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.

Observations:

-Boozer did what your franchise player has to do, he came out and owned the 1st quarter, 15 pts, hitting 7 of his first 9 shots, most 15 foot jumpers over Yao Ming. He was a stud, with his 41 points. Had he gotten the "T-Mac treatment" (more on this later) he would have approached 50. Maybe his best game ever.

-TMac and Yao again played/shot awful in the first half, and Houston was only down by 2. The uglier and lower scoring the game, the better for Houston. If Utah can get this series in the 100's, I really don't think Houston can keep pace.

-Jazz continue to let Houston lull them to sleep in a half-court, late 90's grind-it-out game. If they would look to push the tempo they would leave Yao, Mutombo and Juwan Howard in their dust

-Mehmet Okur continues to struggle. Just 4-23 in the first two games. It appears he's gonna be our "Casper" (disappearing act) player this year, much to my worst fears. More on this in the coming days. If he give us nothing besides tough defense, he did play Yao really tough and was on the bad end of alot of tough if not horrible calls, but Utah can't win if he doesn't give us double digits.

-Virtually every 2nd-half call went the Rockets way, some good calls, some close and others absolutely horrendous. The fact that Utah shot ZERO free throws in the 3rd quarter doesn't begin to tell the story. Yao can do whatever he wants (travel, dislodge with his shoulder (didn't he used to complain Shaq did this?), sprout roots in the paint) and he gets away with it. You can't touch T-Mac without a foul being called, and sometimes you don't even touch him and it's a foul. No doubt in my mind the League wants Houston and it's "Stars" to advance, so they'll do their best to see that happens. The fact that Utah's first home playoff game in 3 years was one of only two to get the NBATV-diss should tell you what they think about the Jazz.

-Houston Rockets fans are absolutely classless. As Deron Williams lay on the cort with what looked to be a serious head-injury, the derogatory chants revealed their true colors. It's tough when you show less class than Utah fans, congratulations Houston you just did. Classless classless Rockets fans. The only more noteworthy item to take note of is 87 year old TNT announcer DickStockton saying it was good sportsmanship of the Rockets to give him an ovation. How you confuse an ovation boo's and "Utah Sucks" chants is beyond me.

-Finally this was some great experience for Utah. Now they know what to expect in the playoffs, the physical play and more importantly they "Star Treatment" and the tough calls that go against you. Now they can go home and protect their homecourt, where I expect Okur, Kirilenko and Deron Williams to play/shoot much better.