Well, that sucked. A comeback would've been nice (it can be done... just ask Iggy), but the Jazz decided to pass on all that fun (I mean, why would they consider anything that might lead to OT and more game-time?) and instead just roll over and play dead for the first half. That allowed the Lakers to roll to an easy half-time lead, meaning the Jazz comeback in the 2nd half wasn't enough.

There were some positives (some)

• Boozer's offensive performance (11-16 for 27 points)
• Deron finding everyone (16 assists)
• owning the boards (46-38, 20-7 offensively... 'Sap had 7 offensive boards on his own!)
• shooting 83% from the line
• the play in the 2nd half (most of it)
• someone had a + +/-. We'll just conveniently ignore that it was Flop in his 15 minutes

For the most part though, there were a lot of negatives.

• Booze played defense in the paint like a broken turnstile
• AK was 3-10 and CJ was 2-9 off of the bench
• Deron only played 45 minutes
• Flop played 15. He sucked in the first half. In the 2nd half, he was getting to the FT line early and often, and then he got benched and didn't get any more time. Yeah, he sucks, but maybe j-slow should've stuck with him when he was the only one scoring
• Brewer. He's really fallen off as of late. Not sure why, but it's not good.. Maybe the team does need someone like Almond (aka, a jumpshooter)
• Starting Korver to be a shooter when Booze is double-teamed is kinda stupid when he's getting fewer shots than 6 players (and only 1 more than Flop!)
• They had 3 guys (Kobe, Gasol, Ariza) break 20 points. WTF? Ariza?
  
• The Lakers were 7-15 from down town.]
• Booze had 4 turnovers
• AK really hurt the team late. He'd make a great play (like the steal) and then blow it (bad pass).
• Fesenko didn't play. Ronnie P. didnt play. j-slow refuses to change things... though it obviously hasn't been working as is. Eh, he's the coach...
• The Jazz got killed. Bynum only had 7 points. Kobe was totally quiet in the first quarter
• The Lakers shot 70% from the field in the 1st quarter (ended up on top, 30-19), and 55.6% for the game. Not going to stop many teams like that. Especially when you shoot 39%

I don't want to go off on the coaching (because j-slow is a Hall of Famer and I live in the basement of my parents' house), but there were some questionable things. The whole thing with Flop above. Plus there was Korver, who seemingly ended up in the doghouse after the first quarter. At the time, he was 1-2 from the field. There was also Brewer, who was 0-3. Both got benched until late in the 2nd quarter. Meanwhile, there was CJ. He replace one of them, and managed to jack up shot after shot (missing them all), and didn't get pulled until mid-way through the 2nd quarter. He was 1-6 or something when finally pulled, and bricked a couple of treys and having bombed a lay-up. Has he been permanently banished from the doghouse? And if so... why?

Also, Bynum was 2-5, and Gasol was 7-11. I think the interior defense trio of Booze, Flop & 'Sap failed (though if you're surprised, you don't follow the Jazz enough). They also had 0 blocks. And 12 fouls (surprisingly, Flop was the only one of the 3 to not get 5 fouls). And given the Lakers shooting percentage (55.6%) and FTAs (32), I don't think they did much stopping of any of the drives inside (by anyone) either. But I'm glad j-slow stuck with his guts and turned a blind-eye towards Fesenko while keeping 2 of his actual bigs (aka, taller than 6'9) in suits (one due to injury, one because he's a rookie).

Yeah, it was ugly. The Jazz were never really in it. I guess we look forward to Game 2 now... Tuesday night in LA. It's an 8:30 PM start, brought to you by the guys that would prefer you not watch the game TNT & the NBA.

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