30 November, 2008

Embarassing Loss at Home, Jazz Drops to 11-7

Jazz Game,

- Baffled. One big Game, followed by an embarassing loss at Home

Others,

- Zach Randolph In, Chris Kaman Out. Clippers will be getting slightly better, I believe.

29 November, 2008

Assists Looks Easy on D Will's hands, Jazz stood at 11-6

Jazz Game,

- a blowout Q3 sealed the game

- 2nd Game (after the 2nd return), D Will has a solid performance with 15 dishes

- 8 players in double figures, does anyone still doubt about our bench depth?

Others,

- Parker and Ginobili are back

- Chris Bosh and Dwyane Wade are currently in their top form

27 November, 2008

Deron is back, Jazz improves to 10-6

Jazz Game,

- Easy win, but huge; it shows clearly that Jazz is a much better team with D Will playing. See the highlights - you will know. He does what a PG does, distribute the ball nicely, set the right tempo and good momentum. Even when he sits for some mins, the other teammates could ride on it

- Millsap, 24 points, 16 rebounds. Glad to see him getting more comfortable in the starting lineup. We need Boozer to help us win Champion this year. But do we need Boozer next year? I rather keep AK, Okur and Millsap, but not Boozer. (Realistically we can't keep them all, right?)

A Letter to Bill Simmons

Dear Bill,

Hope this finds you well. By way of introduction, I am yet another NBA fans from the other part of the world - Asia.

Am scratching my heads after reading your recent article (26/11/2008) in ESPN, regarding Point 9. And I quote directly below.

"9. Is there a dumber argument in sports than "Chris Paul or Deron Williams"?

I argued before the season, passionately, that Paul was in a different league and earned myself a few death threats from the Salt Lake City area. (You stay classy, Utah.) Check out their 2009 stats through four weeks:

Paul: 20.5 PPG, 12.2 APG, 2.9 steals, 52.3% FG, 85.6% FT.
Williams: 7.5 PPG, 8.0 APG, 0.0 steals, 26.7% FG, 66.7% FT.

I mean, that's a landslide! Come on! Can we all agree to stop arguing about this?"


I won't argue with your conclusion - "Paul was in a different league". Everyone could have their opinion and I give full respect to that.

And you try to use the most objective statistics to re-inforce your point, which is alright too.

But, I hope you are aware that the numbers of D Will is from the two games he played this season, with a perhaps-80% ankle? Would recommend you to re-visit the numbers at the end of the regular season, so that we could have a more statistically reliable data to compare.

Last but not least, we are on the same page, let's stop this "CP3 vs D Will" discussion, and wait for the season-end stats + winning records to speak for itself.

Have a nice Thanksgiving holiday.

Warm regards,

Another Jazz Fans in Asia

25 November, 2008

Disheartening Buzzer Beater, Hughes Silenced Jazz (9-6) at Home

Jazz Game,

- Hughes got lucky rebound, nice pump-fake thought...

- Our D on Pick-and-Roll needs to be a bit tougher, Derrick Rose often got plenty of spaces after the pick

- To sum up, nothing wrong in the offense in Q4, but the D should be better

- Okur is back!

- Watch what Coach Sloan, CJ and Knight said after the game - link.

Teams struggling with injury will benefit in Season End?

- Look at Spurs, without two killing weapons - Parker and Ginobili, they are initially struggling, and then they do better than most would have expected (including me) in recent games. The recent "surge" of Spurs could be explained by the more playing mins of Roger Mason, a very capable perimeter shooter (and Sixth Man if Spurs is healthy), and rookie George Hill, no one pays much attention on him when Spurs is healthy. Now, the playing opportunity has already sharpened these two players. They can well replace the roles of Finley, Udoka, etc...

- Same applies on Jazz. Our injury situation couldn't be worse at the beginning of the season. D Will, Boozer, AK, Korver, Harpring, Brevin Knight, and Okur has been back to Turkey for a week. This gives opportunity for CJ, Koufos, Price, Millsap and Brewer more playing time, and getting more seasoned. Now, Jazz simply has the deepest bench in the league.

23 November, 2008

Jazz Improves to 9-5 by beating Grizzlies

Jazz Game,

- still 3 men down (D Will, Boozer, Korver)

- Okur and Price get back their shooting touches

- AK is still doing everything

- not an exciting game anyway, even we suck in Away Game and we have three men down, we should have won this one

22 November, 2008

Another Loss in San Antonio, Jazz drops to 8-5

Jazz game,

- D Will, Boozer and Korver are not available. So losing is not so disheartening but the margin is...bad.

