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Recap - Utah Jazz @ New Orleans Hornets - 77-66 W - Where’s your MVP now? - 8 April 2008
UPDATE: Videos up
It’s almost refreshing that this game wasn’t about Williams/Paul. Let’s get that out of the way. Neither had anything offensively. The only advantage was Deron’s 16 assists to Paul’s 9. We didn’t even see Paul the entire fourth quarter until 3:40 left in the game. And that 8 1/2 minutes while he was out is when the Hornets made their run after being down 20. MVP?
This game was all about the Jazz as a team and the team defense. They’ve held the Spurs and now the Hornets to 64 & 66 points respectively. Can we get Elias Stats to get on that to see if that’s a record? It’s a Jazz record for sure. It’s the best D from the Jazz I’ve ever seen. Ever. They must have set Sloan’s heart aflutter with all the diving for loose balls, strips, blocks, and overall hustle. It was infectious. It seemed like everyone was on the floor at some point. Now that it’s spring time, maybe the Jazz are getting their super-human defensive power from the yellow sun of the earth, let’s hope there’s no kryptonite.
The only thing you have to worry about was Utah’s offense these past two games. The Jazz seem to get out of their normal flow when it’s a big game. That’s what happened in the last game in NO when they got blown out. Once they were down so much, they relaxed and almost pulled that one out. Both teams seemed to be out of sync the whole game. It’s like they both knew the importance of the game and forgot their offenses.
The only one that was reliable this game was #13, Memo. After Neo rescues Morpheus from the agents and Trinity from the helicopter, Morpheus says to Trinity, “Do you believe me now?” Memo showed why he’s the one that needs to be clicking for the Jazz to make a run in the playoffs. He was 9-20 for 22 points and 17 boards. Millsap, Boozer, and AK all had 10. Memo and Peja were the only ones that had decent offensive outputs for this game. Okur was the only player to break 20 points. Let’s hope Memo can keep this up for the next couple of months.
The team offensive stats are so were so ugly that I won’t even go over them. Take a look if you dare.
Okay, so a little more on Williams/Paul. The match-up everyone was hoping for never materialized. Both only had 4 points on 2-11 shooting. Deron had some great assists, but he was unbelievably wild. He had 6 turnovers and on consecutive possessions through the ball way over the head of Memo. That’s pretty hard to do when you’re 6′ 11″. He still wound up with 16 assists on some great plays but the Jazz actually seemed to be playing better when he was out. The same was true for Paul. The Hornets played better with CP out as evidenced by Scott leaving in the bench to start the fourth. They cut the Jazz lead from 20 down to 12. We didn’t see Chris until the game was pretty much decided. You’ll have to wonder now how much that will hurt his MVP chances. They have another game against the Lakers coming up. If they fall in that game, that could be the death knell.
Speaking of the Lakers, they went down to the Trail Blazers last night. That means that the Jazz are only 1 game behind them and just 2 1/2 behind the Hornets. The top 6 teams are now just separated by those same 2 1/2 games. I don’t know if it’s technically possible, but it would be great for everyone to end up with the same records and they have to use tiebreakers such as who had the better free-throw percentage in road games decided by two point or less.
And finally, almost overlooked in all of this is the fact that the Jazz are back-to-back champs, of the Northwest Division. Like I stated in the preview, this is only the second one in Jazz history. Karl and John only had the 97-98 seasons as repeat champs. I think they pretty much went back and forth with the Spurs on that under the old alignment.
So we’re hitting all the goals so far. Playoffs, check. Division champs, check. Winning big games late in the season, check. Up next, home-court advantage. The Jazz are now 2-0 on this six-game “series.” Up next are the Mavs who have been playing very well since the return of Jirk. It’s a road game as well but is still very winnable. Did you ever think that would be said about the Jazz playing on the road?
Other notes,
- Now we know how Paul and Chandler get some many alley-oops. Chandler just takes out the guard on the pick and roll. He whacked Deron in the eye on his way their 145th oop this season.
- I appreciate letting them play, but the Jazz only went to the line 5 times? Wow. NO only had 13 trips.
- Millsap was a beast. He had tip ins and boards galore. His best play came when he stole the lazy in-bounds pass at then end of the first half to put the Jazz up 18.
- I don’t have the +-, but I would have liked to have seen more of Price. The team seemed to be playing well while he was in.
- The Jazz game didn’t get shown on Sports Center until about 45 minutes into the broadcast. Amazing. We saw almost every baseball game and NBA game before that. I was trying to give ESPN the benefit of the doubt as the NCAAW championship was the same night and the Jazz game had ended just 30 minutes earlier. But it was a pretty significant game that got pushed way back. We even had a Rewind of NBA games before we saw the Utah/NO game.
Other blogs,
RELATED POSTS:
Yahoo! sports box-scores have the +/- values. Price was tied with Booze for the team lead with a +15.
