First observation is this was Utah's best shot at winning in Houston, and they just blew it down the stretch (more on this later).

-The difference for Houston was their role players finally made a basket. The production of their role players (Howard, Head, and Battier combined for 35 pts) out*played Utah's bench mob (Harpring, Giricek and Millsap only had 19 pts).

-Andrei Kirilenko has finally broke out of his slump. He left his fingerprints all over the 1st quarter, blocking shots, deflecting passes and completely confusing Yao Ming. In the 3rd, he finally got his offense going. First he hit a little turn-around over Battier. That gave him the confidence to hit two mid-range jumpers, all-in-all: 3-3, 6 pts in the 3rd (he only had 2 fg in the other four games combined). In the 4th he cut down the lane and Boozer fed him for a dunk, and also returned the favor with two gorgeous passes to Boozer cutting down the lane. Kirilenko was much more active in Games 3 and 4, now if finally started showing up in the box score.

-Yao Ming continues to underachieve. After two awful games in Utah where he let Mehmet Okur out physical him, he continued to settle for fall-away jumpers while looking like he's never seen a double-team in his life. Thank goodness the Rockets one, because it's almost unforgivable the way he's allowed Okur to slow him offensively. Perhaps his biggest accomplishment this series is the fact that he's tired Okur so much from having to lean on him that Okur has no legs in his 3pt shot (just 4-25 in the series).

Finally, Jerry Sloan and the Jazz just absolutely thew it away down the stretch. They were down 85-92 with 3 min left when they pulled Derek Fisher who was getting burned by T-Mac and went with the bigger line-up of Deron Williams, Matt Harpring, Andrei Kirikenko, Carlos Boozer and Mehmet Okur.

They then proceeded to score 6 straight points. They scored 3 times in a row by running high-screen roll with Deron and Booze. Battier had to rotate to pick up Boozer rolling down the lane, getting Harp two open jumpers on the baseline. The third time, Deron made the extra side-pass to AK on the wing who found Boozer cutting to the basket behind Yao. Then they run a cross-screen to free Boozer and pick up a foul. Then they run high screen roll and get Okur a wide-open 3 that rimmed out. AK gets the rebound, and in the scramble they never reset their offense, and Harp had to force a jumper with Battier in his face. Then, only down 2pts, 2pts meaning they didn't need a 3!, and Sloan takes AK out (who was passing it beautifly in the 4th) and puts Derek Fisher in, going away from the line-up that got them back in the game and had that 6-0 run. They don't run pick n-roll, they give the ball to Boozer at the 3pt line and have Deron go down and set a pick (he didn't actually even screen anyone) with Harp and Fisher coming off. Fish gets the ball at the 3pt line and does something that's happened much too often and makes every Jazz fan cringe. He ducks his head and drives. Offensive foul. Close call, but the home-team definitely deserved it.

The point is, high-screen roll with Boozer got Utah back in the game, but on the game's biggest possessions they went away from it. It's one thing not to call time-out when they know what we're going to run (high screen-roll) like the back of their hand, but it made no sense for Jerry not to take a timeout when their offense broke down or they were running something different. Bizzarre, and they wasted a spetacular performance by Boozer.

 

Boozer played like a true superstar. He displayed the competitive greatness that separates the good players from the great ones. Over the course of this series he has developed the mindset where he says "You know what Yao, forget about worrying about your size. You need to worry about how you're going to guard me." He mixed up his game beautifully, knocking down mid-range jumpers when Yao backs off and driving by and dunking it on Yao when he closes out. He's altered this matchup from one of size to one of skill and movement.

He played like a true superstar down the stretch and gave Utah a great opportunity to win this game. It's a shame they never gave him a chance to win it for them.

Tuesday marked the official announcement. Not that it left anyone suprised. Toronto Raports Coach Sam Mitchell, won in what basically a two-horse race his first Coach of the Year Award. Utah's Jerry Sloan finished second. Again.

This year Sloan led Utah to a 51-31 record, and it's first division title since 2000. The 51 wins was a ten win improvement from 2005-06, which was a 15 win improvement from 2004-05. Sam Mitchell led Toronto to 47 wins and the 4th best record seed in a very week Eastern Conference.