- Same problem, defending threessssssss. Spurs are 15/25 today, a darn 60% and 45 points.

- You know my style, for a losing game, I don't intend to write much.

Other highlights,

- Knicks have two trade, one with Warriors, and one with Clippers. Will be fun to watch the chemistry after the trade.

- Vince Carter had his best game this season - watch this recap video, and enjoy his entertaining plays. The anchor said - "Vince Carter in style" - describing his entertaining facial & body expressions after the reverse dunk.

- Rudy Gay seems to lose his identify in Grizzlies with the rising of O.J. Mayo. His shots are never falling this season.

20 November, 2008

AK Show, Jazz improved to 8-4

A bit of a roller-coaster game, built up a great lead, trailed by 2 points after first half, and it expanded to 10 points until the team did a great execution from the later part of Q3 onwards.

Highlights,

- AK, 16 points, 7 rebounds, 3 assists, five steals and four blocks. Salute! He has made a strong statement in the Wins against Suns vs Bucks - even he is the Sixth Man, he is indispensable in the team. He is basically everywhere, both on the defensive and offensive end. As of now, he is definitely the MVP of the team.

Quote from Price - "His (AK) capabilities to get in passing lanes and make plays happen on defense is incredible. That's why he's a key player on our team, and you can tell the difference when he's on the court and when he's not on the court."

I hope we can see him in All-Star (by coach voting of course...) this year, I hope he could win the Sixth Man Award, and perhaps he can also be in the Defensive First Team.

- CJ, 25 points. Got a feeling that in the offensive end CJ and Brewer are quite similar, perhaps CJ shooting range is even better. In defensive play Brewer should have an edge.

Other Highlights in the day,

- Hornets lost to Kings at Home. I have to say Hornets is one of overrated teams in the league. No offense to CP3, great player, but the whole team is not as formidable as the press has been bragging about. (P.S. Kings won without Kevin Martin, Mikki Moore)

- Wade, 40-pt night. As said many times, his form has been crazy from Day 1 (actually you can see his craziness in Beijing this summer). In the East, I am more inclined to support Pistons, Raptors and the Heat.

- Pistons won Lakers, and today won Cavaliers. They will play Celtics tomorrow. Again, Win-Win trade for Pistons and Nuggets.

18 November, 2008

A Nice Win, and We are 7-4

I watched quite a bit of the game, very enjoyable!

Highlights of Jazz Game,

- Not a surprise that we win, (somehow) we always have an edge over Suns and we are back to Home Court

- AK is amazing. He hit all his FTs in the first half, while other Jazz players are struggling on the FT line. He kept us in the game (we were donw 23-32 in Q1). He is all over the place in the NBA highlights, not to mention the two consecutive blocks on Shaq! The only thing to pick on is he has two very careless passes in the game.

- Brevin outshined Price in this game, and he only took good shots.

- Paul Millsap, hustle, hustle and hustle.

- CJ had hot hands today, but he needs to improve his consistency.

- Anyway, I feel that under the current system, D Will, Boozer, Okur and AK are the four players who could consistently play ~30-35 mins in the game. The rest of the mins is allocated to those who are hot in that particular day. In this game, we have no problem of giving 20 mins to Brewer only even though he has been good in the past 10 games. He was just not as hot as others in the game.

- I still love watching Matt Harpring, again, hustle, hustle and hustle.

- I am convinced that we have a chance to be the Champion this year, simply because we have a very deep bench, and we are a very well-coached team.

17 November, 2008

Shaq's Flagrant Foul 2?

Today's highlights,

- Shaq committed a very controversial foul on Rodney Stuckey in today game. Before I make any comments, look at the clip first - link. What do you think? The referees think that it is a flagrant foul 2 and Shaq was ejected.

I am not professional trained to judge whether it is a flagrant 1 or 2, but from my humble opinion it is definitely not an unintentional foul.

- Another clutch-time effort by Tim Duncan and Spurs, another close win. Jazz needs this.

16 November, 2008

"Shorter-handed", Jazz drops to 6-4

Jazz game,

- Harpring is out for this game, that makes us four men down

- Did not watch the game, but read some online comments about Brewer getting intimidated when facing LBJ. I hope the Coaching Team can do something about it if that's true

- The only thing we should be happy about is that Price and Korver are getting back their shooting touches in the game. They combined for 7 three pointers with 9 attempts. And two buzzer beaters by Ronnie (which he did quite often at the end of last regular season) in the Q1 and Q2

Short-handed Jazz lost to Bobcats, 6-3

Jazz game,

- without D Will, Okur and AK, at best it is a (Jazz) 55-45 (Bobcats) game. Lost is not a BIG surprise, but of course disappointing.

