San Antonio 106, Utah 100

Talk about mind-bogglingly ugly.

–>Brewer had 23 points after 3 quarters… and didn’t score in the 4th. Of course, it didn’t help that he didn’t start the 4th, and J-Slow waited for him to cool down before putting him back into the game.
–>Okur seemed to finally find his shot… but disappeared big time down the stretch. He did have 17 boards though.
–>6 points from the bench (combined), including a couple of ugly looking treys by Korver. Trade him!
–>One game after playing well in a loss, the Fes/The Koof combo played for just over 3 minutes combined. What?
–>Tonya Harding yet again played alright, but didn’t pull a Bruce Bowen or a Cheap-Shot Bob on anyone on the Spurs unfortunately.
–>The officiating (on both ends) was absolutely horrific. They had no idea about possession calls, flops were called every which way, and in general, it was perfectly legal hack someone, as long as it wasn’t a 7-footer on the Spurs (or a guy married to an ABC show star).
–>The Spurs were draining everything (51.4% from the floor).
–>The Spurs were 11-20 from downtown (55%!), and that’s after missing their last 4 treys. The Jazz refuse to play perimeter defense, and Matt Bonner (the 2nd coolest red-head in the league after Scalabrine!?) and Roger Mason lit them up. Hell, Mr. Longoria had 2 treys on the night… giving him 11 on the season.
–>Deron was 2-6 from the line.
–>CJ had yet another maddeningly inconsistent game… a couple of nice dunks & huge treys offset by some very stupid plays.
–>I miss AK.

Oh, and if you want to know why the MLB & No Fun League are better than David Stern’s WWF on the Hardwood, just look at the officiating. I mean, I’m a Pirates fan, and I know they’re going to be bad. But at least I have the knowledge that it’s because the team was badly constructed and is rebuilding… and not because the umpires unfairly call everything against the Pirates. Not the case in the NBA, where the refs do whatever they feel like.

Of course, it doesn’t help the Jazz to constantly leave players open on the perimeter, yet for some reason, that doesn’t change. And we’ve been seeing that forever. What? As they say, defense wins championships. (Also, as someone somewhere might’ve said at sometime… “change can be a bi***”.)

Filed under: Andrei Kirilenko, CJ Miles, Deron Williams, Game Recap, Kosta Koufos, Kyle Korver, Kyrylo Fesenko, Matt Harpring, Mehmet Okur, Ronnie Brewer, SA Spurs

RMR Day 1 Thoughts

• Missed the Hawks-Mavs game (didn’t know they have a “watch live” option on the website). Oops. It seems like it was a good game too.
• “Watched” most of the Jazz-Spurs game. Watched in the sense that it was on the TV (yay for KJZZ). I really only had the TV on for the 1st 3 quarters. And my time was spent more following the Pirates game online and hating on the Jazz brass for the CJ Miles era (which is probably over now). Because, you know… the NBA is turning to crap.
• The officials are horrible. They seem to have this idea that the more often you blow your whistles, the more likely you are to make it to the NBA. I mean, if they had had their way, everyone would’ve fouled out in the first quarter. Including the fans & coaches. Now we know why they have a higher limit on the number of fouls you can commit. It’s a fu**ing summer league game. Let them play. God, you can’t even watch this stuff. Watching paint dry has got to be more exciting.
• The Jazz were horrific (save the 2nd quarter… where they only seemed good because the Spurs were worse). I don’t have exact numbers (the box-score PDF for the game has some error… fix it!), but the recap states that the Jazz shot 29.8% from the field. Ouch.
• These guys would be great on the Jazz. I mean, they follow J-Slow’s defensive idea so well. You know, the “leave the middle open, and if someone drives in, foul them” scheme that has made Booze so popular with Jazz fans.
  

Filed under: Jerry Sloan, Kosta Koufos, Kyrylo Fesenko, Morris Almond, SA Spurs, Summer league