So no one picked Toronto to do much of anything. Why? Because they haven't in Sam Mitchell's previous two season, where he won 37% of his games, alienated Vince Carter (who claimed Mitchel tried to fight him in the locker room), and was believed to be in danger of losing his job had Brian Colangelo had a suitbable replacement available. So since the expectations were so low, having a winning basketball team suddenly looks alot better, so much so that 47 wins in the morebound Eastern Conference outdoes 51 wins in a conference with 6 of the leagues 7 best teams.

In his 19 years coaching the Jazz and 22 years coaching in the NBA, Sloan has never once won coach of the year. Although many other curius names have. Doc Rivers won one for leading his Magic to a 41-41 record and a first-round exit in the playoffs. Sloan won 55 games that year. Mike Dunleavy, Del Harris, Larry Bird are among the other winners during Sloan's tenure. Are they better coaches than Sloan. All Sloan has done with the Jazz is win 940 games, lead them to the playoffs in 16 of his 19 seasons and take them to the Finals twice. Mike Dunleavy has coached three different teams in that span, fired from two of them.

What makes Jerry Sloan so great has also kept him from winning the award. He epitomizes old-school. Basketball is simple to him. He doesn't believe he does anything special. He draws up plays (he remarkably calls every set play, even when John Stockton was his PG), expects his players to run them and then fight and compete as hard as they can to keep the other team from scoring. Simple right? But definitely not flashy, nor tremendously popular in small-market Salt Lake City.

Which has helped the new-millenium Jazz  find a new annual national media-tradition. Ever since losing to Portland in the Conference Finals in 1992, the Jazz were constantly counted out as a Western Conference contender, yet surpassed expectations by the end of the decade Jazz fans stopped listending to the "experts and Peter Vescey" because they knew they would be in the playoffs.

Now the media has found a new game to play, called the "Let's Make It Sound Like Sloan has been done an injustice, then continue to do an injustice to him." At first it was funny, now it's becoming repetitive. Every announcer or national media member who covers a Jazz game always says "how has Jerry Sloan never won coach of the year?," yet five minutes later will say "I think (Insert Name of any NBA Coach who's last name is not Sloan Here) deserves to win it." Guys like Marc Stein, Greg Anthony, John Hollinger, Mike Tirico and Mike Breen will use the "How has he never won it" ploy to give them material to talk/write about, but when it comes down to it, they are largely the reason that Sloan has never won it.

It's getting to the point that I hope Sloan never wins it. It would be much better to retire having been snubbed for 20+ years than to win it in your last year and have everyone forget about the previous 19 yrs of snubbage.

For a guy who is all work and no hype, it would be a fitting way to be remembered.

Adjustments Utah must make if they still want to steal a game in Houston:

#1 Offensive Spacing - with the exception of 2 Boozer dunks and an open Okur baseline jumper (he missed it) Utah's screen-roll got their bigs nothing. In the 1st half, Houston was sticking with the screener and going under the screen, giving DWill some open looks. 2nd half, they hedged and often either rotated a guy top-side to DWill or ran a guy across the lane to the screener. Either way, Utah was playing 3-2 on the weakside but except for 2 occasions (a baseline cut by AK which he promptly fumbled because he jumped before he caught it and a cut by Harpring which he also fumbled away from point blank range) they could never take advantage from it. Must have better spacing with Giricek on the wing and whoever's playing SF closer to the baseline. I like all the shots Okur got, Boozer needs to face-up Yao on the left wing from 12 feet and go to work. To much time on the right wing where he's not as comfortable.

#2 Andrei Kirilenko needs to play more. Aside from TMac torching Giri/Fish, in 15 min Kirilenko had 1 blk, a stl, a forced missed layup and 2 deflections resulting in TO's. Also, the more Harpring played the more he started forcing shots. Would like AK to play closer to 25-30 min.

#3 Don't give the ball to Fisher when the shotclock is winding down. Everytime this occured (and it happened WAY TOO MUCH) he shucked off all his teammates and went one-on-one. While it worked in the 2nd qtr, it broke us down in the 3rd and won't help us win this series. Better getting it to Giricek or throwing it inside than letting Fish dribble drive or worse, launch a pullup where he can't even see the basket.

Conclusion: Boozer, Okur, Millsap will all play better. Our FT shooting should improve slightly (this was the difference in Game 1 because Houston shot like #### too). DWill played great in his first game. The way Houston came out (and they looked just awful at times) this looked like our best shot, but we played one of our worst games too. Game 2 is so very winneable. We still have a great shot at stealing homecourt, then we can open it up at Energy Solutions and make it a more of the up-and-down series that can swing things totally in our control.