- the only shining spot is Koufos, 9 pts, 10 rebs, and 5 blocks

Others,

- Mavs is in a deep hole, 2-7. They have got a good team, but it seems the new Coach still needs to find a new system for them

- Tim Duncan shows his quality, some clutch shots and a key block on Brooks brought his team to a victory

- Most importantly, Lakers lost, and ther is no more unbeaten teams

- By the way, Nuggets brought down Celtics. Perhaps my intial thought that the Iverson-Billups trade is a Win-Win move, is actually right.

13 November, 2008

Jazz Lost to a Winless Team, 6-2

About Jazz game,

- Matt Harpring is back. Will wait for you contribution!

- I doubt on the decision on playing D Will for 30+ mins back to back. I am okay if he plays some 20-25 mins to get himself warm-up, but not for that long considering that he can't do a good defense and in the offensive end he can't do explosive steps, but just perimeter shooting.

- Anyway, not a game I want to talk about anymore, a loss to a winless team...

Other highlights of today,

- Shaq is back, and he is a real entertainer, watch this video - link.

"Somebody pushed Steve so I had to take care of my little man," O'Neal said. "It wasn't nothing serious, though, just a push and shoving match."

McGrady felt O'Neal's strength.

"The big fella pushed the heck out of me," McGrady said. "It's basketball, it happens and after that we just went back to playing. A big thing for us is we kept our composure and won this ballgame."


- Paul Pierce, another money shot. Big play.

- Rudy Fernandez, another huge game, 25 points. He is flirting with both Sixth Man Award and Rookie of the Year Award.

- Wade, is really back this season. If Marion can play what he supposed to be playing, Heat is a real force in the East.

12 November, 2008

Jazz Knocked Down 76ers, 6-1

D Will is back! He admited that he won't come back so early if Jazz did not lose at New York and Okur is not back to Turkey.

Statistically he did not contribute much but I am sure he has controlled the rhythm of the game well. He can still feel pain so he basically can't do anything explosive at all to pursue for his lay-ups / dunks!

Brewer's heart and maturity seems to become better and better, and he played 38mins today, which shows Coach Sloan trusts him more and more (even he had 0 pts in the first three quarters).

Koufos is doing on par with my expectation.

By the way, just feel pity that Baron Davis and Captain Jackson can’t play at the same team again, they are both very exciting players who just draw the audience so deeply into the game.

11 November, 2008

Okur is back to Turkey for family issue

Jazz excuse Okur so he can be with family in Turkey. Okur's agent said Okur will be missing for around 1 week but nothing is sure yet...It will be a tough road trip.

On a positive note, Koufos and Fesenko will have more minutes…


It is reported that originally Fesenko needs to fly to Toronto for visa issue, however, his agent is trying to work around it because everyone knows that it is a rare opportunity for Fesenko that play for 10+ minutes in a real NBA game.

For Koufos, I hope he learnt something of his two appearances vs Clippers, in which he got blocked by Chris Kaman in both games.

O.J. Mayo, two consecutive games with 30+ points... He is definitely catching my attention.

10 November, 2008

Jazz Lost in Madison Square, 5-1 now

Highlights of the game,

- Statistically Brewer had a great game, high shooting accuracy with 7 assists and … 7 steals! 1.67 steals per game now, keep it up! Still a front-runner of Most Improved Player Award. As of now, Danny Granger also looks like a promising candidate.

- Sloan said beforehand he wished he could bring his team into New York the day of the game to avoid distractions. His tone wasn't much different after the latest loss in New York. "Maybe they saw too much of it. I don't have any idea," Sloan said. "But I was disappointed that our energy level was not higher than what it was coming into this game."

Other highlights,

- Piston was limited to 10 points in Q2 by Celtics. Prince seems to be more involved in the new offense system in Detroit, he took considerably more shots this season.

- Iverson is now 0-2 with Pistons while Billups is 2-0 with Nuggets.

09 November, 2008

Coach Sloan's 1000th Win with Jazz

Thunder 97-104 Jazz

Highlights of the Game,

- Sloan's 1000th Win with Jazz, and probably not a single coach could break this record. 1000th Win is possible. But with the same team? No way. Look at an
interview of him from NBA Videos.

- This game could have been a landslide win, not sure what happened in 2nd Half

- Brevin played for 28 mins with 11 assists, both are season high. We need to thank Clippers for this

Other hightlights,

- Iverson's debut is ruined by Devin Harris's career high 38 points. Nonetheless, I am positive that he can give the spark that Piston needs. In contrast, Chauncey Billups had a win at his hometown in his debut in Denver.

