The Utah Jazz | as seen by Basketball John

Hmm, maybe I shouldn’t have been happy to see Yao go the the bench early with fouls.  Because while he was in the game, it seemed like the Jazz played better.  The Jazz rolled early in the first quarter until a few minutes remaining, the let the Rockets close to 29-24.  Without Yao, it was the McGrady show.  Tracy poured in 47 points and many of those came in the fourth to silence the crowd as the Jazz made a couple of comebacks.  It didn’t matter whether the Jazz threw Brewer, AK, or a couple of rottweilers at him.  But I don’t blame the guard defense.  A lot of his points came from screens and would take it to the rim for either an uncontested layup, or in one case, a thundering dunk.  I why didn’t he end up on his back on any of those?  And did anyone else catch McGrady’s smirk after he faked getting hit in the lip by Brewer?  He was pulling at his lip all the way down the floor to shoot his free throws.  And then at one point, he looked to the bench and gave a little look.

I would like to add to the list of unavoidable things in life: death, taxes, and bad officiating.  When was the last time you watched a game and there weren’t about 5-10 bad (non-)calls?  They’re human, so they’re going to miss a couple, but you can count on a couple every quarter.  And this was for both teams.

The Jazz were decent on offense, but disappeared in the second quarter.  That, coupled with giving it up to McGrady, pretty much did the Jazz in.  And it’s not like the Jazz shot that poorly, but I remember about 4 minutes into the second quarter, they had only attempted something like two shots.  When they finally did get their shots, they seemed rushed and not in the natural rhythm of the offense.  Sloan stated,

We tried to go one-on-one. Everyone tried to beat them by themselves,

Our usual get-us-back-into-the-game-run-stopper Williams didn’t shoot too well, going 6-17.  Boozer was Boozer again with 30 & 16.  Memo and Brewer contributed 16 and 13 respectively.  But we got almost nothing from the bench.  This is my biggest concern for the year.  While our second team was in there, that’s when Houston same back from their early first quarter deficit.  We’ll see how this plays out.

As McGrady stated, this is only the second game of the season.  Nothing to get worried about yet.  But we have to be worried about the bench and not being able to defend the basket against penetrating guards.

Best quote of the night from Yao, “We feel like it’s Game 8 for us.”  So now that they won, we’re going to a deciding game 9?  And I know that the NBA schedule for the playoffs is spaced apart, but that would be a little extreme.

Up next, game 7 with the Warriors Saturday night.