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,

• Hornets 24/7
• At the Hive
• My Utah Jazz & Some more
• Biased Fan
• FLA

I didn’t get this in to Jim in time for the Hornets website.  But I spent too much time on it not to put it up somewhere.  Interestingly enough, he had Jed from My Utah Jazz answer the questions and the answers were nearly identical.  Crazy.  So read what Jed had to say and then read these below.  Game thread and thoughts coming later today.

PS, I heard Smash or Smush or someone on 1280 the other day from My Utah Jazz talking about the biggest Jazz rivalries and they let him give out his URL.  Pretty good stuff.

Here were mine,

Hornets.com: With only a week remaining in the regular season, what will be the biggest keys to success for the Jazz in the 2008 playoffs?

Basketball John:  Just win baby.  Maybe.  See, here’s the crazy thing.  If the Jazz stay at the number four seed, their playoff bracket includes Phoenix (possibly), Houston, Denver/Golden State, and your Hornets.  And the Jazz have played very well against all of these teams.  If they move up to the three seed, now they’re playing in the same bracket as the Lakers, Spurs, Mavs.  These are the teams that the Jazz (at least the fans) fear the most.  So the goal is to get home-court for the first round, but not move up in the standings.  You don’t want them to lose, but if they don’t move up, it might not be the worst thing. And also, they need to show they can win on the road.  And a win against your Hornets tonight would make a great statement.

Hornets.com: What are the most prominent areas where the Jazz have shown improvement or regression since the 2007 playoffs, when they were a surprise participant in the Western Conference finals?

Basketball John:  I didn’t get time to get to this one.

Hornets.com: Who would you choose as the biggest “X-factor” for Utah in the postseason, a possibly under-the-radar player who will be key for the Jazz?

Basketball John:  He’s not really under the radar, but I really think that as Mehmet Okur goes, so do the Jazz.  When he’s on and hitting threes and taking it to the basket, the Jazz really have as good of a “Big Three” as anyone in the league.  He spreads the defense and opens up lanes for Deron Williams.  And we saw a couple nights ago against the Spurs that he can actually play D and score at the same time.  He’s averaging about four more points, three more rebounds, and 60 points higher on his field goal and three point percentage since the All-Star break.  If he’s on, watch out.

Hornets.com: Utah has one of the largest discrepancy between home and road success in the NBA. Nearly every team is better at home than on the road, but how do you explain the Jazz’s drastic differential?

Basketball John:  If I knew, I’d probably have a job sitting next to Sloan on the bench.  It’s really inexplicable.  A lot of it had to do with their horrid month of December when they went 5-11.  They lost game to Atlanta, Charlotte, and the Heat in which they had leads in the fourth quarter.  But they are actually 10-7 on the road since their January 17th loss at Denver.  So there is improvement.  They may actually be coming around.  And a win tonight would go a long ways to complete the turnaround.

The biggest reason for the discrepancie though I think is that they don’t seem to play defense on the road.  They don’t get as many blocks, steals, turnovers, or defensive rebounds.  A lot of people will say that the Jazz get the calls at home, but they average 23 fouls a game at home, the same as the visiting team gets.   This team can score.  If they play even above average D, they’ll win.

Hornets.com: Overall, what do you think would qualify as a successful postseason for the Jazz? Reaching the West finals again? Advancing past the first round?

Basketball John:  I think in the West, any team will be fortunate to advance past the first round.  I don’t know if there’s a favorite because I think anyone can beat anyone else in a seven game series.  But for the Jazz, having a taste of the Western Conference finals, I can’t imagine anything less being considered a success.  If the Jazz get home court in the first round, advance, and can play either NO, Denver/Golden State, I like their chances.

Hornets.com: Lastly, which player is BasketballJohn.com endorsing in the MVP campaign? Chris Paul, perhaps?

