The Lakers shot 60% including 55% from downtown, yet they could not put away the Jazz like they should have done under those circumstances.

If not for a brutal opening quarter that saw L.A. dump in 41 points, the Jazz played the Lakers even.  But the stretch that lost the game for Utah was not in that miserable 1st quarter, it came in the second half of the second quarter when the Jazz were outscored 17-3 over a four and a half minute span. The Lakers lead ballooned from six to twenty and the relatively good play of the Jazz for the rest of the game would go for not.

• Deron was spectacular despite the seven turnovers that he committed, finishing with 35 points and 9 assists to go along with 4 steals and 2 blocks.  D-will was deadly from outside, dropping in 6 of 11 three’s and also hitting a number of other long two’s.
• Utah “contained” Kobe relatively well again but did send him to the line ten times, he converted on nine of them. Bryant has really not forced his offense in the first quarter of the first two games and the Lakers have outscored the Jazz 71-48 in the combined first quarters.  Kobe has done most of his damage in quarter 2 through 4 and the Jazz are playing the Lakers even over those periods. Perhaps the Jazz should make Kobe do it himself by not dropping off other defenders to help (usually resulting in open Laker three’s).
• That deserves another mention… if you take out the first quarters, the Jazz have played the Lakers EVEN. This is why the Jazz have struggled so mightily on the road, they fall behind early and run out of time at the end. Whereas at home, the Jazz usually come out and get off to a decent start, playing relatively even or as front-runners rather than playing catch-up.

The series doesn’t really start until the home team loses a game, right?

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

The Jazz stuck with the Lakers until the wheels fell off near the end of the 3rd quarter and suddenly the Jazz deficit grew to 20+.  The Jazz had no answer for the Lakers offense which torched Utah inside and out. 

Looking back on this game now, there is little need to dissect it deeply.  The intensity will be much greater when game 1 tips off on Saturday or Sunday in L.A…. The Jazz will hopefully have both Memo Okur and C.J. Miles back in the lineup and the Lakers will surely have much more to play for than they did on Tuesday night.  

On the bright side, Deron Williams was able to penetrate against the Laker defense and get to the hoop at will. The Jazz shot a ridiculous 29 free throws in the first half and another 18 in the second half. Deron had 10 of those attempts on his way to 25 pts/13 ast and one nasty throw down. Boozer played relatively well throughout on offense but couldn’t keep Bynum and Gasol out of the paint on the other end. Ronnie Brewer was all over the place early on his way to 5 steals.

Andrei Kirilenko had a decent game if you look at the box score: 20 pts 4 steals. But to watch his play at the end of the 3rd quarter and into the 4th was maddening at times. Andrei committed 6 turnovers in the game and a few horrible fouls.

The Jazz trailed by just one point after a Deron Williams layup with 2:58 to go in the 3rd, 75-74. The Lakers went on to score 16 points in the remaining 2:58 including one point on a completely unnecessary AK foul on Kobe Bryant with .8 seconds left. Kobe would have taken a rushed off-balanced shot (not saying he couldn’t have made it but the probability was low) but instead was bailed out by AK’s reach.  Sure Kobe missed one of the free throws but it is mental errors like this that are completely inexcusable at the professional level. Apparently the Jazz did not learn from their similar mistakes such as those in the Miami loss.  Despite the losing and poor play of late, I still stand by the Jazz chances of making a competitive playoff series against the Lakers, but mental lapses such as this make it a hard stance to defend. The Jazz lost the game and their chance to move out of the 8th spot with that 2:58 closeout of the 3rd quarter where they were outscored 16-9 and the Lakers seized all momentum.

Much more on the Jazz-Lakers first round match-up to come over the next few days.

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 Utah Jazz were able to jump out on the Denver Nuggets by 11 in the first quarter… and then J.R. Smith started raining threes. Smith was the dagger in the side of the Jazz as he dropped 28 points on 8-13 behind the arc… but he was hardly the only problem the Jazz had in this “Monumental” game.

