There was one thing from the Denver beatdown that bothered me most. More than making Linas Klieza look like an all-star. More than the 11th loss in their last 12 road games. More than Jason Hart's ineptitude. More than Carlos Boozer's infatuation with his jumpshot. More than Paul Millsap continuing to get zero respect from the referees. More than the "it's not the team, it's their schedule" excuses.

It occured in the 3rd Quarter when Kleiza had a fastbreak layup looking for 2 of his eventual 41 points, and Kover fouled him while clearly going for the ball. Clean play? Yes. Hard foul? You betchya. Kleiza took exception to this and blatanlty kneed Kover in the back while Korver was trying to get up, and stood over Kyle as if to punk him. This occured right in front of Carlos Boozer and Deron Williams and no one did anything.

This is the problem with this team. No toughness. If you're doing the radio shows, if you're talking about being the future of this team, you gotta get in Kleiza's face. Do you think Michael Jordan or Karl Malone would have stood there and did nothing? Heck, Raja Bell would be suspended by now.

I don't care if Boozer's making $64 million or DWill's going to get max money. Like the school yard bully, Linas Klieza just took their milk money and the Jazz did nothing to stop him.

The first two games of the Jazz/Warriors may have been two of the greatest, most exiciting and well-played games in the last 10 years. The scoring, drama and just pure excitement has been unbelievable, and the best part is we're just getting started.

That being said, as unbelievably good as the basketball has been, the announcing has been just as bad. It's so awful that TNT's Reggie Miller is actually making his partner, DickStockton-who generally has no idea what's happening right in front of him, bearable to listen to.

You could be sitting at home with your tv on a different station and get more calls right than DickStockton. It's unbelievable how the guy just can’t get anything right, and HE’S SITTING RIGHT THERE AT CENTER COURT. How hard is it to call a foul and say who it was on, especially when it’s being announced over the PA as well. If you can’t see what’s happening twenty feet infront of you or from it being blared over loudspeakers, exactly what can you do? Insert Hellen Keller Joke Here

My favorite part is on ####-#### plays, DickStockton usually just spurts out three random calls and hopes one of them is the right one. It’s defintely time to start a count on how many calls DickStockton gets wrong (although it’d be a lot easier to count how many he got right).

 If you listen to Reggie, you’d think the entire universe revolved around Baron Davis and that knucklehead Stephen Jackson just won the Nobel Peace Prize. Even without noting his UCLA/Pacers connections, there’s not question which team he is “rooting” for.

Reggie even critisized officials for reversing a call in the Jazz’s favor as he said “even if it is the right call.” I can imagine the TNT producer either just getting up and quitting or having a heart attack during the broadcast.

 

Another Reggie line is “in five years, Deron Williams will be just like Baron.” Hmmm..the way DWill is playing right now is the only thing Jazz fans should look forward to more hamstring injuries?

 

All the while, Kevin Harlan and Doug Collins are calling the Piston’s drubbing of the Bulls. Just think how many “Right between the eyes!” have been wasted!

Had Marv Albert been doing this series it would be one non-stop "YES"-fest, which would have made the announcing all the more memorable, rather than forgettable.

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.

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.

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.

Extremely disappointing showing by Utah.

-1st realy playoff experience for alot of their guys and it showed. Boozer/Okur combined 6-31 from the field. Ugghh. Kirilenko only 15 min.

-Fisher made the play of the game by blowing a wide-open, you'll never get an easier shot in basketball, layup that totally swung the game in the Rockets favor.

-Deron Wiliams definitely ready for the big stage. Shoulda had a triple double (15 pts, 9 reb, 9 ast) if not for imcompetent play by his teammates.

-Houston having Yao guard Boozer forced Booze to settle for 16 footers, and he couldn't throw the ball in the ocean tonight, just 1-9 in the second half. Of his 4 field goals, two were baseline jumpers in the first 8 minutes of the game, the other two were dunks off feeds from Deron Williams. That's it. Not the way you want to start your first playoff series.

-Also Yao Ming (13-15 FT's) definitely going to get "star treatment." He was coming over everyone's back and there was no call, but if you touch him its a foul. Should be fun.

-1 pt in first half for TMac, Yao misses 10 of his 18 shots, hold rockets to 32 point first half and Utah loses by 9? Not a good sign.

Okay, not a huge story considering the majority of the sports world had no idea John Amaechi even existed before releasing his book, but I found this story particuarly interesting as I follow both Penn State basketball and the Utah Jazz.

The problem with Meech coming out like this is nobody really cares because nobody really cares about John Amaechi. The guy was a good collegiate center (1st Team All-Big Ten at Penn State) but wasn't drafted and was lucky to latch on with the Magic. Then after turning down a $17 million contract to play alongside Shaq he signs a $9 million with the Jazz, which was about $9 more than he was worth.

He was absolutely dreadful with Utah. His mid-range jumper was streaky at best and his go-to move always seemed to be a baseline drive. The problem is he was never able to actually drive the baseline. On the rare occasions he didn't step out of bounds he would always get behind the basket then try a flip shot, either resulting in his shot being blocked or hitting the underside of the basket. As a fan, it drove you crazy. For someone who is as inteligent as he reportedly is, it is mind boggling that he failed to realize that this move never worked.

Even worse, he lost interest in the game, which if you play for Jerry Sloan is like a fat man becoming lactose intolerant. Jerry Sloan breathes hard work, compete and play hard. The fact that Amaechi openly admitted to Jerry that he didn't like basketball did not make the two of them friends for life.

As a result, it is also not suprising that Amaechi's book openly criticizes Sloan and the Jazz organization, but that should not be taken seriously.

The bottom line is Amaechi did absolutely nothing for the Jazz (the fact that Greg Ostertag was more productive than meech is saying something)  who is trying to use his time there along with his homosexuality to propagandize in an attempt to raise money for his floundering gyms and organizations in Britain.

The fact that he comes out now means nothing, and is not the nobel act that he is trying to make it. If he truly believes in his cause then the courageous, book-worthy act would have been to come out and admit it while he was still playing. Would I have bought that book? Probably not. But atleast when people called him #### as a player they would have known they weren't actually insulting him.