That’s how it’s suppose to be done.  The Jazz led by only 6 after one, but they added another 6 in the second for a twelve-point lead.  And then the game was over a few minutes into the third when the TWolves couldn’t score until about the 7 minute mark.

You look at this game and think, “Are the Jazz that bad on the road?”  I can’t imagine how they lost to these guys last week.  They really are terrible.  They only had 15 turnovers, but it seemed double that.  In the second half it didn’t seem like they could go a possession without getting the ball stolen or deflected.  And they had the most airballs, shots that would hit the backboard and no rim, and all kinds of ugly shots.

Deron led the way again with 21 points and only 11 assists.  If you’re keeping score, that’s 50 assists over the last three games.  He nearly beat the TWolves as a team who had only 12 total.  He beat Telfair and anyone else they threw at him off the dribble all night.  At one point he had two consecutive shake and bakes that led to a lay-up and the foul.  It sure seemed like he had a personal vendetta tonight.  Maybe his pride was hurt from losing last time.  But his play reminded me of the Feb 4 game against Paul and the Hornets.  Someone needs to email him daily and tell him that [next PG opponent] is better than he is just to keep him angry.

Memo had 15 and has seemed a lot more aggressive inside lately.  I believe it was Bolerjack who has said over the past couple of telecasts that Okur has kind of taken to heart the knock on his inside game and defense.  He had a couple of great drives tonight that were reminiscent of those in the Mavs game.  Why does everyone have to play angry?

Boozer had 16 & 14.  He also had the clip of the game when the camera guy went in for a close-up following a missed lay-up (that he should have had) and a foul.  Instead of his And-1!, Aaaaah! or Get-in-There! shouts, he gave us the Christmas Story inspired, “Fuuuuuuuuudge!”  Only it wasn’t fudge.

And probably the player of the night for sheer entertainment value was Brewer.  He had dunk after dunk, not to mention 2-2 from the arc.  Who said he couldn’t shoot?  Here’s one of the aforementioned dunks:

Video Coming. YouTube was down

So the Jazz take care of business and never let this one get close.  The 17th straight home victory give the Jazz 40 wins on the year.  And now with only 20 games left, and 3.5 games back of the Spurs for first in the West, the Jazz are going to have go on quite a run to overtake them and hold off anyone else.  They’d also have to leap the Suns, the Lakers, Houston, and NO.  They’d have to finish about 17-3 to have a shot at that wouldn’t you think?  Especially with how everyone short of PHX is playing lately.

And a lot of those wins are going to have to come on the road.  The first of the those comes Friday against PHX.  They could actually pass them in the standings with a win.  And the Suns didn’t do us any favors tonight, losing to the Nuggets.  The Suns are limping now and the Jazz need to take advantage of that before they get rolling again (if they do).  And with Shaq, we’ll likely see a lot more Tree.  Could we also see a Fess call up?  But with this game on the road, I’m not very optimistic for a win.

Other blogs:

• Biased Fan (nothing yet)
• My Utah Jazz (nothing yet either)
• Frank Layden Fans
• No Siler recap yet.  Just an AP article.  Did he finally drop from exhaustion?

Other notes:

• Sorry about the outage.  Thanks to TrueHoop though for the link again
• The Suns are looking to Giricek to help out?  Now we’ll get to face him again.
• Don’t look now, but Deron’s averaging 19.1 points and 10.1 assists.  If he average 23 points a game for the last 20 games (and maintains his assist per), he would finish with 20 & 10 for the year.  A bit of a stretch, but doable.  He’s averaging almost 15 assists his last 5 games.

This was suppose to go up earlier, but I got hammered from deadspin.com.  So I finally got things worked out with my webhost and I think we’re good to go again.  Recap coming after the game.

There’s some local news here in Salt Lake that is making me sick to my stomach.  So I’m trying to fill my mind with other activities so that I don’t have to think about it.  Anyway, here’s a whole slew of Jazz links that I’ve been looking at to push out the crap.

And I could be adding more to this list as I find them.

