The Utah Jazz | as seen by Basketball John

One thing’s for sure. Sloan doesn’t change for anyone or any thing. Little known fact, the 1 foot radius around Sloan is still on MST when everyone else switches to MDT. You could argue that he’s changed the offense because of the whole AK saga last year, but isn’t it really more Deron changing and getting AK involved? The offense hasn’t changed that I can see. It’s usually the C or double-C that gets called for the most part. This Jazz team is one of the most high-scoring in team history, but it’s still the same offense. We just have better finishers now than teams in the past.

So we’ll keep seeing Deron get pulled with 2-3 minutes left in the first. We’ll see Booze sit from about 10:00 in the second to about 5:00. It kills me because it doesn’t matter if they’re in a groove, they’ll get their breather regardless. Last night, Boozer was again killing the Warriors when he got sat. And Williams was carving them up. With the backups in, GS was able to keep it close instead of the Jazz being able to put it away earlier.

And yes, I complain even when we win. Isn’t that the mantra of Sloan and his coaches though? Sure we won 119-109, but we sucked tonight according to Jerry. And everyone asks why Sloan keeps his starters in with a huge lead late in the fourth. Most times it’s indefensible, but Sloan had a big “I told you so. My way is the right way” night when the bench let a double-digit lead dwindle to 8 with about 56 seconds in the game. It took just a little over a minute for the GS scrubs to almost caused Sloan to put back in his starters.

But the game was never really close after the half. They took a 13-point lead, 77-64 into the half. It was never single digits until the last minute of the fourth. Ellis, Davis, and Harrington came out hot and scored at will as both teams shot +60% in the first quarter. But unlike the Warriors, the Jazz actually play D and held GS to 45 points in the second half. The Jazz only scored 42 themselves, but their 41 point second quarter was enough.

Deron was in All-Star snub form with 29 points and 11 assists. AK had 18. Boozer had 16 & 12 and Memo 16 & 10. Korver was hot in the first half, but didn’t hit jack in the second. Hart, Miles, and Collins finished out the game and we saw what happened there.

The Jazz showed again that they own the Warriors. And we may not even see them in the playoffs as they currently would be out with Houston’s win. We could realistically see 2 games separate 1-9 in the west. How nuts would that be? And is the WCF champ going to have anything in the tank to take on the East champ? Do you want to play any of these teams? If the Jazz come out of the west, they’re going to have three series that will be brutal. And who is Boston or Detroit going to have to play?

This could be one of the best regular season finishes we’ve seen.

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