Carlos Boozer, Memo Okur and Andrei Kirilenko were a combined 10 of 45  (22.2%) and Deron Williams had a very marginal game as well (but his stats were somewhat padded at the end of this one).  

According to Deron, “That’s probably the worst 18 points, 10 assists I’ve ever had in my life.”

It is really amazing, actually remarkable, that the Jazz were able to have several chances to cut the lead to 4 in the final minutes of this one. 

Looking back at my preview of the Jazz-Nuggets game yesterday, I mentioned the issues the Jazz have with shot-blocking teams:

Block Party?

One concerning stat is that the Nuggets are second in the NBA with 5.9 blocks per game.  The Jazz (Carlos Boozer in particular) struggle against teams that block shots.  Utah is just 11-12 (.478)  in games versus teams in the top ten teams in blocks.  Conversely, the Jazz are 35-16 (.686) against the rest of the league.  Including the Nuggets game, five of the Jazz final eight opponents are among the top ten in blocks (@Denver, @Dallas, Golden State, L.A. Clippers, @L.A. Lakers).

Hmm… well, Chris “Birdman” Andersen finished with 8 (eight!) blocks on the Jazz and the Nuggets had 10 as a team.   More worrisome than the Nuggets stats is the fact that Carlos Boozer was blocked 6 times himself. 

Carlos seemed to have a HORRIBLE game and the Jazz seemed as though they would be better off without him but looking at the final box-score, the Jazz were +4 with Booze in the game and -22 with Millsap in the game.  Millsap (14 points on 7-10 shooting with 12 boards) along with C.J. Miles and Ronnie Brewer, seemed to be the only Jazz players that had decent games.

• The Jazz started the game very nicely with 3 made jumpers by Ronnie Brewer, a couple of jumpers by C.J. and a nice D-Will dunk. The Jazz were up 22-11 before J.R. Smith hit his first (26 foot) three pointer. 
• The Nuggets outscored the Jazz 10-2 over the last 2 minutes of the first quarter and closed the second quarter on a 19-8 run.
• Deron Williams was called for his 4th foul midway through the third quarter really killing the Jazz chances.  Jerry Sloan didn’t like the call and delivered a bit of a jab at the Nuggets after the game, “They’re cute with the way they play and that’s what happens.” It will be fun if these teams meet in the playoffs, I suspect you would definitely hear more of that quote.

61.8% (47 of 76) was also the 11th best shooting game for the Trail Blazers since the 1986-87 season (all Blazer wins).  Not since a 2003 game has Portland had a better night from the field.

It was a barrage of Portland three pointers and alley-oops with little Jazz defense mixed in.  It is of very little surprise that Jerry Sloan was ejected, in fact, it is almost a miracle that he lasted nearly until the 4th quarter. The funny (or scary) thing is, the Jazz could have been crushed much harder had Carlos Boozer not somehow found his jumper.  Booze was nearly the only offense that Utah had in the first quarter and was 10-12 with 20 points before he was inexplicably ejected along with Joel Przybilla of the Blazers.

This game was virtually over from the tip.  Immediately it was visible that the Jazz were just going to be thrashed.  In the first 4 minutes the Jazz gave up 15 points on 6-8 shooting for the Blazers.  But it wasn’t just the defense of the Jazz early that was the issue, the offense was out of sync  and were making a countless number of bad passes.

Gotta give a lot of credit to the Blazers as well. Brandon Roy and LaMarcus Aldridge were a combined 20-30 with 51 points and I thought the Steve Blake played a fantastic game against Deron Williams.  The Blazers outscored the Jazz by 35 in the 29 minutes that Blake was on the floor.

For the record, I predicted on Twitter that the Blazers would get this game from the Jazz (much to the dismay of many Jazz fans).  The Blazers have been just about as good at home (31-7) as the Jazz (32-6) this season so it is wishful thinking perhaps that the Jazz could correct their road woes in such an environment on the second night of a back to back.  Sure the Jazz didn’t show up tonight but it’s just one game, it just happens to be at an inopportune time.  A loss is a loss, just like a win is a win.  So there is no need to over-analyze what went wrong. If anything I expect this game to have a positive effect on the Jazz for their game at Denver on Thursday more than a 2 point loss would have.  