• You’re telling me I can meet Fess and have dinner at Denny’s?  Awesome!
• Hmmmmmmm, saaaaaalt.
• No sexy on the Jazz? - I think Adam Keefe and Amaechi would have to disagree.
• Karl Malone v Carmelo Anthony - Discuss
• The Powerless Rankings - Brought to you by Amare Stoudemire on the low block
• I don’t hate Kate - “It would be nice to get 26 free throws.”  You have to try to get contact though first.
• Maybe because he doesn’t have the flint/steel wool skills? - That was a low blow to church leagues.  Does Jerry frequent them?
• A good western
• Half man, half a season - There’s some Jazz stuff in there too.  But that nickname is gold.
• “No heart feelings”

My latest column is up on HoopsVibe.  I’ll try to get an rss feed for my articles to put up here.  But in the meantime, I’ll put up a post about it.  It’s only my second one there as I couldn’t get much done over the holidays.  But there will probably be a weekly column there. 

And if you’re familiar with Jazzfanz, sirkickyass also write there now.  Although now he takes on the name “Captain Jack’s Headband.”  Whatever that is.

Just when you thought that the Korver/Giricek talk would start to die down, you get a little more now that Philly is in town just few days after the trade.

Giri is going out with his girlfriend (really, I didn’t think he was gay) to his favorite restaurant (any guesses?) on his return to the SLC.  I wonder if she lives here.  And Korver is still probably looking for housing and a good place to eat.

Both have stated that facing their old team isn’t a big issue.  Gordan would have the biggest reason for playing well against the Jazz, I don’t think he will play enough to be able to exact revenge.  Although if he can drill a three to finish out the game, I’m sure he would feel some measure of satisfaction.

The big argument on Jazz boards and some blogs is that Korver is taking away minutes from Miles and Brewer who have both been playing well.  He shouldn’t be as he’s mainly a SF.  I think their decline in minutes against the Portland game was more for that matchup more than how things are going to be.  And there’s no denying that he brought a buzz to the arena and to the team.  The obvious person who should be losing PT is Harpring.  But he’ll stay in there until one of his legs breaks off at the knee.  And even then he wouldn’t be any worse on defense so he’ll probably stay in.  But we may see more of Korver tonight as he could play a bigger role in defending his old teammates.

I’m not ready to say that the Jazz are back to their winning ways despite the impressive win over Portland.  They have to rattle off a few in a row, including some road games, before my confidence will be back up.  That said, this game should be on of the easier ones and we should have the Jazz riding a wave of confidence from the last game.  This one shouldn’t be close for long.

• Jazzfanz discussion
• 76ers Blog
• 76ers Locker
• SLTrib & More Trib
• USA Today

That’s what you get when you step away from the computer for a few hours, KOC goes and pulls a trade behind your back.

Earlier this morning, the Jazz finally found a suitor for Giricek and sent him and a future conditional first-round pick for Kyle Korver.  The Jazz get rid of Gordan and the Sixers free up some cap space for next year.  There weren’t any details on the pick traded, but it probably won’t end up being a high pick, and if it is, it’s probably top 5-10 protected.

This is one of the trades that works out for all involved.  Gordan gets to start over and be a viable option coming off their bench.  He’ll be able to play for a contract next year in the NBA or overseas.  And of course he’ll finally be able to move out of Jerry’s doghouse and not have to worry about being yanked.

I was going to say that Korver would be moving to a contender, but I couldn’t really back that up with anything lately.  But he should add a deep threat for the Jazz who rank last in almost every three-point category.  We should be able to see him shoot as he comes in with the second team.  He’s only shooting 35% from behind the line this year after coming back from a groin injury.  But he is a lifetime 40% shooter and so hopefully we’ll see that from him.  And we got the league’s free-throw percentage leader.  Maybe we’ll have someone down the stretch that can hit some?  91.4%.  I don’t remember having any players on the team that shot that high.

