Sunday, November 23, 2008

   If you ever wanted to see an NBA head coach, let alone a 66-year-old one, take control of a game as if he were a high school coach, then Saturday was the game for you.

    Jazz coach Jerry Sloan watched his team get off to a slow start, watched it get carved up in a zone defense and spent the rest of the half on his feet and ordering his players around the court. It didn't hurt that the Jazz also started trapping off the pick-and-roll.

    Sloan was yelling at his players to pass the ball inside, to get up into their men on defense and to run the floor. One scout was laughing that one moment Sloan hollered for his players to hit the floor after a loose ball and the next he was yelling to get back on defense.

    I mentioned the high school coach comparison to C.J. Miles after the game and he agreed. "Like when the coach puts you in a full-court trap and calls out where everybody is supposed to be," Miles said.

    The bottom line was it worked. The Jazz needed a jump-start and Sloan helped provide it. The Jazz came home from this trip with a split instead of adding a humiliating loss to Memphis on top of an embarrassing loss to San Antonio.

    This game also never quite felt like it was in the Jazz's control. They could have led by nine at halftime, but led by seven instead after Mike Conley hit a runner at the buzzer. Memphis got within six midway through the third and eight going into the fourth.

    Even after the Jazz built a 22-point lead in the fourth quarter, Memphis still got the game down to single digits (99-90) with 1:27 left. That came shortly after Rudy Gay threw down a poster-quality dunk on Andrei Kirilenko.

    Now the Jazz have four games at home to build off Saturday's victory. If they take care of business and Deron Williams returns at close to 100 percent, the Jazz should have a five-game winning streak by this time next week.

    * * *

    I seem to remember getting a lot of Ask the Expert questions, either this summer or last, about the possibility of acquiring Darko Milicic. Just wondering if any Jazz fans still want him after watching Saturday's game.

    Milicic had four points and three rebounds in 15 minutes and made 2 of 6 shots. He struggled to convert around the basket with rookie Kosta Koufos on him. He committed an awful foul to put the Jazz at the line late in the third after Memphis had closed to 75-67.

    * * *

    Have to laugh that the Oklahoma City Thunder have been in business for less than four months and they've already had one more coaching change than the Jazz in the last 20 years. P.J. Carlesimo's name gets added to the list as the 220th coaching change around the NBA during Sloan's tenure. Tyrone Corbin interviewed for the Sonics job two summers ago before it went to Carlesimo and you have to wonder if he might get another call this summer.

    * * *

    Everybody's going to bag on Memphis all season. The team is going to play in front of thousands of empty seats at FedExForum (you can get tickets to six games for $60) while using one of the youngest starting lineups in NBA history.

    But here's three things the Grizzlies do well from a fan standpoint that other teams could stand to learn from.

    1. The explanation is a little sketchy, but the Grizzlies have a student section in the upper deck. They've been there all season, apparently. It's a group of kids from local high schools who buy $5 tickets and stand the entire game as if they're at Cameron Indoor Stadium.

    They sing "Ole-Ole" to Marc Gasol and deliver all the predictable chants, from "Let's get rowdy" to "No one likes you" to the slightly off-color "We love Gay." The Grizzlies should make it a priority to get those kids into the lower bowl.

    2. According to the Memphis Commercial-Appeal, the Grizzlies auctioned off a trip to Dallas for a game against the Mavericks as part of their tipoff luncheon. It was no ordinary trip, though, as the two winners got to fly on the team charter and stay at the team hotel.

    They went to the game at American Airlines Center, then flew home with the team afterward. The two winners bid $1,450 each, with proceeds benefiting the Boys and Girls Clubs of Memphis. That's a pretty cool fan experience.

    3. The Grizzlies let their players pick the music that's playing during pregame warmups. We were treated to three selections courtesy of Darrell Arthur - - Kanye West's "Stronger," a Lil' Wayne song and "Dirt Off Your Shoulder" by Jay-Z.

    * * *

    Of course, I'm going to note that the Memphis Tigers did draw 18,000 fans for a game that started at 11 p.m. locally against Massachusetts. The announced crowd for the Grizzlies (a 7 p.m. start) was 13,121.

    I also enjoyed the moment during a third-quarter timeout when I looked at the Grizzlies bench and realized - - oh my goodness - - Antoine Walker is actually here with the team. I figured he'd been deactivated after this summer's trade.

    * * *

    With Carlos Boozer missing his second game with a strained left quadriceps tendon, Jerry Sloan opted to start Paul Millsap instead of rookie Kosta Koufos. Sloan said Koufos got mixed up a couple of times on defense against the Spurs, which was no surprise considering he was playing against Tim Duncan.

    Matt Harpring not only was available to play in the second game of the back-to-back set, he logged 13 minutes and had five points. Morris Almond, meanwhile, had a career-high 11 points in 15 minutes. Ronnie Brewer also matched his career-high of 21 points for the fourth time.

    * * *

    To the Coldplay crew: I'm mainly interested in whether they played "Warning Sign," which is by far my favorite song of theirs and perfectly complemented the scene with Zach Braff on the porch in the last five minutes of "The Last Kiss."

    --Ross Siler