Tuesday's Report
Officially, the Jazz trounced the Washington Wizards on Monday night.
In reality, the seeds to Utah's easy 129-87 victory were planted 24 hours earlier, when the Jazz suffered a 110-103 loss at lottery-bound Minnesota and the Wizards lost in overtime to Kobe Bryant and the Lakers, 126-120.
This turn of events happens frequently in the NBA.
The Jazz were embarrassed by the Timberwolves and were ready to take it out on the Wizards, who were flat after their taxing effort in Los Angeles.
You could almost see the Jazz's 42-point win coming.
OK, so nobody could have predicted a blowout of such gigantic proportions -- not with Andrei Kirilenko and Ronnie Brewer sidelined with injuries and the Jazz starting C.J. Miles and Ronnie Price in their place.
Miles and Price played exceptionally well, however. So did Matt Harpring and Kyle Korver. Memo Okur also bounced back from a two-game absence with a nice game, while Deron Williams and Carlos Boozer got the Jazz off to the kind of start that prevented the Wizards from even thinking about winning the game.
I thought Sloan's decision to start Price at shooting guard was an interesting one.
Rather than move Korver into the starting lineup or put the burden on rookie Morris Almond, Sloan went with Price, who made his second start in his 141st game in the NBA. Normally the Jazz's backup point guard, he finished with 10 points, four rebounds and four assists and provided some of the aggressiveness that was so obviously missing in the Jazz's loss to Minnesota.
Sloan mentioned Price's willingness to dive on the floor after loose balls, which was another reason the Jazz lost to the Timberwolves. The Jazz failed to come up with loose balls three times in the closing minutes against Minnesota and the failure to do so doomed their attempt to rally from a nine-point deficit in the final minutes.
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The Jazz's win over Washington was only the eighth by 40 points or more in franchise history. ...
The Jazz had a season-high 40 assists. Williams had 16 in only 28 minutes. He did not play the final 15:28. ...
Almond, just back from the D-League, played for the first time since Jan. 10. His three-pointer with 4:42 left was the first of his NBA career. ...
After the game, Kyrylo Fesenko asked Ronnie Price a question as Price was getting dressed and preparing to be interviewed. Price didn't hear, so Fesenko repeated it. This time, Price heard the question but didn't understand. In his broken English, Fesenko repeated it again. When Price still didn't understand, Fesenko smiled and said, "O.K., no more questions." He got up and left the locker room. ...
I felt a little badly for Washington's DeShawn Stevenson, the former first-round pick of the Jazz. You can tell how hard he tries to play well against Utah, but he usually struggles. It happened again in this game. Stevenson was scoreless in the first half. He finished with nine points -- all scored during garbage time -- on 3-for-8 shooting. In two games against the Jazz this season, he scored 14 points in 60 minutes. He made only four of 17 field-goal attempts, including 1-for-11 from the three-point line. ...
In a blog last week, I mentioned that I was eager to see three-time Western Athletic Conference Player of the Year Nick Fazekas in the Jazz-Clipper game. The Jazz had interest in Fazekas in last summer's draft, but ended up taking Almond at No. 25. I obviously jinxed Fazekas, however, because he did not play against Utah. But I noticed he finished with six points and 10 rebounds in the Clippers' 93-86 loss to the Mavericks on Monday night. I loved Clipper coach Mike Dunleavy's line, when I asked him about Fazekas: "He kind of grows on you." Classic. ...
Talking about the Jazz's effective pick-and-roll that his team could not stop, Washington coach Eddie Jordan said, "We wanted to be aggressive on Williams. [But] he's very good at finding the slips, finding the spot on people. He's good with vision from the strong side of the floor all the way to the weakside of the floor. He's one of the best at it."
-- Steve Luhm
In reality, the seeds to Utah's easy 129-87 victory were planted 24 hours earlier, when the Jazz suffered a 110-103 loss at lottery-bound Minnesota and the Wizards lost in overtime to Kobe Bryant and the Lakers, 126-120.
This turn of events happens frequently in the NBA.
The Jazz were embarrassed by the Timberwolves and were ready to take it out on the Wizards, who were flat after their taxing effort in Los Angeles.
You could almost see the Jazz's 42-point win coming.
OK, so nobody could have predicted a blowout of such gigantic proportions -- not with Andrei Kirilenko and Ronnie Brewer sidelined with injuries and the Jazz starting C.J. Miles and Ronnie Price in their place.
Miles and Price played exceptionally well, however. So did Matt Harpring and Kyle Korver. Memo Okur also bounced back from a two-game absence with a nice game, while Deron Williams and Carlos Boozer got the Jazz off to the kind of start that prevented the Wizards from even thinking about winning the game.
I thought Sloan's decision to start Price at shooting guard was an interesting one.
Rather than move Korver into the starting lineup or put the burden on rookie Morris Almond, Sloan went with Price, who made his second start in his 141st game in the NBA. Normally the Jazz's backup point guard, he finished with 10 points, four rebounds and four assists and provided some of the aggressiveness that was so obviously missing in the Jazz's loss to Minnesota.
Sloan mentioned Price's willingness to dive on the floor after loose balls, which was another reason the Jazz lost to the Timberwolves. The Jazz failed to come up with loose balls three times in the closing minutes against Minnesota and the failure to do so doomed their attempt to rally from a nine-point deficit in the final minutes.
********
The Jazz's win over Washington was only the eighth by 40 points or more in franchise history. ...
The Jazz had a season-high 40 assists. Williams had 16 in only 28 minutes. He did not play the final 15:28. ...
Almond, just back from the D-League, played for the first time since Jan. 10. His three-pointer with 4:42 left was the first of his NBA career. ...
After the game, Kyrylo Fesenko asked Ronnie Price a question as Price was getting dressed and preparing to be interviewed. Price didn't hear, so Fesenko repeated it. This time, Price heard the question but didn't understand. In his broken English, Fesenko repeated it again. When Price still didn't understand, Fesenko smiled and said, "O.K., no more questions." He got up and left the locker room. ...
I felt a little badly for Washington's DeShawn Stevenson, the former first-round pick of the Jazz. You can tell how hard he tries to play well against Utah, but he usually struggles. It happened again in this game. Stevenson was scoreless in the first half. He finished with nine points -- all scored during garbage time -- on 3-for-8 shooting. In two games against the Jazz this season, he scored 14 points in 60 minutes. He made only four of 17 field-goal attempts, including 1-for-11 from the three-point line. ...
In a blog last week, I mentioned that I was eager to see three-time Western Athletic Conference Player of the Year Nick Fazekas in the Jazz-Clipper game. The Jazz had interest in Fazekas in last summer's draft, but ended up taking Almond at No. 25. I obviously jinxed Fazekas, however, because he did not play against Utah. But I noticed he finished with six points and 10 rebounds in the Clippers' 93-86 loss to the Mavericks on Monday night. I loved Clipper coach Mike Dunleavy's line, when I asked him about Fazekas: "He kind of grows on you." Classic. ...
Talking about the Jazz's effective pick-and-roll that his team could not stop, Washington coach Eddie Jordan said, "We wanted to be aggressive on Williams. [But] he's very good at finding the slips, finding the spot on people. He's good with vision from the strong side of the floor all the way to the weakside of the floor. He's one of the best at it."
-- Steve Luhm
12:28 PM
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3 Comments:
This post has been removed by the author.
You mean you felt bad for Deshawn Stevenson?
Badly is an adverb, which as used, would imply that the mechanism which allows you to generate feelings about said player, is broken.
I enjoyed this post. The sort of blog post that gets me through the time between games.
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