Basketball John: Well I know your readers are going to think it’s my bias that won’t let me endorse Paul for MVP.  He certainly has the numbers.  And I don’t know what’s lead to the recent rash of PGs as MVPs because it’s been very rare before.  Have you looked at John Stockton’s numbers (now we’re going to start that debate) from 1988-1991?  If Stockton had taken more shots, he would have had better stats than Paul has this year but he didn’t even get to within sniffing distance of an MVP.

My pick though is Kevin Garnett.  What he’s done with that Boston team is unbelievable.  After him, Pierce, and Allen, who is there?  He led them to the biggest turnaround in the history of the NBA.  They might get overlooked because they’re in the East, but their record against the West is impressive.  He’s literally changed a franchise.  They were praying for a lottery pick this same time last year.  And now they’re the favorites for the title.  You could argue that Paul has done something similar in New Orleans, but Garnett has been the league’s MVP.

Tell me what’s wrong with this picture from today’s Daily Dime?

The column has nothing to do with Chris Paul.  But I guess since he didn’t play last night, they have to put his picture in somewhere.

Amazing.

UPDATE:  Thanks for this tidbit from Nick.  It’s in the comments, but in case you’re reading this from the main page,

It gets worse. I read this thing last night, and it originally mentioned how Paul finished March with 199 assists, making him be one short of being the only PG in the last 10 years other than Nash to finish a month with 200 or more assists. But then somebody noticed, oops, Williams had 212 this month, so they changed it. Isn’t that interesting, Paul’s almost matching a substantial achievement matters more than Williams actually doing it.

Question, why not make it a story about Williams instead? Oh. . .right.

Well now we all know that Deron Williams reads BBJ.  We saw the same angry Williams last night that we saw in late January and early February.

Deron was nearly perfect going 13-15 from the field for 32 points and causing problems for the Clippers all night.  Whether he was taking it to the basket, pulling up for the J, or dishing one of his ten assists, the Clips had no one to stop him.  He had one of the beset dunks of the year when after a steal, at half court, he drove the lane and threw down over Kaman.  I think only his dunk over Tyson Chandler was better.  And that was because it came after he made Paul look silly.  And with this double-double, Deron and Paul both have 46 DDs.  You won’t hear that comparison anywhere else.  But you have started to see Sloan not holding back praise for Williams,

Deron sees so much out there on the floor and knows the game so well as a young player. It’s very unusual,

This coming from the same Sloan that complains about defense and lack of effort when the Jazz blow out teams.

Deron didn’t do it all by himself though.  The other half of the LA-abusing duo was Carlos Boozer.  He had his way with the Clippers big men, shooting 16-22 for 36 points and picked up the rebound slack with Memo out, grabbing 17.  It was the same for Booze as it was for Deron.  He would either knock down the 16-19 foot jumper or drive right by his defender.

Maybe it was best that Memo (stomach virus), Brewer (ditto), and AK (left in second, calf spasms) were out for this one.  The rest of the team seemed a lot more focused and played within the offense.  They were getting lay-ups, dunks, and open shots. And Jaron Collins didn’t suck.  We also saw Hart play for 16.  And he didn’t suck either. And because they were playing in the offense, they were able to get back on D.  The Clips still shot 51%, but the Jazz forced 17 turnovers and out-rebounded LA, 41-29.

The Jazz did what they needed to do and took care of things at home.  There wasn’t going to be lapse with this one.  The lead got to 25 at one point and the closest the Clippers could get was 15.  Korver helped seal the deal with a couple of threes down the stretch and finished with 17.

And the night got even better after learning that NO got blown out by Boston.  The Celts really are becoming my second team to root for.  It’s too bad they don’t play any more WC teams.  And even bigger news is that Memphis went into LA last night and beat the Lakers, 114-111.  That was despite Kobe’s 53.

So as it stands now, the Jazz are two out of first, 1 1/2 behind Houston (our latest first-round matchup),  and a half game behind PHX.  We’ll get the chance to overtake Houston on April 14.  It will be the third and final game in the series this year.  The series is split 1-1, so whoever wins will have the tiebreaker advantage.  But you know how they show lead changes in a game?  I’d like to see the seed position changes for the last month of the season for the WC.

