Thoughts after The Blowout
3-POINT SHOTS from 30,000-feet above some snowy Midwestern plains en route to Milwaukee from New Orleans, site of the Jazz’s worst blowout loss of the season:
POINT 1: The Jazz didn’t just talk about losing – they admitted that they simply got beaten. And badly as the scoreboard reading 100-71 in New Orleans’ favor suggested.
In other words, they took their 29-point shellacking from the Hornets graciously.
“They did everything better than us,” Jazz coach Jerry Sloan said. “And they outcoached us, so give them the credit.”
Same sentiment came out of Deron Williams’ mouth.
“I’ll be worried if we come out like that (tonight),” he said. “This is just one of those games that nothing seemed to go right for us from the start. … A lot of it was them.”
POINT 2: Things were a bit rough out there while Mehmet Okur was on the court, something Sloan anticipated in his center’s return. The coach also said it’s tough to gauge where Memo’s game is right now.
“It’s hard to say because he’s just treading water to try to get to play,” Sloan said. “That’s not a disrespect to him.”
But the Jazz and Okur realize it’s critical for his progress to get him in game situations after he missed eight months due to rehab his ruptured and surgically repaired Achilles tendon.
If nothing else, Memo’s short stints will show the center where improvement needs to be made.
“Every day I felt better and better – myself, my tendon,” Okur explained about why he returned Friday after missing eight months. “I feel like it’s about time to go out there and try it.”
POINT 3: Shooting guard Raja Bell missed his first four 3-point attempts in his return from a three-game absence due to a strained groin. Bell finished with eight points on 3-for-11 shooting, including a 2-of-8 night beyond the arc.
After one of his 3-point misses, Bell yelled out a bit of frustration while getting back on defense.
“I wasn’t down. They all felt really good,” Bell said. “I told Deron and C.J. (Miles) at one point four of those felt like the best shots I had shot all year. They were right on target if you look at them. They were just a little short.”
Bell said that was to be expected, considering he didn’t even feel like moving around a week earlier because of the adductor injury.
“The injury felt good,” he said. “I wasn’t even thinking about it. It wasn’t something that affected me out there. Just the layoff affected my legs a bit.”
Interestingly, rookie Gordon Hayward seemed to play more aggressively coming off the bench than he did while filling in for Bell as a starter.
The 20-year-old rookie scored seven points on 2-for-2 shooting from the field and the free-throw line after registering all of one point in his three recent starts.
Hayward also had the best plus/minus rating on the team with a minus-one. Seven of his teammates were in double-digit negative territory.