The Utah Jazz | as seen by Basketball John

I told you it wasn’t going to be a lame top ten list. And I hope that you weren’t expecting a 12 days of Christmas, because I figure that by the time I got releasing one a day, you wouldn’t read the last two anyway. We won’t see mention of the launching of basketballjohn.com or the great Alan Henderson trade (although we ended up with Fess from that).

So in no particular order, I’ll cover the big Jazz headlines from the previous year. I have to admit, I forgot about a couple of them. So with 10 business days remaining until Christmas, I give you the first annual, “It’s not lame, it’s the 10 days of Christmas.”

On the 10th day of Christmas, the Utah Jazz gave to me:

No Rape Charges

In our own version of the Duke LAX rape case, four Utah players were accused in the rape of a Portland woman during a Portland pre-season game in October 2006. Dee Brown, Deron Williams, Paul Millsap, and Ronnie Brewer were all suspects.

After a late-night visit to a strip club, the four Jazz players invited the accuser to come back to the hotel. On the way home, they stopped off at a convenience store to buy some condoms for Brewer. Once back at the hotel, the players had to convince her to go upstairs, according to hotel employees. That’s where it turns into a they-said, she-said.

She appeared in the lobby from the elevator some time later, alone and naked. She claimed she was raped and the employees called the police.

Each player was interviewed separately and gave consistent accounts of what happened.

Dee went back to his room to play video games. Williams and Millsap left after she started talking about being raped before and crying. That left Brewer to defend the fort. Apparently it was his room so he “built a divider with blankets and pillows, telling her she could sleep on the bed or the floor if she wanted to stay.”

So on January 5, 2007, the prosecutors released a statement that there would be no charges against any of the players as none of them could be positively identified.

How would the Jazz have been affected if they had been charged officially, let alone convicted?

And whatever your point of view is on going to strip clubs, it could have ended at that. They were asking for trouble in this situation. I can’t believe that any of them thought that all four of them taking her back to the hotel where she had stated that she wanted to “have sex with two of them at the same time,” was a good idea. I’m not judging any of them, but being high-profile athletes, you have to know that this kind of thing can happen. Whether they did it or not, just the accusations are enough to cause problems.

And some feel that this is one of the things that led to Dee not being re-signed because of his “bad influence”. If that’s the case, wouldn’t the blame be more on Deron? Although still a young bunch, he’s the veteran.

We forget sometimes that a lot of our heroes are people too. And we also forget that although they’d like to consider themselves men, they’re still boys.

Other notes

• How did they get four NBA players and a girl from the strip club in a cab?
• Maybe if Brewer could bring pillows and blankets to a game, he could build forts to keep shooting guards out.

I didn’t really have any motivation to write recaps on either of these two games and I almost didn’t.  But I couldn’t waste that clever title.

I was glad I was out doing Christmas shopping.  It gave me an excuse to not have to write anything about the games.  I don’t what to say that hasn’t already been stated here and in other places.

It’s a shame that we hold both teams in check save for one player in each game.  We give up 37 to Manu and then a career-high of 47 to Josh Howard.  We hold the Spurs to 43% shooting and shoot 54% and lose.  Then we shoot 60% but give up 60% the the Mavs and lose again.

The Spurs go without Duncan and Nowitski has a pedestrian 16.  You’ve got to like your chances.  And Manu only shot 9-21.  You’ve go to be liking that.  But he drove the lane at will and as a result, he went to the line 19 freakin’ times.  And Howard got 17 trips.  Now I could only follow the game on my cell phone as I was out braving Utah drivers in the snow, so how Howard was able to go 14-19 from the field is amazing.  You can say, “Well, Howard had a career night.  Not much we could do to stop him.”  But the thing is is that it seems that a lot of SG/F types have their career nights against the Jazz.

And I’m not sure how you stop it with the current batch we have.  How much more defense can you teach someone?  Either they have that mindset or they don’t. 

The worst part about this whole thing is that Williams is probably playing the most dominant ball of his career right now and it’s being overshadowed by these losses.  Have you looked at his last five games?  Here you go:

31.6 PPG
58% FG, 61% on threes
41-47 from the line
8.4 assists

That’s MVP worthy.  And in my newfound quest of 8>3, here’s Paul’s stats.  Not too shabby either.  But you won’t hear any talk of Williams for MVP.  Had they been winning though, you might have heard whispers by now.

So let’s close the book on this.  I’ve written more than I thought I would.  It’s not a total shame to lose to the Spurs/Mavs, unlike losing to Minnesota.  We’ve got Portland at home on the 11th.  So let’s hope they can put a stop to the losses and gain some confidence going into a brutal next couple weeks with 6 of 7 on the road.