I wanted to write a love to note to Kobe after game one because he is the most awesome player to ever put a basketball jersey on. His game one highlights include badly missing 3 shots in a row in the fourth quarter when the Jazz were finally playing as a real team and not turning the ball over every other possession like they did in the first half. He also was able to get the foul line at will by screaming like a little bitch if any Jazz player even looked at him wrong. I am sure that all of you Laker fans will try and tell me that Kobe deserved to go the line 23 times and if you do, you give up your right to ever call another fan from another team a homer. 50% of the fouls called on Kobe are complete crap as it was with MJ, Magic, Bird, Malone and any other superstar. Lets see here, the Jazz shoot 30 free throws as a team and the Lakers shoot 46, that seems like calls were fair both ways. (I do agree with Phil Jackson however that the officiating was a little wishy-washy at best, but it is not why the Jazz lost the game.) Back to Kobe, he played great defense on our worst offensive player all night holding Ronnie Brewer to 11 points. All in all he was just awesome, in fact I would dare say that he was the best player on the floor yesterday, something I am sure that none of us irrational fans were expecting.
On to the real issues of the game.
1 - Carlos Boozer needs to pull his head out of his butt and play some ball. 7 turnovers is not acceptable Carlos, neither is the 6-14 shooting.
2 - Deron's shot was off and that should get better, but did you realize he was 1 assist and 1 rebound away from a triple-double. Not too bad for an off night.
3 - Matt Harpring needs to stop shooting the basketball. Ugh!
4 - For the love of everything holy lets make a damn shot. 38% shooting for the game? Really? At least we rebounded all of those missed shots. We had 22 more shot attempts than the Lakers due to the work on the offensive glass, if they can keep that up around 15 for game two and get the shooting percentage up to 45% the Jazz win the game. (Note to Lakers players, feel free to box out on the glass, from what I saw in game one you are really bad rebounders. I would like to point out that I did mention Okur would own the glass against softy Pau.)
Game 2 is all about adjustments so lets see if the Jazz can adjust their shooting stroke and make a series out of this. They need a full 4 quarters of execution, not the 3 that we got yesterday.