Good lord... looking back at the official "I hate the Jazz thread"... so entertaining. I think this is easily the best Treeman post ever:
I'm most worried about Okur. He will absolutely kill from three point range, and JVG might possibly put Battier on him when he's on the perimeter. But for that to work, the Rockets would need to go into a Zone defence, and while I'm not exactly clear as to what defence they use (I think it's man-to-man, because I remember one pistons game where Billups was posting up alston, not a pretty sight). Hayes on Boozer while Deke is empty handed because Okur is camping out on the perimeter Deron Williams might murder Alston though.
Yeah, this is going to be the first real test for the post Yao injury Rockets. Our matchups with them at the 4,5 spots are weak. There is no way that Deke can guard Okur out at the 3 point line (which is exactly what the Jazz want) and there is no way that Juwan can slow down Boozer. We really need Chuck Hayes to come up big, stay out of foul trouble, and work well against Boozer. We just match up so badly against them. Juwan and Shane are the only 2 logical defenders against Okur. So, I would look for a lot of minutes at the big man spots for Juwan, Hayes, and Shane, and less minutes for Deke. I would imagine JVG starts the game with Deke on Boozer and Juwan on Okur, and I hope it works, but I'm afraid that Boozer is going to take Deke to the cleaners and have him on the bench with 2 fouls in the first 4 minutes. Then it's Chuckie and Juwan's turn on Boozer. Not to mention Deron Williams just manhandling Rafer at the point. This is the game that I really wished JVG would pull out the zone to cover up Boozer in the middle. Okur gets the night off defensively against Deke and Hayes. Boozer matches up well against Juwan and can fade off him to help in the lane. He'll give Juwan that 18 footer and shut down the paint. Juwan will have to be hot, hot, hot for us to keep it close and the problem is that he is due for a cold, cold, cold shooting night after so many good shooting games. I just have a bad feeling about this one. Hope I am wrong. But I think we are headed for a double digit point loss. McGrady and Juwan are going to have to be very good and we are going to have to force the ball into the paint and get them in foul trouble in order to have a chance. Sloan always coaches a hard nosed, hard working, grind 'em down rough and tumble type team and with our injuries, we are not that hard nosed save for Hayes. I would imagine that after this game, people will be screaming for Rafer's benching even more than they have already. I dread watching this one.
This is the first real test at home since Yao went down....If we can win this, I think we will be OK without Yao for a while.....the true test willb e the two games on the road on Sunday and monday before we play Lakers next Wed.... Rockets beat Jazz here... 104-96
Gonna be a tough one.....their 2 strengths are our weaknesses...PF and PG. Rockets prevail at home though 99-96 DD
This game might be the one to illustrate to all you non believers that Battier/Howard/Hayes is not quite adequate at the POWER Forward position. Mutombo must have a good game for us to win, he must defend the basket with detrmination + 7 blocks. Also JVG must, for a change, be wise and be sure to match up to the best of our teams ability. Alston should concentrate on defense and only try to score in the second half.
You and I are thinking almost exactly alike. On the bright side, the Jazz haven't played lights out recently. Even though they are 7-3 over their last 10 games, the Jazz haven't been blowing teams away. Maybe we catch them on a bad night.
Its time for JHo to shine in defense. Will it happen? If not, we will struggle tonight since Ulta is a good shooting team.
The jazz are not yet in the elite group (spurs/mavs/suns). We have a 50/50 chance of winning this. We are at home and we got the red rowdies. Don't underestimate us. We have a solid group. With that said, Boozer and Okur collided, while running through screens, in the 1st quarter and neither can shoot straight for the remainder of the game.
This one is a real one to test our team! With TMac and Yao, we lost to them this season and now this winning chance is less than 50% for sure. More and more tuff games arrives after this, it is also a big time to test our fans' heart! If 50% winning record for this month, it will exceed my expectation. Go, ROX!
We have been playing at a very high level since Yao has been out but we will need to hit on all cylinders tonight to get a win. Juwan will need to get a double double T-mac will need 30+ and Alston, Head and Mutombo will need to continue their good play.
