It was a second half to build upon. It was a first half to forget.
After the Jazz started the opening few minutes strong, the Lakers imposed their will on the visiting 8th seed and built a 22 point halftime lead. In the second half, the Jazz fought back to narrow the margin to as few as 9 on multiple occasions but in the end game 1 was all L.A..
Wide Open Threes
The Lakers made 7 three’s (3 for Trevor Ariza and Shannon Brown, 1 for Luke Walton) and I’m pretty sure that every one of those makes was a WIDE-open look. The Jazz must not allow the Laker role players to get such open looks because they can win the game with those looks just as much as Kobe Bryant can. This was something that killed the Jazz in the series against L.A. last year where Farmar, Fisher, Vujacic and Radmanovic put the dagger in the side of Jerry Sloan’s team.
Shannon Brown killed the Jazz with his play in game 1. The Lakers were +20 in his 22 minutes in the game and were -8 with Derek Fisher running the point.
Boozer/Williams
Boozer had a season-high 27 points (yep, it hasn’t been a great season) to go along with 9 boards and a couple of steals. It was perhaps Boozer’s best offensive game that we have seen all year, yet Booze was burned on countless occasions on defense and the words “Boozer with a very poor show [on pick-and-roll D]” continue to echo in my head. But a Boozer with offense yet no defense is better than a Boozer with no offense and no defense so I will take this game as encouragement and hope that he can finally start to find his offensive game on a consistent basis.
Deron Williams had an interesting game. He piled up 17 assists to go with 16 points but had a rough game shooting the ball (4-14). Deron seems to be effective breaking down the Lakers defense to a degree so if he can find his shot there is hope that he can lead the Jazz to a few W’s. Deron only had 3 TO’s to go with his 17 assist and two of those were in the final minutes. It might not be a bad idea to play Deron for all 48 minutes during the rest of this series as Brevin Knight has not been playing well and the Jazz lost 5 points in his 3 minutes taking Deron’s place.
AK Steals the Ball!
With the Jazz down 11 with just under 4 minutes left in the game the Jazz needed a near flawless finish and catch a few breaks along the way. Andrei Kirilenko played some fantastic one-on-one defense on Kobe on the perimeter and stripped the ball for a steal. Bryant was back-peddling and AK had the chance to take it right at Bryant, probably resulting in a a dunk or foul. But instead AK threw a horrible pass into the 5th row at the Staples Center. When AK’s pass landed in the rows occupied by C-list celebrities, so did the Jazz hopes of coming back to win game 1. In addition, Deron was trailing AK and a simple pass back to D-will would have given the Jazz an easy 2. Let’s go to Twitter for the reaction:
- phoenixstan Wow. AK47 a the steal and then the bail. Cry me a river
- 3QCMagic Ladies and gents, that’s Andrei Kirilenko’s post-Boozer-arrival career in a nutshell. Gah.
It’s not all AK’s fault but the Jazz were -21 in the 26 minutes that he was on the court
Jarron Collins Came to Play
Speaking of +/-, Jarron Collins was the only Jazz player in the positive for the game at +2. Jarron stepped in to start in place of the injured Memo Okur and had 7 point and 7 rebounds in 15 minutes. Jarron brought energy and some decent defense in his best performance in some time… unfortunately it was wasted in a loss.
Lack of D
Utah did a relatively good job of containing Kobe Bryant, holding him to “just” 24 points on 17 shots. A good sign is that Kobe only went to the line 7 times (Kobe shot 96 FTs in the 6 game series last year). The Jazz had ZERO blocks to the Lakers NINE on the Jazz. I look for that stat and the defense to pick up some when the series moves to SLC where the Jazz play with more energy but the Jazz cannot win when they give up 110+ points to the Lakers. The Lakers ended the game shooting 55.6% from the field.
Game 2 -Tuesday at 8:30 Mountain Time on TNT
I would not count on Memo making a return for the Jazz in game 2 so the Jazz need to find someone that can hit outside shots. Ideally, Deron will find his shot, making him even deadlier attacking the Lakers defense. The Jazz played a pretty good second half, outscoring L.A. by nine… but the Jazz cannot afford to fall behind and play catchup again.
Lakers 1-0
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