Man, on a night when no one could get it going offensively don’t you think CJ could have gotten a little burn?
By the way, doesn’t Ryan Bowen remind you just a bit of McLovin?
As a Hornets fan that was at the game last night, that was one of the ugliest games I’ve seen in a while. The Jazz had the benifit of having the one non-sucking offensive player on their team in Okur, and even he missed some wide open 3’s. This may very well be the Jazz year, because they only have to win one game on the road in each series. Thankfully for the Jazz, they won’t have to face Minnesota on the road in the playoffs.
The Jazz team defense was excellent. They took the lane away from Paul, and were able to double West. That really messed up our spacing and offensive rythm. The Jazz also get big a plus on transition D. That was championship-calibur defense. Play defense like that for the rest of the season, and the O’brien Trophy is yours.
(recycled from a comment I left @ MyUtahJazz but I like it so can I please leave it here sir??
I can honestly say I have never seen back to back better ‘DEFENSIVE’ games by a Jazz team, and I have been a JazzFanMan ever since the move to SLC, so that’s been awhile. How unreal (and uncharacteristic for this years team anyway) is it to hold last year’s champs to 64 and then the west conference leaders to 66? A hypnotist must have told them before the NO game that “you are the Jazz, you are still in NO, this is a home game!” They sure looked like the home team. A couple of things that stood out and I still can’t believe; 22 turnovers on the road and still win, and (thanks to DJ for this one,) The Jazz score 9 in the 4th and still win by 11? Holy hell!! We ARE in a parallel universe. They continue to play defense like this and nobody can touch them home OR away. The entire team played defense. I honestly think the reason we only scored 77 was our intense focus on the ‘D,’ and in the end it’s a ‘W.’ Doesn’t really matter if the final scores are 55 to 51 as long as we win although scores like that won’t be good for ratings but ‘oh well.’ The ‘Turk’ is the key. Memo is an animal and whatever special place that man is in KEEP HIM THERE! To have the two cold war boys start the game like that for us is like, wow! Jerry has also tightened the rotation to his ‘playoff’ rotation and I like it. Everyone played great overall, everyone hustled even though a couple of guys could have shot the ball a little better, ok, a LOT better (you know who you are KK.) Can we not go to a Jr. high in visiting cities, hand out about 10 or 12 Jazz blue shirts and give them tickets to the game? Boozer is playing both ends, Memo is playing like and all-star, and DW’s team wins regardless of his personal stats, a ‘true’ point guard in every sense. CP3 and DW both only score 4 but who’s team dominates the entire game. Who ‘leads’ his team as a point guard should and thinks ‘team first?’ Bottle this guys. There is no reason they can’t go 4-0 the rest of the way playing like this. And one more thing, there was a shot of West, CP3, & Peja that was pure Deja Vue from the Spurs game when Parker, Duncan, & ManoFlop were sitting there late in the game and they knew it was over. Sweetness.
Paul’s +/- was -22. MVP indeed!
Deron was +6 even though he struggled.
Does no one have video of Deron saying “sorry buddy” to Melo? I must see it!!!!!
That Powerhouse highlight of the game was great…showing Deron going nuts on the sideline with the Millsap steal was awesome…DERON IS THE TRUTH!
That link about Deron owning Chris Paul is awesome. I seriously wish I could be at the game against the Thuggets and I’d shout MVP like crazy anytime Deron got near the ball. I urge all of you who will be in attendance to do so.
Did you see the ESPN recap? ‘Deron Williams had an off-night, and Chris Paul wasn’t much better’ - when Dwill had the better game!
Of all the questions we can ask about Deron Williams, this one is most important: when will he get an ESPN commercial?
Um, guess what?? Playoff tickets are on sale!!!!!!!!!!! Yay.
yay! videos!
[…] a team that’ll let him play. Not even if … gah, let’s avoid all that. Linkage Basketball John recap My Utah Jazz has enough recaps to drive a fan insane (that’s a good thing, by the way). FLA […]
Ok, what I was going to say is that I got a promo code for playoff tickets, so that you can buy them early before they go on sale to the general public. If anybody wants the code, tell me and I’ll post it on here.
Yes please. That’d be great.
Here’s the email I got from my Jazz guy who actually works at the ticket office, so I know it’s legit. I just copied and pasted it in here. I’m SO excited for the playoffs!
Playoff Tickets
Northwest Division Champions 2007-2008
Follow the link below to buy playoff tickets before they go on sale to the General Public.
http://www.ticketmaster.com/promo/qicrn5
Enter the Promo Code: JO7208. That is the letters JO and the number 7208.
The Utah Jazz are playing amazing. Don’t miss the chance to see them in the playoffs.
Please feel free to pass this link along to your friends and family who might be interested in coming out for the playoffs.
The link goes LIVE on Friday, April 11 @ 10 AM! You can buy playoff tickets anytime after the link goes live.