So I’m sitting on my couch and someone knocks at the door. Not the main door to my apartment. The door that leads out to my front deck. The front deck that is situated about fifteen feet above the ground floor. HOW DID SOMEONE GET TO MY FRONT DECK AND KNOCK ON MY DOOR.
… then I realized that the deck connects to the other side of my duplex. Turns out this dude came over to visit my roommate but entered the wrong side of the house, thus showing up on my front deck.
This incredibly boring story is brought to you purely to underscore how UTTERLY AWFUL this game was. By comparison, that story was friggin' Shakespeare.
Seriously, there was nothing to see here after about the first quarter. The Jazz opened the game poorly, with bad spacing, lazy ball movement, careless passes (Boozer had three turnovers in the first quarter alone) and settling for long jumpers -- again. While the Hawks started hot and quickly cooled off, the four-point lead at the end of the first would be all they needed.From then on, it was a comedy of errors on the part of the boys in blue, culminating in a dismal 37-17 third quarter that had the Hawks up by 30 points. Josh Smith led the way with a Kirilenko-esque* stat line of 16 points, 8 rebounds, 5 assists, 5 steals and 2 blocks.
*By "Kirilenko-esque" I am here referring to the times when Kirilenko was, you know, a good basketball player.
One night after appearing on national television and hearing Kenny Smith and Charles Barkley call him the best point guard in the NBA. Deron Williams put up this line: 2 points on 1-8 shooting, 4 assists, 3 rebounds, 2 steals, 4 turnovers and a +/- rating of -36 in 21 minutes. If he's ever had a worse game as a professional, I can't remember it.
The fourth quarter was probably the most entertaining part of the game for Jazz fans, as a lineup of Eric Maynor, Wesley Matthews, Ronnie Price, Andrei Kirilenko and Kyrylo Fesenko looked like the only players with "Utah" on their chests who gave a crap.
Of course, by then, the conversation in the Game Thread had turned away from the basketball game and onto such thrilling topics as "Peanuts: Not Actually Nuts At All" and "I Have Too Many Vowels On My Scrabble Rack."
Honestly, there may be other insights to glean from this game, but I don't have the energy to try right now. I'm serious. I had observations in the first half. At least I think I did. I mean, there they are in the Game Thread, with my name beneath them and everything, but the rest of the game was so boringly depressingly terrible that I think it deprived me of my ability to remember things I actually said.
The good news: we can bounce back tomorrow night in Charlotte. In the words of Wesley: You have until midnight. Then it's time to get over it and move on.