• As Sloan was clearly trying to find something that would spark the Jazz, Matt Harpring started the second half for the Jazz in place of C.J. Miles.  Matt scored a 17 foot jumper just 15 seconds into the half. It’ll be interesting to see if C.J. remains in the starting lineup or if there is a shake up.
• The highest FG% game in the NBA since the 1986-87 season was 69.3% by the Los Angeles Clippers in the 1997-98 season. 

Ouch. Another winnable road game down the drain. Such a great game full of so much bad defense, unexpected heroes (for the Suns) and disappointments (for the Jazz).

Honestly, I thought that the Suns lost the game with 8:10 left in the game when they took their best player out, Louis Amundson.  Amundson won this game for the Suns with his hustle, blocking shots, and putting in 10 points on 5 of 6 shooting. The funny thing is, Amundson is perhaps the least productive player in Utah Jazz history… Here is his career line with the Jazz:

Despite the great former Jazzman’s performance, the Jazz and Suns were tied with 49 secs left after Ronnie Brewer hit a jumper.  Following a timeout, Grant Hill hit a tough fade away in the key to regain the lead with 31 seconds left.  It was definitely a difficult shot, so credit the veteran for coming through.   Now this is usually the type of situation that the Jazz thrive in. When almost every team in the league would call a timeout, Jerry Sloan and the Jazz usually don’t, preferring to keep the defense on their heels rather than let them talk it over and get set.  But to my surprise, Jerry Sloan called a timeout himself with 27 seconds left.  The only person more surprised than me perhaps was Deron Williams, he kept running the offense, unable to hear the unexpected timeout whistle. After the timeout, Deron missed a 17 footer but Memo got the Jazz another shot with a offensive board.  Unfortunately for the Jazz Memo forced up a horrible shot with 5 seconds left and that was that.  Not the shot you want to go down with.

• Boozer’s play is still frustrating me as I am sure it is to many fans of the Utah Jazz.  And actually, it all started about a year ago, continued through the playoffs and through the Olympics and through most of this season.  I have always defended Carlos when fans have ridden him for his injury issues but this seems to be a major confidence issue and I’m really not sure if there is an end in sight.  His box-scores are generally okay but if you watch closely, Carlos is really struggling.  He is fumbling balls, making careless decisions and costing the Jazz points and momentum at key times in the game.  Boozer got blocked 4 times in the games (twice by Shaq, once by Hill and once by Amundson). To my liking, Sloan pulled Booze with 3:17 left in favor of Okur.
• Deron Williams played a great game and got the Jazz back in it with back to back three balls when the Jazz trailed by 7 with less than 5 minutes to play.  D-will was having his way most of the night on his way to 25 points and 10 assists.
• Kyle Korver continued to impress with his hot shooting (5-8 from deep).  He is deadly at the moment if he gets any sort of an open look… far cry from January when he was struggling mightily (most likely due to his injuries).
• Props to Grant Hill.  The guy has battled back to play in every game this season.  He finished with 26 points including the shot that put the Jazz against the wall.
• Can’t help but start to wonder if the Jazz would be better off at times with Ronnie Price rather than Brevin Knight.  I think Knight is a fine player and solid backup but Price brings more energy and better shooting.  Coming into this season, I though Knight’s biggest strength was not turning the ball over but Brevin had 3 costly turnovers in 9 minutes against Phoenix.
• The Jazz and Suns each shot 27 free throws… the Shaq-lead Suns made 6 more of theirs… ball game.

The ejection did not give the Jazz the kick in the butt that Jerry was probably hoping for, instead Orlando widened its margin to 15-3 and never looked back.  Utah was playing very little defense and the offense was stagnant and off from the get go.

Most loses consist of some underlying lessons or a glimmer of hope.  This loss was different and should be put out of memory as quick as possible.  It now seems like forever ago that the Jazz were riding high and on their way to great things, now every Jazz fan is just looking for  a victory at home on Tuesday against the lowly Washington Wizards.