- After a 55-pt night, Tony Parker sprained his ankle. Probably needs to be out for a few weeks like D Will. May I revise my Spurs standing forecast from 6th - 9th to 7th - 10th?

07 November, 2008

Roy sinked Rockets by a Buzzer Beater

Please look at the last shot of Roy in this NBA Video Link.

Some notes / thoughts,

- Charles Barkely commented in NBA Inside that Yao should not be the guy who tried to stand in the sideline and influence the pass.

- Watch the video carefully, what I saw is T Mac's tried to point / get his teammate to guard Roy who runs out to 3pt line. After 0.5 second, nothing happens, T Mac starts to follow. Too late.

- The most important thing that kills Rockets, of course is the lucky shot.

And...last but not least...Go JAZZ! Take Thunders tomorrow for Coach Sloan's 1000th Win wtih Jazz.

06 November, 2008

4-0, and counting

Thoughts on Jazz Game,

- as mentioned, deep bench, this time is some clutch plays by Okur and Brewer

- looks like the 19-pound gain by Brewer helped him a lot, makes him have an edge physically over ordinary SGs. With his better and more confident outside shooting, he is (once again) set to be a front-runner in the Most Improved Player Award this season

- Price seems not to be used to the starting PG role, at least his shooting accuracy so far is sub-par.

- If we win the next game vs Thunders, we can celebrate Coach Sloan 1000th Win with Jazz at Home.

- D Will does not need to rush for return in Thunders game (they are Thunders man, we should be able to take them down without D Will), but for this potential memorable game he may consider to play some 20 mins as a warm-up for the road trip?

Other Thoughts of Today,

- ESPN's column writer David Thorpe
seconds my support on Rudy Fernandez. He is more than a rookie, and he seems to payback my support by cooling down a bit vs Jazz. Thanks!

- Heats got lucky, Mario Chalmers, very solid rookie, looks like a unsung hero. 9 steals today... Did I mention Heats also have a so-far-alright rookie Beasley?

- Derrick Rose is still keeping his good performance, no matter Bulls win or lose. Another front-runner of Rookie of the Year.

- Last but not least, did the 2OT win by Spurs over Timberwolves convince you that their dynasty is over? You won't believe Spurs needs 2OT (and actually could have lost in 1OT) to beat Timberwolves if I told you in the past few seasons. As of now it is just a 2+1 team (Duncan, Parker, Mason)? You are in doubts? look at the
Boxscore and you will know. 78 out of 97 attempts are by them. But credit to Parker, his 55 pts is amazing and his shooting is indeed getting better and more stable year after year.

05 November, 2008

The End of Spurs Dynasty

Yes, I made a bold statement - The End of Spurs Dynasty.

Spurs opened the season with 0-3, yayaya, Ginobili is injured, but it does not cover the truth - Spurs is no longer a strong force in the league, at least this year. (and Jazz without D Will, now 3-0, you see the difference, huh!)

Tim Duncan is always a very stable player, Tony Parker seems to be getting better every year, and I won't doubt on Ginobili, but please look at their other players. Michael Finley? perhaps worth to note 5 years ago...The only player that may be interesting to watch is Roger Mason.

When Ginobili came back, Spurs perhaps could catch up a bit, but my prediction of Spurs Western standing is 6th - 9th, flirting with a playoff spot. Let's see.

By the way, well-done Celtics, there is one less unbeaten team.

04 November, 2008

Millsap single-handedly destroyed Clippers, brings Jazz to 3-0

Another Great Win, Jazz is 3-0 now.

Highlights of the Game:
- Millsap scored 15 straight points in 4 min 10 sec in Q4, his turn-around movement looks better which create chances for layups / short jumpers
- single digit TOs = 9
- FT 25/31, much better than last game
- 3PT 0/10
- Kosfos is blocked by Kaman again in this game

Others:
- Iverson to Pistons, Billups to Nuggets; looks like a Win-Win trade, Pistons can get the spark that they badly need, while Nuggets can get a real quality PG

02 November, 2008

Jazz Beat Clippers by 2nd Half domination

Great Win, 2-0 now.

Highlights of Jazz Game:
- Only 5 TOs
- Considerate decision to give minutes to Morris Almond, 4 mins with 5 points, although we decided not to pick up next year option
- Better involvement by Brevin Knight
- 13-22 FTs, definitely something we need to work on

Other Highlights:
- Another solid game by Rudy Fernandez, although Trail Blazers lost to Suns
- Toronto Raptors should be a serious contender of Eastern Conference Champion, they have a great roster this year
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