So tomorrow it’s a rare Sunday game; at Minnesota of course.  Then it’s return home for game against WSH, Minny (again), and the biggie next Friday against SA.  There’s a good chance to move up in seeding this week.

Great time  to be a Jazz fan.

Other blogs

• Clips Nation
• Biased Fan
• Ross Siler (more insight into President Monson talking to Sloan & Deron with a classic quote about it)

Other notes

• Sloan turned 66
• President Monson (LDS Church leader) was in attendance.  And according to ESPN, he stopped by the Jazz bench on his wait out from halftime and said a couple words to the team and Sloan.  Probably a Happy Birthday, go get ‘em kind of talk.

  

• The Clips have had a lot on injuries to say the least.  But it looks like they could get Brand back soon.  He was working out before the game.  Also, if you haven’t seen Livingston’s injury, check out this link (not for the squeamish).  It’s amazing that he can walk again after that.

  

• NBA Top Ten

• Amazing stat of the night goes to Corey Maggette going to the line 19 times.  He scored 16 of his 28 points from the line.  And take a look at his shot chart,

He had one made jumper.  The rest were layups and foul shots.

UPDATE: Welcome TrueHoopers. Sorry for the downtime. Please resume your regulary scheduled reading.

UPDATE2: Dirk’s been suspended for 1 game for his “accidental” takedown of Kirilenko.

Aahhh, the NBA. One of the greatest PR machines of our time. Here’s the classic positive-spin description of their picture of the night,

Dirk Nowitzki accidental[l]y crashes into Andrei Kirilenko on Monday.

They must not have attended any driver safety courses lately because they’re now called collisions. There are no accidents. And why was it called a flagrant one if it was an accident? I should find the Malice in the Palace photo. It would read,

Ron Artest and a fan have a disagreement concerning Artest’s beverage preferences.

I thought maybe I was looking too much into this whole thing, but after reading about Dirk’s “accident” with Fisher the night before, and after watching the video 100 times, here’s my problem with it being an accident. A hard foul is one thing. Even grabbing around the neck and head might be an accident. But when Dirk continues his downward motion of his arm to throw AK to the ground, it’s not an accident.

But both Deron and the Jazz got some love on the NBA daily roundup. Maybe it’s because they were part of only three games that night and one of the other games was NOLA/NYK and the other involved the Clippers.

Deron’s 14 assists in the first half was one off the team record by Raul Lopez. Kidding. He finished with 20. If he has another couple games with 14+, he could get a player of the week award.

Speaking of great point guards, do you realize that Stockton is eligible for HOF enshrinement next year? We’ll find out in a month whether or not Adrian Dantley finally gets the call.

Other Dirk/AK fallout:

• Utah hates Dirk
• Another vantage point showing Dirk around AK’s neck

Other links:

• More Utah/Dallas recap
• Williams/Paul
• Don’t you wish your girl was flexible like me?
• Any move on the Jazz trade front this summer? (end of article)
• Giricek is back in the West.
• Kyle Korver hitting the mainstream on Digg

This game scares me for a lot of reasons.  First, the Hornets just put a beatdown on the Suns.  But most teams are doing that since the Shaq trade.  And Detroit had just beat them by 30 as well.  Second, this game is on the road.  And we all know that the Jazz are Jekyl & hude away from the ESA.  And third, Paul has to play well against the Jazz one of these times doesn’t he?  So I’m kind of pessimistic on this one.

And heaven help us if the Hornets win.  Because even if Paul shoots 2-12 and has 3 assists, that’s all we’ll hear about on ESPN and in the news.  Williams could have 50, but all we’ll see is Paul.  What am I talking about?  Even if the Jazz win and Deron dominates Paul again, we’ll hear that Paul somehow gave it away.  It makes me sick.  Williams needs to stop being friends with Paul and punch him in the face once or something so that we can get a bad-blood rivalry going on.

I’ve got a post over at Hornets.com where I answer some of their questions about the Jazz season and about Williams v. Paul.