Looking for any sort of encouragement from this game, I guess it would have to be Carlos Boozer’s offense, particularly in the 2nd quarter.  Booze hit three jumpers on three straight possessions (all Brevin Knight assists) for the Jazz at the beginning of the quarter.  In all the Jazz scored on 6 straight possessions but only made up one point on the Magic during that stretch… obviously, there was a lot to be desired in the Jazz defensive effort.  

Dwight Howard really did look like Superman and the Jazz didn’t have anything remotely resembling kryptonite. Howard finished with 28 pts and 20 rebs but the damage seemingly could have been far greater had this been a close game or had he not missed nine free throws and committed 7 turnovers.

There were so many mental lapses by the Jazz that I am just going to explore a few of them:

1. With Jazz up 5 with 50 seconds left Andrei Kirilenko gets called for an offensive foul as he passes the ball off.  Only 5 seconds had run off the clock since 2 Heat free throws.   AK clearly shouldn’t have driven toward the basket to put himself in that type of situation especially since he was only passing it out of there anyway.
2. After a bucket by Miami cut the lead to 3 with 35 seconds left, the Heat pressured the Jazz in the backcourt.  Korver found AK to get the ball over half court and, unfortunately for the Jazz, ahead of the defense.  AK passed to Millsap and his dunk was blocked by Jermaine O’Neal.  Total time taken off clock: 9 seconds.
3. After a missed Miami free throw, Millsap had a legit shot at the rebound with 15 seconds left.  The ball ended up out of bounds off Paul.  The replay was unclear who it went off.  Not so much a mental error but had Millsap handled the board cleanly, Jazz probably walk away with the win.
4. After scoring 8 straight points to open up overtime with 2:46 remaining the Jazz didn’t score again but they could have easily won without silly turnovers and better clock management.  Korver was called for an offensive foul as he fought to create a passing lane for D-will (who shouldn’t have picked up his dribble which created Korver’s urgency).  This was followed by a Mario Chalmers steal on the next possession.
5. Jazz ball with 22 seconds left in OT, tied at 115… last shot, right? Wrong. Carlos Boozer took a tough, contested fadeaway with seconds left. The Jazz could have definitely found a better shot than that and they inexcusably allowed D-Wade to have a crack at winning the game (Wade, however, did miss a few of these opportunities but that doesn’t excuse the mental errors).

It is unfortunate that the Jazz made these errors because they played a great opening 47 minutes. They could have been headed to Orlando with a great win under their belt, now they could be looking at a potential three game losing streak. Some notes:

• Utah wore their home white uniforms because Miami was wearing special “El Heat” uni’s as part of Noche Latina 2009. The NBA promotes Noche Latina as a way to thank and recognize their fans in Latin America and U.S. Hispanic communities. I can’t help but see it as just another way to sell more jerseys. Why were the “El Heat” jerseys a variation of their road black jersey rather than a variation of their home white jersey? I am guessing because the black jersey is a better seller. “The NBA has one of the largest and fastest-growing Hispanic fan bases in U.S. professional sports…” said Saskia Sorrosa, Sr. Director of Marketing for the NBA. One of the largest/fastest-growing? Is that really saying much? How many major U.S. professional sports are there?
• You can’t help but wonder if this was a bit of a audition for Carlos Boozer with the Heat. He started out with a great 1^st quarter with 8 points on 4 of 6 shooting along with 5 boards and 3 assists. Booze ended the extended game with 20/13 but he is still struggling with defense, timing and handling the ball. 
• C.J. Miles put in two early threes but only played 15 minutes. I have to think it might be partly due to the fact that all 5 of his shots came from deep.
• Mental error by the Heat (although the Jazz easily won this category): rookie Michael Beasley, a power forward, took a inbounds pass and launched a half court three pointer with 3 seconds left in the first quarter… probably could have found a better shot than that.
• I would guess that the Jazz play less day games than any other team.  With relatively so few Sunday games on the Jazz schedule and no ABC games, it seems odd when the Jazz take the court before noon Mountain time as they did today and last weekend in Toronto. Day games only seem to happen on extended Eastern road trips for the Jazz.
• Korver was hot and had a great game. He scored 25 on 10 of 16 FGs (4-7 3PT) and had two huge blocks that led to Jazz fast-break buckets.
• AK perplexes me. He will make a beautiful scoop shot as he did early in the 4^th then an amazing touch pass to Millsap for a lay-up seconds later. And then at times he looks like the most awkward, uncoordinated guy out there as he drives to the hoop and throws up weird off balance shots with his arms flailing all over the place.
• Deron seemed to tweak his back as he scrambled and tangled with D-wade fighting for a loose ball.  He played the rest of the game for a total of 51 minutes but I wouldn’t be surprised if we heard more about this.
• Memo shoots 54% from deep in Jazz victories while only 26% in Jazz loses.  Okur was 2 of 4 from three point land today… should have been a Jazz victory.
• Jazz haven’t won in Miami since 2003. Wade is 10-1 against the Utah in his career.
• I really appreciate Jazz P.A. announcer Dan Roberts, especially after hearing the Miami version for regulation plus three overtimes. “It reeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeallllllllllllllllly geeeeeeeeeeeeets anooooooooooooooooooying!!!!!!!!!!!!” Roberts is the best.

