The All-Star break is over, which means we’re in the home stretch of the NBA regular season and playoffs seedings start to really take shape. Let’s get on with another report card, academic style!
Ronnie Brewer and the Jazz are on a roll, but it's still yet to be seen if they can continue their momentum on the road.
A – Utah Jazz Hitting Stride - The Utah Jazz have had a roller coaster week since beating the Los Angeles Lakers right before the All-Star break. The Jazz kept the momentum rolling by beating the Boston Celtics this past week, becoming the third team to beat both participants of last year’s Finals. Last Friday, the Jazz’s longtime owner, Larry H. Miller, passed away after fighting courageously to survive type 2 diabetes. Miller was considered by many to be one of the most passionate owners in the NBA, he kept the Jazz in Utah. Fans in Seattle can only hope they had an owner as great as Miller and that they would still have their SuperSonics. The Jazz played an inspired game on Saturday in memory of Miller and beat the New Orleans Hornets. In head-to-head matchups Deron Williams is now 13-2 against Chris Paul. The Jazz, despite losing the most games to player injuries this year, is in the Western Conference playoff hunt and only four games from homecourt advantage in the first round. With Carlos Boozer hopefully coming back from injury this week, the Jazz will play their first game of the year with their whole starting lineup healthy.
B - Charles Barkley Returns - Charles Barkley made a bonehead mistake last month when he was caught driving under the influence. A lesser known, non-athlete would be sitting in jail right, but the “Mound of Rebound” is back on the set of the NBA on TNT. His T-Mobile commercials are back (thank goodness, those generic ones were doing nothing to help them) and he is apologetic for his act of stupidity. Barkley mentioned on his first show back that he might consider giving up drinking alcohol altogether, if that’s what “professionals” tell him to do. We don’t know what professional would tell Barkley that drinking is fine, but our advise to Barkley is to stop paying “professionals” to be your shoulder angel and listen to us, “Drinking and driving is a no-no.” While we in no way condone Barkely’s actions, we are glad to see him back. He brings a lot of knowledge and personality to the show, the past six weeks without Barkley have been like watching The View without that one white woman…if a name just came to your mind then maybe this website isn’t for you.
C - The Good Ol’ Suns - We don’t know whether to praise the Phoenix Suns or slap them in the face for taking so long to realize that they never had a problem with their offense. Last season, Suns management thought they needed to change their offense so they brought in Shaquille O’Neal and slowed things down. To further enforce their change in philosophy, they hired Terry Porter as head coach and let go the Mike D’Antoni. Then this season they traded Raja Bell and Boris Diaw for Jason Richardson, and fired Terry Porter. With Alvin Gentry at the helm, the Suns averaged 140+ points/game until they lost to the Celtics. With the Celtics loss aside, it was nice to see the good ol’ Suns, it’s just too bad they lost Amar’e Stoudemire for the year and all their key players are closer to retirement than winning a Championship. It doesn’t take a genius to realize their only problem before was that they didn’t play defense.
D – The Trade Deadline - As the NBA trade deadline loomed this past week, there were a lot of rumors swirling around. According to the experts, a lot of teams were talking turkey, big trades were in waiting. When the deadline came and went, all we got was a bunch of over-hyped luncheon meat trades. While there were a few moves, they were nothing like the fire sale we thought was about to happen. With the bad economy (anybody else getting sick of hearing about that?) a lot of teams are in a financial bind, especially the ones in smaller markets. The Los Angeles Clippers, Milwaukee Bucks, and Hornets are among the teams that are losing more money than they make and of them were unsuccessful in shedding a large contract from their team. It would be so much easier if teams could rid themselves of poor performing players by simply putting their torches out, “Survivor” style.
F – Tyson Chandler’s Toe - The Hornets were actually of of the few teams that were successful in shipping off one of their overpaid players, but only for a matter of days. The Hornets traded injury-riddled Tyson Chandler to the Oklahoma City Thunder in a move to simply clear salary cap space. Chandler had been having knee problems, but it was a past problem with his surgically repaired toe that caused him to fail the physical. The Thunder’s team doctor, who said there is a risk Chandler might re-injure his toe, is the one that initially performed the surgery on it a few years ago. You have to wonder what was going through that doctor’s head while examining Chandler’s toe, probably something along the lines of, “Whoops…” In the end, Chandler was shipped back to New Orleans and the trade was rescinded. Chandler must have felt like the kid that gets tossed around from team to team on elementary school playgrounds across the nation, “You take him!” “NO!! YOU TAKE HIM!”
Tags: NBA
February 23rd, 2009 at 8:46 am
The Jazz game on Saturday was amazing! I am so glad that they played well for Larry H. Miller, he will be missed. I’m just hoping that they keep their momentum and finish out the season strong.
February 23rd, 2009 at 9:37 pm
The jazz are on a roll! I hope they can keep it up. Im surprised nobody made any big moves, especially teams in the west. I thought they would want to try and close the gap betweeen the lakers.