My overall reaction is that this is a good-very good trade.  The draft pick hurts a bit, but the Jazz aren’t likely to have a high pick for the foreseeable future barring a catastrophe.  But we had to get rid of Gordan.  It was becoming a distraction and it was obvious Giricek wasn’t going to be part of the plan anymore.  So now we have a three that can shoot the three.  One question is whether Korver will knock Harpring out of the regular rotation.  Let’s hope so.  He’s got a better shot and we all know he has to be a better defender by virtue of being able put one foot in front of the other.  He’s also been getting about 30 minutes with the Sixers.  That would probably drop to about 20 minutes I would guess with the Jazz.  With his contract, that’s pretty expensive.  And he’s not quite the veteran presence I wish we had, but it’s a step in the right direction.

We won’t see Korver tonight against the Celtics.  That should give him plenty of time to come to the SLC, see the lights at Temple Square, catch a handsome cab ride, and get his hair done.

And don’t worry Giricek lovers, you’ll see him soon enough as the Sixers return to Utah on the 2nd.  How does that always happen?  Whether it’s in basketball, baseball, football, whatever, if you’re traded to another team, you’re guaranteed to play your old team within a couple days.

Fan Reactions: JazzFanz, SlTrib, ESPN - Great quote from someone, “Korver is a stand up guy and the city of Utah will love him.”  I’m sure the rest of the state of Salt Lake will like him as well.

Other reactions:

• ReclinerGM
• Luhmmy
• HoopsVibe
• InsideHoops

Build lead in third, turnover the ball and miss free-throws in the fourth, rinse & repeat.  That’s all I have to say for the two weeks.  Oh, and I forgot about strategy of play poor against the zone and foul on defense.

You’ve seen it a hundred times in movies.  An airplane is in a nosedive and heading for a mountain.  All seems lost until someone steps in and pulls hard on the controls and pulls them out of it.  My question is who is that guy for the Jazz?  We’re two losses away from crashing and burning.  And going up against Orlando and Miami next, it could well happen.

Tell me who the leaders are on this team?  Williams and Deron claim to be.  And they very well may be the only leaders, but I haven’t seen anything yet that tells me that they have everyone behind them.

Where are all the crafty veteran moves that are so famous in the NBA?  When you are up double-digits and all of the sudden the momentum is shifting, it’s the veteran leader that steps up and gets points no matter what the cost.  They get to the line, they find the open man, and they silence the crowd.

And as much as it pains me to say it, but losing Fisher has taken a much bigger toll than I thought it would.  Maybe there’s something to this veteran leadership thing.  Boozer and Williams have claimed the position but I don’t know if they’ve earned it.

We all know though that if Fisher were here he would still be starting.  But would having Brewer coming off the bench be such a bad thing this year?  Not if you look at how poorly they have performed. 

The big story of course is Giricek’s fight with Sloan which led to the inevitable banishment.  In what was likely Gordan’s last game as a Jazzman, he was booted to the locker room after drawing Sloan’s ire for some unknown reason.  He was then told that he wouldn’t be with the team for the remaining two games of this trip.  So likely we will see him shipped off and get almost nothing in return.  Because so much goes on in the locker room and behind closed doors, it’s hard to say how Gordan fit in with the rest of the team as a teammate.  But outside of Okur, it didn’t seem like he was friends with anyone else.

I don’t know if we have anyone on the team right now that can pull the Jazz out of this horrendous slump.  So should Giri get traded, let’s hope it brings in a vet that can show the others the way.

I hope you got your fill of Turkey and Booze last week, because you weren’t getting any tonight.  Okur was out with back spasms still and Booze was letting his ankle heal a little more.

No matter as Deron Williams and Andrei Kirilenko led the charge and got a revenge win over the visiting Lakers.  Deron had a career-high 35 points and became the go-to scorer for the night.  He relinquished the assist duties to AK, who had his third career triple-double with 11 assists, 11 boards, and 20 points, not to mention 4 blocks and 6 steals.  Millsap and Brewer added 20 & 14 respectively.

