No.4 in West

After beating Suns, we are No. 4 in West, for now. Fantastic achievement.

We should be happy because we get the win from behind (at one point we trailed by 17 pts).

AK had 25 pts, led Jazz scoreboard. He recently took all the minutes from CJ.

Boozer, 21 pts, 20 rebs. wow.

A Win at Philly, without D Will

We got an Away win without D Will. Not bad indeed.

Millsap finally showed up and Wes Matthews indeed played very well.

32 asts in 42 baskets, we shared the ball well.

We don't know how good CJ Miles would be when he comes back, but at the moment Wes Matthew seems playing better than last year CJ.

And all the best to D Will's family! and we look forward to your return.

Wow...Jazz Lost 3 Straight

Jazz Games,

- no comments. But I insist AK is an important player while CJ is someone that we should use less.

Others,

- Gerald Wallace's rejection on D Wade is strong, clean, and nice. You got to see the Top 10 Video on Friday from NBA.com.

10th Straight is Nice; The Comeback is Even Better!

Jazz Game,

- I think Jazz fans are all happy to see the resilience demonstrated by Jazz tonight. They were down by 19 at one point and they got a nice comeback and sealed the win. Fantastic!

- D Will has a sick cross-over, between-the-legs jumpers in Q4. What a showoff... :P

Others,

- Vince Carter had a fantastic lay-up in tonight game. Check this out, No. 1 basket of today - link. CJ's facial on Nene is also highlighted in Top 10.

Jazz Lost in Staples Centre

Jazz Games,

- an expected loss. We are not in full team anyway, and the game is somewhat close in Q3 and first 7-8 mins of Q4. Same old problem, we opened the game in a bad shape.

- Millsap, indeed something. He was in a bit of foul trouble, playing only 31 mins but scored 16 pts and grabbed 17 rebs.

- I have seen about 20 mins of Jazz-Lakers game, and I saw a few times Jazz players (one of them is CJ) make similar mistakes when Lakers have some potential easy baskets.

In these situations, either you i) foul on them hard enough to not let them finish two points (and hopefully soft enough to not have flagrant foul), or ii) you give them two points.

We give them "And 1" almost every time.

I don't believe Jazz players are not tough enough to foul hard, but some of them just don't have the "blink" to make the right decision in the tenths of the second. In those moments, the player basically can't think but react with their instincts.

However, either you are born with it (the instinct, the basketball wisdom), or you need to nurture those instincts through lots of games (experience).

For the record, I think D Will does possess the wisdom, but I am not sure about CJ & Brewer.

Others,

- Marbury may go to Celtics. A reunion with KG? - link.

Bittersweet Win, Jazz master comeback against 7-pt Q1

Jazz Game,

- Bittersweet. When I opened the ESPN page and saw the 27-7 Q1, I thought - "ESPN page had some errors again", and they did not.

- Coach Sloan is obvioulsy mad with CJ and Brewer today. You know he is famous for not hiding his comments.

"Not if we don't come and play," said Sloan, who benched starters C.J. Miles and Ronnie Brewer the entire second half. "You can talk about playing basketball all you want, but with that mess we put out there to start with, it's frustrating."

"To see us come out and not compete our butts off knowing that we're on the road for five games and it didn't look like that there was any concern about whether we won or not. Just try to get numbers and go home."

Well, perhaps there would have some shake-up in the formation for the coming Away games. We'll see.

- Well, Sloan likes AK.

Talking about the prospect of starting Kirilenko, Sloan said, "I've got to get somebody to come out there and compete and execute what we're doing rather than just try to take shots."

"He's not going to take a lot of shots," Sloan added. "If he does, he'll take the ball and put it on the floor a couple times, get on top of the basket. After that, then he'll take jump shots, which I don't (have) any problem with."

- In NBA.com highlight I saw one scene that D Will is yelling at AK and seems blaming him not coming out to challenge a Three (by Harris?), and AK opens both of his arms in an unsafisfactory look. Did I see it wrong? If not, I hope that's just winning passion but no hard feeling between them.

Others,

- Breaking news! - link

For the first time, Boozer said unequivocally Wednesday night that he will indeed opt out of his contract at the end of the season, foregoing a guaranteed $12.66 million to become an unrestricted free agent.

"I'm opting out. No matter what, I'm going to get a raise regardless," Boozer told ESPN.com. "I am going to opt out, I don't see why I wouldn't, I think it's a very good business decision for me and my family, but I'd also like to see what happens with the Jazz and stay here."

He is all about money, no doubt on that. He comes to Jazz purely because of money. And he will leave Jazz because of money. A Championship Ring? Probably never in his mind.

He said he won't talk about this until the season ends. Now he decides to talk about it, probably because 1) he is too bored to sit on the bench and no one cares about him, he needs to make some talking points, and 2) he sees how good Millsap plays and he knows his time in Jazz is almost over, so he tries to play some mind games.

So Coach Sloan, what will you do? To continue give 35 mins to a player that explicity said he will leave or not? To me, trade him already.

- I guess I talked about Marcus Camby here before, and I feel the need to extend praise on him once again - he is still a monster despite his age. In today OT loss, he contributed 19 pts, 27 rebs, 2 asts, 1 stl, 4 blks. And I still feel that Clippers is becoming a team that would give trouble for every contender.

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.

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.

The Second Thought of CJ as a starter

Starting CJ Miles seems to be so natural if we follow the development since the first preseason game. Coach Sloan wants AK to add some sparks in the second team and (gratefully) AK does not have any problem with this arrangement (so far). But let me do a second thought here.

Foremost, transforming AK into a Sixth Man is a good choice, and worth trying. I don’t’ have any problem with that, and so as most of the Jazz fans.

A newspaper in Utah has raised an interesting question – why don’t we start Korver? Without doubts Korver has the caliber as the starter of Jazz (and perhaps even more convincing than CJ). However, putting him in the second team will fit him more, and also could add the ranges that our second team needs badly. Therefore, not starting him is the right choice.

Wait…, if Harpring is healthy, actually I may prefer him. He could set the right tone at the start of the game, and he is always a reliable player that Sloan trusts a lot. Perhaps the only worry is that he may not be athletic enough to defend some of the awful weapons in opponent’s starting lineup.

Impatience may have cost CJ his starter position

Jazz is never short of Small Forwards. However, Harpring is still recovering from his ankle infection while Coach Sloan seems enthusiastic to try AK as the Sixth Man, all in a sudden CJ Miles may have got a chance to be in the starting lineup of Jazz, at least in the first couple of games.

Wait…he did something not so clever in the Preseason Game vs Portland. After a zero-shot first half, CJ came out in 2nd Half and took two shots in consecutive possession, and committed a turnover followed by an immediate foul.

Obviously, Coach Sloan didn’t like it - "It's like I don't get any shots the first half, so I've got to show you I can get them off the second half, that's not a good way to do it."

Korver is another choice, and I personally prefer him because it could add some ranges to the starting lineup. Bear in mind that both Brewer & CJ are not great in their mid-range jumpers.

Nonetheless, Jazz won’t match the four-year USD14.8m offer sheet of CJ for nothing. Quite likely we will see CJ in actions for ~15 mins per game in the beginning of the season. The rest is literally on his hands.