I’ve also got another HoopsVibe article ready to go, but it hasn’t been put up yet.  I’ll get a new post up when it’s ready.

I’ll have some links ready to go possibly before the end of the day.

Other blogs:

• My Utah Jazz
• Frank Layden Fans
• Biased fan
• Hornet 24/7
• Larry Brown

Well, it’s 1 p.m. MST and no trades announced for the Jazz. I’m more relieved than anything, not because the core is left in tact, but because we can finally stop hearing ridiculous trade suggestions and made up ones.

So you’ll get some links as we wait for possible Bulls/Cavs trade and see if Artest ends up anywhere.

• Here’s Simmons latest offering for the Jazz. Ugh.
• Please don’t click on any of these links unless you have tons of spare time. It will kill productivity. Most probably already know about this site, but there might be a few that don’t know. If you’re into stats or want to do player comparisons, check out basketball-reference.com. Here’s the main Jazz page and the 2008 page. They have player comparisons, head-to-head matchups, and other cool stuff. This link compares Boozer and Malone, Williams and Stockton in their respective years in the league. Williams and Paul in head-to-head matchups. Duncan usually played better than Malone while Karl had a slight edge over Robinson. Too much time wasted already.
• Jazz get some blog love
• One blog talks about ESPN’s roundtable. Here’s the original article. It scares me when Hollinger likes the Jazz.
• Someone stole my stability article. Not really. But he talks about the Jazz and stability. I’m the first one to ever write about that, right?
• Thanks Luhmy!
• Layden breaks down the matchups.

And finally, if you’ve read this far, it means you got past the basketball-reference link. Also, I’ve got an email interview coming up with Jonathan Rhinehart of the Jazz. He’s the Public Relations and Communications head man for the Jazz. You can see him sitting at the end of the court-level press table during games. He had a blog last year where he would give some insights into the Jazz life. He’s probably been a bit too busy because he hasn’t been able to keeps it up.

But if you have any questions you’d like to have him answer, leave it in the comments. I have a list already to go, but thought I’d send a few more his way.

And since I’ve started getting a few more comments, I’ve added a plugin that will allow you to reply to specific comments.  So try it out.

So I have to take back a little bit about what I’ve stated about the All-Star game.  I still think the Deron got snubbed, do doubt about it.  But really, the All-Star weekend turned out as well as you could expect for a Jazz fan.

First of all, we were pretty well represented.  Fesenko and Almond were in the D-League All-Star game.  Brewer and Millsap were on the Soph team that beat the Rookies.  Millsap didn’t have a great game, but he did have the block of the game.  Brewer played well and had a ferocious windmill dunk.  But the biggest non-story that made headlines was him wearing a headband.  Steve Luhm went off about how him wearing a headband disrespected Sloan as Sloan doesn’t allow them.  Why is he trying to make this into something that it isn’t?  Even Sloan didn’t seem to care,

I don’t have any control over that, if he wants to wear a headband when he’s there, I guess he can go ahead and do it. Nobody telling him he couldn’t

Why is he trying to create news?  Like one commenter said, if the headband had said “Sloan Sucks,” then you have an issue.  There are a lot of things players wear that don’t make a difference in their shot, but they wear them for fashion or whatever.  I thought it was funny though that Millsap wouldn’t wear one because he was scared of Sloan.  And Brewer though that he was going to get fined.

We didn’t have anyone in the slam-dunk contest or the three-point shootout.  I though KK could have been in the 3P contest, but they were showing stats and guys were shooting 46% from 3 but were only 7th in the league.  K3 is below that so it’s hard to make a case for him.  Brewer could have been in the dunk contest, but when they only have a field of four, it makes it tough.  I love how Malone was one of the judges though.  He absolutely didn’t want to be there.  He never wanted to be at any of the All-Star games when he was a player.  And they thought he would want to be there for this?  The best part is when he went after Barkley for making fun of his draft-day suit.