And with two big guys out, the Jazz had to bring up Fess from down the road.  He played in his first official NBA game and didn’t seem to show any signs of being nervous or intimidated.  He went for 6 & 7, already career highs!  If we see much more of him, the ESA is going to start chanting his name when Collins is in.

Full Box Score

The Jazz led by 19 at the break and were never seriously threatened after that.  They pushed the lead to as much as 28, but it didn’t seem to get below 17 from that point on.  The controlled the second half, holding Kobe to only 6 points.  The second half is usually when the Jazz give it up to the elite players, but not this night.  They held LA to 44% shooting and the Lakers could never get in a rhythm.

A couple of glaring stats, one good and one bad.  First the bad.  Deron had a whopping 9 turnovers.  The Jazz only had 3 the entire first half.  But the biggest stat of the night was 70 points in the paint.  I don’t know what the record is, but I don’t remember anything that high.  But an even more astounding 52 of those came in the first half out of 70 total points.  And they say our interior defense is lacking.

Kirilenko had to be salivating to be the man again.  You could see see him mentally going back to the 03-04 season.  He was the dominant AK that earned the max contract.  Although I advocated trading him for Marion before the season started, I’m glad they didn’t.  Those hindsight glasses work great.  Could Marion put on a performance and put up the number like AK did?  AK should be the backup point guard.  He also had a nice full-court football pass to Williams for a layup, reminiscent of the Stockton to Malone pass against the Bulls in the playoffs.

Let’s hope they can keep him and the other parts of the core for at least the next few years.

Overall, a win against the Lakers and shutting up their fans that attend the games at the ESA is one of the sweetest things for Jazz fans.  And it’s especially savory because Boozer and Okur weren’t playing.  We could have Knicked them.

Fesenko Interview - Apparently he didn’t even have time to pack a change of clothes
Kirilenko Interview - AK has been cut.  See, he’s human.
ESPN highlights - The Lakers have a new sensation, Jobe.

Other random notes:

• Crittenton was added to the long list of AK rejections when he tried his best Kobe “going away from the basket, hop, travel, reverse layup” move and got made a fool.  Just like they keep track of how many parks a batters hits a home run in or who they’ve hit them off of, the NBA should keep track of how many unique players have been swatted by a particular player.
• Phil Jackson will have to start earning that new $24 million extension next game.
• Fesenko was hot when he first came in and played pretty solid in the second half in limited action.  But you can one weakness is running up his foul totals quick as do most rookies.
• Millsap looks to be getting back into his 06-07 form.  He had 20 (a career high) & 9.  Maybe because his 10 & 10 are the norm now he’s not surprising anyone this year.  He wasn’t expected to do what he did last year and now we take it for granted.
• Looks like Kobe still prefers the jump shop karate chop to try to make it look like he got fouled.
• And Odom must have just wanted out of the game.  Fouling Brewer on a break-away was understandable.  But then he didn’t let go of Brewer’s arm and threw him to the ground.
• Does Williams have the best crossover in the game today?  It wasn’t fair to Radmanovic.  He got schooled twice.  Try picking on someone your own size Deron.  Oh, that’s right, he crossed up Fisher too.
• The Jazz cannot play transition or fast break D to save their lives.  One guard has got to stay back if the other’s going for the board.
• Sloan was finally forced to play Giri.  I found out what happened.  Apparently Giri was caught reading a New Holland tractor catalog.  There was a whole blue v. green argument with Sloan.  Giri was just staying loyal to his European roots.  People’s mommas came up.  Miller was trying to mediate.  Ugly, ugly.
• Weird note from Ross Siler, Sloan has Flash season tickets.  They made Sloan buy tickets?  Do they make him pay for his Skittles too?  There’s no reciprocity?
• Fisher was surprised by the boos.  Why would he be?  He’s a Laker again, probably the most hated franchise of Jazz fans.  Was he picked on a bit?  Sure.  But he acted like the fans were abusing his daughter or something.  But I thank him for last year and his 1-8 shooting tonight.