet Okur blocked a couple shots and Yao was bothered all night.  I think you have to look at him, and not McGrady as to why Houston didn’t win this game and series.

How many Jazz fans cringed when AK took that three with the Jazz trailing by three?  I went from panic to elation in about 2 seconds.  The only other time I felt that before is in high school when one of our centers took a baseline three in a simliar situation in the district championship.  Everyone was screaming “No, no, no!” when he hoisted it, but went nuts when it went in. 

When T-Mac was fouled in the last few minutes by Harpring (even though there was no contact and Matt was moving out of the way), I thought that was it.  Here comes the star treatment.  This is where the Jazz normally would have been done.  But they pulled it out and showed the winning attitude that I haven’t seen since the 12-1 start to open the season.

Up next, the Golden State Warriors.  Here come two teams bursting with confidence from their respective wins.  Here are two teams with the loudest arenas in the league.  And thank goodness the Jazz have home court for this series because it’s going to be awfully hard for each team to win on the road in this one.  And both teams are going to have to change up their styles of play for this series.  GS went small against Dallas and killed them.  The Jazz have one of the best front courts in the league, that philosophy isn’t going to work against them.  And the Jazz focused on mainly Yao and McGrady.   With GS, they don’t really have the go-to guys.  Anyone of them can hurt you.

This should be good.