And of course Deron was in the PS3 skills challenge.  He squeaked into the the finals when defending champ Wade put on an embarrassing show by losing a dribble out of bounds, missing shots, and then showing that he really didn’t care by missing 2 lay-ups at the end.  He even went as far as just chucking up the last two balls from the jump-shooting portion just so he could go on to the next station.  He didn’t want to be there at all.  And Kidd couldn’t hit a jump-shot to save his life.

That left Williams v. Paul for the final.  And once again we learn that 8>3.  And not only did Deron win it, he posted the event-record, 25.5 seconds.  It was great to hear the media spin on this.  The announcers basically stated that Paul was amazing and it took a record time to beat him.  Not that Deron won, but that Paul only lost because Williams pulled a miracle out of his butt.  Unbelievable.  I also like the following quotes,

Not moving at full speed, Williams clocked 31.2 seconds in the first round

And then for Paul,

Paul, the All-Star point guard of the host New Orleans Hornets, posted a strong final-round time of 31.2.

Paul’s 31.2 was clearly superior.

And finally, Boozer got to play in the All-Star game after missing last year’s with injury.  He posted 14 points & 10 boards in only 18 minutes.  He was part of the West’s comeback, but was taken out after they had tied it up.

So as I was saying, we got to see 5 Jazz players participate in the All-Star festivities.  No one got hurt.  Williams didn’t feel totally left out.  And although he’s stated that he’s over the snub, you know he’s going to use it as fuel for the rest of the season.  And that’s a good thing.

So let’s get ready for the second half of the season with GS tonight.

Other AS notes

• Kobe playing only two minutes so as to not get penalized for not playing is ridiculous.  Does the NBA not have anyone in charge of common sense?  It’s like suspending the Suns players last year for leaving the bench and going back.  How does him playing make sense?
• Does anyone at Getty check for errors with captions? - This isn’t the first time.  Do they have editors that know sports?
• Brewer and Millsap pics from the R/S game
• What’s Malone eating?  The boy next to him looks like he could use a bite.
• Why was Michael Bivins a big part of the AS festivities?  Turn back the clock night to 1993?  I grew up on BBD.  It was just weird to see him again.
• Yahoo Jazz images

GS game blogs

• Biased Fan
• My Utah Jazz
• Golden State of Mind

Morris Almond lost out to Lance Allred of the  Idaho Stampede in the return of HORSE to the NBA’s D-League.  Morris won the first round with a HO.  But in the finals, Almond got beat down by a HO when Allred nailed the patented Harpring jump shot from the left elbow.  He did call out Harpring Sucks though when he shot it.  Mo wasn’t able to match that.

And apparently if you’re white, you have an advantage in HORSE.  That coming from both Almond and Allred.  Did we ever see either Bird or Jordan win? And is the reason why the league capped the games at 5 minutes because they didn’t want players yelling out HOR! when the other guy missed?  Isn’t that the best part of playing HORSE?  You progress from HO, to HOR, and then to HORS (with a z sound).  I guess they’re trying to attract as few groupies as possible.

Millsap and Brewer played in the Soph/Rookie game tonight as well.  Brewer made the most of his 17 minutes going 6-6 from the field and finished with 13 points.  Millsap didn’t do as well.  He only got up four shots in 22 minutes.  He only had two boards as well.  Daniel Gibson won MVP going 11-20 from the three-point line.  And those were the only shots he took.  I don’t think he even crossed the arc.

So tomorrow night we’ll get to see Williams embarrass Paul, Wade, and Kidd in the skills challenge.  No word yet on whether Kobe is going to still play in the All-Star game.  We know Kidd likely won’t be traded now before then due to George and Stackhouse.  So if Mamba can’t go, there’s a good shot Deron could get the call.

Some quickie links for the night:

• Thanks to Scrumtrulescent for this link.  Booner absolutely dominates in HORSE.  He could probably take most players.
• Booz will be flashing some gold kicks at the AS game
• Don’t expect any more Jazz trades
• Even NO’s assistant coach agrees, 8>3
• Jazz own the Hornets
• Simmons likes the Korver trade