Well, on to Orlando for yet another test (back to back, coming off 3 OT, up against a very good Orlando team, last game of long trip). Can the Jazz stop the bleeding?

• Horrendous start by the Jazz. This is what usually leads to Utah road losses; they find themselves down 14-4 halfway through the first quarter as they did on Tuesday night and spend too much energy fighting back.  Lately, Memo Okur has been the first quarter offense for the Jazz but he was hit with 2 early fouls against the Hawks and forced to the bench just a few minutes in.  Although the Jazz did fight back to take the lead with a huge third quarter, it was no doubt their slow start in the first quarter that cost them their 13th straight victory.
• The third quarter has one of the best of the season for the Jazz and allowed them a chance down the stretch.  Utah outscored Atlanta 33-18 in the quarter and hit 11 of their final 13 shots of the quarter.
• What is up with Atlanta’s fan base? The Braves have always filled their stadium or am I wrong? The Hawks are different though, they consistently have some of the lowest attendance in the league, even when the Hawks are having a good season as they currently are. Atlanta is XX-7 this season at home; imagine if their fans actually gave them a real home-court advantage. Last night’s announced attendance: 13,112 (the Jazz are not necessarily a top draw but they did come in with a 12 game win streak).
• I am still wondering about the Josh Smith play in the third quarter where he was fouled and his dunk (no doubt after the shot clock expired) was counted as continuation.  Can anyone verify the correct rule on this?  It does not seem logical to me that the shot should have counted.  What if it was the same scenario with the game clock rather than the shot clock? If the foul happens before the clock expires, does the foul take the clock out of play for continuation? To me, this was the turning point of the game as the Jazz were on a roll at the time and up 5. It appeared to be Jazz ball after a shot clock violation (the foul was not obvious and appeared after the shot clock as well); instead, Smith converted the three point play to pull the Hawks within 2.  A few seconds later Joe Johnson made a blind-side steal from a careless Carlos Boozer and all of the sudden it was a tie game.
•  Got to mention the play Deron made, I believe in the third quarter.  On a fast break, Deron somehow got through an uncalled foul at half-court then made a spectacular behind the back dribble to himself before dishing it to Millsap for a layup.  I watched this play about ten times on my Tivo.  In slow motion it looks like a very simple move… at full speed it is something that only a handful of players on Earth can do.
• It could have been a worse night for Utah but the Rockets and Blazers were both knocked off at home.  The Jazz did lose ground to the Nuggets, Hornets, Lakers and Mavericks. 
• Can the Jazz recover and find victories in Florida? The team was riding an emotional high during their win streak so it will be interesting to see their body language, confidence and energy as they take on the Heat.  Miami tends to give the Jazz issues and D-Wade is having a fantastic season.  If Wade is able to score more than 25 or 30 points as Joe Johnson did, it will be very hard for the Jazz to win.