The morning (mourning?) after
Have to admit, I didn’t exactly see that – let’s call it a Mav-handling – coming. A loss wouldn’t have shocked me, but a 29-point blowout in which they were hardly competitive?
This team, honestly, baffles me. You too, I’m sure.
Of course, that’s how I felt about the Jazz back in the Stockton-Malone years when they’d occasionally get bounced out of the first round when they were expected to go deeper.
Heck, I even remember sitting in the United Center for a real, old-fashioned MJ-Pippen-administered butt-whooping in 1998. Final score of that one: Bulls 96, Jazz 54.
Funny thing is, I started that game basically watching it from the rafters with some pigeons, but a co-worker offered his third-row seats by Dan Patrick and Laverne (no Shirley, though) to me for the second half.
How generous of him, eh?
My point is, embarrassing blowouts occasionally happen. What really matters is what you do in the aftermath. The ’98 Jazz bounced back to be way more competitive in Game 4, falling 86-82. BUT then Utah spoiled, er, delayed Chicago’s sixth title party by beating the Bulls in Game 5 in Chicago 83-81.
We all remember how that one finished, so let’s go back to my point of how embarrassing blowouts occasionally happen. Unless it comes in the final game of the season, it’s what happens after that matters most.
Because New Orleans also lost a game I thought it might win – falling to the Suns last night – I’m still sticking with my prediction from a couple weeks ago that Utah will finish with the seventh seed, the Hornets will end up eighth and the Mavs will be sixth.
If the Jazz can somehow turn things around in San Antonio, a true test of their mental fortitude, that would really put the heat on the Hornets. A loss versus the Spurs would likely force Utah to win at the Staples Center against the Lakers in the regular-season finale to avoid a Round 1 match-up with L.A.
There’s still time to right the ship, but not much. There’s still hope for a non-Lakers’ first round, but if the Jazz don’t start playing better it might not matter if they face L.A., Denver or Minnesota in Round 1.
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Wednesday night’s blowout will probably be great news for Jazz fans hoping to buy playoff tickets today. I’m sure there are plenty of operators standing by waiting, waiting, waiting and waiting for that phone to ring.
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I’ve been high on Jason Terry for the Sixth Man of the Year award, but I might have a new candidate: J.J. Barea.
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I made my Jazz beat radio debut yesterday on the John and Hans Show on 1280 The Zone and have spent many of the past 24 hours thinking, pondering, fretting over what came out of my mouth. (Especially the part where I admitted to reading “Little House on the Prairie” as a kid.) That over-analyzation is the way I usually feel in the aftermath of some of those unpleasant conversations with my wife – except John (played by Jake Scott in this case) and Hans gave me some courtesy laughs at a few jokes I tried to crack.
I did get a little long-winded on a couple of occasions. I think Hans and Jake were hoping for the equivalent of a two-minute youth talk and I gave them the 45-minute High Councilman speech.
I still think it was kind of rude that they started making snoring noises when I was breaking down how good Portland is. (They didn’t really, even if they might have wanted to.)
But I still had fun. Hope they invite me back someday. And I think they have a really entertaining show – and, yes, I’m just saying that because they had me on. (Just kidding, I’m really saying that because Hans is a 300-pound former NFL/BYU lineman who could snap me in half if he wanted to.)