The Utah Jazz | as seen by Basketball John

Craig Bolerjack wasn’t announcing tonight for the KJZZ crew and it’s probably for the best for those watching because Memo went off again for 29 points, including 4-5 from the three point line.  I would have put the over/under on “Money” calls at about 125.  And that would probably have been low.

Okur looked like his 2006 self when he helped lead the Jazz to a 12-1 start.  He was hitting threes when his defender would sag to help on Williams’ drives.  Most of those threes helped swing the momentum late in the game to the Jazz.  And probably more impressive was him keeping Howard in check for the most part.  Howard got most of his from the line and I think a lot of his came on Millsap and Collins.

This is the Memo Jazz fans have grown to love.  I don’t think anyone expects him to put up almost 30 every night, but they do expect him to hit open threes and to rebound.  And if Memo is back on track, I think we can all start breathing a little easier and start expecting a run to take back first in the division. 

This win put the Jazz 2 1/2 back of Denver and Portland and 1/2 game out of the playoffs.  And if you’re into stats, Portland’s playing above their +1.3 point differential and the Jazz are playing below their +4.7 pace.  Although the Portland number could be misleading because it includes their horrible start and their recent success has brought that up.  It was probably negative for a while.  But now that Memo is playing well again, we should start winning a lot more of the close games like we did in 06-07.  But let’s give it at least a couple more games until we declare Memo all the way back.

Kirilenko didn’t look like he had missed 3 straight games.  AK was 6-7 shooting for 15 and had 7 boards and 8 assists.  He’s averaging 4.8 a game.  He occasionally has some errant passes when he’s trying to make a routine play spectacular, but for the most part, he creates good looks for others.  Williams added 17 & 11 and Booze had 15 & 10.  The Jazz also shot an impressive 85% from the line.

So for the first time in a while, the Jazz have looked confident, especially Okur.  This was a quality win in two ways.  First, Orlando is a good team and are third in the east.  They’re also a very good road team (they’re 7-8 at home?).  And even though it didn’t turn into a blowout, this was probably one of the more impressive wins of this recent stretch.  They held off the Magic in the fourth and made the plays that they needed to to win.  That’s something that we haven’t seen for a while.

So now we have a very winnable game Monday against the Bucks before we head to Denver to take on the division leaders.  The Jazz were able to go to Denver last year and pull out a win that pretty much put the division out of reach.  The Nuggets will have played two games before then.  So if the Nuggets can throw away two against the Bobcats and Hawks and the Jazz win, we could tie with a win next Thursday. 

Other recaps:

• Third Quarter Collapse
• Biased Fan

Other notes:

• CJ got the DNP-CD tonight.  I can’t understand this one.
• Here’s the live blog in case you didn’t read it.
• Flickr photos
• Memo Interview & Boozer Interview