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:

1. phoenixstan Wow. AK47 a the steal and then the bail. Cry me a river
2. 3QCMagic Ladies and gents, that’s Andrei Kirilenko’s post-Boozer-arrival career in a nutshell. Gah.
3. talkhoops Kirilenko passing up that dunk perfectly summed up this day for the Jazz
4. macmissionary Now why doesn’t AK dunk over Kobe.
5. HPbasketball Bryant got insanely high on that. AK still could have dunked on him if AK wasn’t AK.
6. 1280TheZone wow. Ak pick pockets kobe drawing aahs from crowd & then throws it away on break. not his day
7. HPbasketball Aaaaand that’s AK.

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

But it isn’t the end of the world either.

Minnesota did not play like the 21-54 team that they were supposed to be.  They fought behind the good play of Rodney Carney, Ryan Gomes and Sebastian Telfair.  Mike Miller was huge down the stretch. Surprisingly, Kevin Love only had 2 points and six rebounds but the Timberwolves were +16 in his 26 minutes on the floor. 

It’s really hard to see where this one went wrong by only looking at the box score, but if you saw the game you know it was the lack of Jazz defense.

Minnesota out-shot Utah 53.3% to 48.0%. And even more surprising, the Timberwolves had 5 more assists than the Jazz, 27-22.  The Jazz almost always dominate those two statistics at home.

Somehow the Jazz managed to lose despite the Timberwolves committing 13 more turnovers and despite the Jazz making 13 more free-throws. Carlos Boozer continued to struggle, shooting just 1-9 (although his one make came at an opportune time, a 19 footer that put the Jazz up 3 with 3:45 left).  

Andrei Kirilenko found his shot that was so absent in Denver and had 13 points on 6 of 7 FGs and also contributed 3 blocks.  Andrei’s jumper was flowing and he didn’t attempt a single three-pointer (AK is only shooting 25% from behind the arc this year so missing three-pointers often just ruins the confidence in his overall jump shot). 

The Jazz had the ball with 2.3 seconds left and Deron Williams had a shot to win the game. Was he fouled??? Maybe. But that really doesn’t matter because you can’t expect that to be called in that type of situation.  I couldn’t help but rewind the Tivo a few times to see if Deron had enough time to pass it to Korver in the corner.  Korver’s man had slid back a bit on Deron’s drive.  With about .8 seconds left D-will could have passed Kyle the ball for a quick but more open shot.  Was there enough time for that, I don’t know.

You also can’t help but wonder if things would have been different with Sloan at the helm, better or worse (not a knock on Phil Johnson at all).  

Sure you could write off the Jazz after this HOME loss to one of the worst teams in the league, or… you could embrace the fight for the 6th/7th/8th seed and be happy that you are not a Phoenix Suns fan on the outside looking in.

The Jazz lead by 24 early in the third quarter and then, almost as if sensing what the fans expected but wouldn’t say, allowed the New York Knicks to come all the way back to take the lead.  Maybe they are challenging themselves. Maybe they want to keep the fans interested.  Maybe they are just toying with our emotional state.  Maybe this experience will turn out to be a positive come playoff time.

In the end, of course, the Jazz rallied down the stretch just as they had done against the Phoenix Suns on Saturday night.  Check out the gameflow from this win over New York:

Now compare it to the win over the Phoenix Suns:

Take into account that the game-flow from the Suns game included overtime so it is condensed a little more than the New York game-flow.  All in all, these two games were two games that Utah should have coasted to, but at the same time, were lucky not to lose.  But in the end all that matters is that the Jazz head to Portland with two home wins under their belt and will try to correct their road woes against the Blazers on the second night of a back to back.

• Andrei Kirilenko had to leave the game after jamming his finger in the rim, AK was in street clothes for the second half after only playing 9 minutes.  It doesn’t appear too serious but given the quick turn-around for tomorrow’s game it is any body’s guess whether Andrei will be in the lineup or not.
• Deron Williams had another fantastic game with 24 points and 13 assists.  Deron really has been turning it on when needed the most hitting clutch jumpers and pushing the ball when it matters most. D-Will is itching closer and closer to Chris Paul for the NBA assist title: Paul 10.9 assists/game, Williams 10.6 assists/game.  
• Carlos Boozer had a relatively good game, although I am not really sure what that means these days.  Booze had 21 points and 11 boards on 8 of 13 shooting.
• Brewer and Millsap were the energy for the Jazz when it was needed most. Paul came up with a few huge buckets and rebounds when the Knicks threatened and Brewer was up to his usual hustle, generating multiple layup attempts.
• Memo Okur was in foul trouble for much of the game and never really got into the flow.  Memo finished with just 8 points in 21 minutes.  Perhaps he can follow with a big game in Portland since he played relatively few minutes tonight.
• The Jazz finish the season at 15-15 against the “weaker” Eastern Conference while they are currently 31-12 against the “stronger” Western Conference… Kinda makes you scratch your head. The positive is that if the Jazz end up in a tie-breaker that comes down to conference record, they will win it.
• No other meaningful games for Jazz fans on the scoreboard Monday night.  Tuesday is a different story with the Mavs, Spurs, Nuggets, Hornets and of course Blazers (vs. Jazz) all in action.

Do you think the Jazz can breakthrough on the road against the Blazers?