Is the Northwest division the best in the West right now? Utah, Portland, OKC, and Denver are all in the playoffs right now. The Pacific division has LA & PHX while the Southwest has Dallas & San Antonio.
If you look at the combined winning percentages of each division, the NW trails just the SW division. But if you take the top four teams of each division, the NW has the best % by far.
| Eastern Conference | |||
| ATLANTIC | W | L | W % |
| Division | 115 | 175 | 0.397 |
| Top 4 | 109 | 122 | 0.472 |
| CENTRAL | W | L | |
| Division | 148 | 148 | 0.500 |
| Top 4 | 128 | 109 | 0.540 |
| SOUTHEAST | W | L | |
| Division | 155 | 137 | 0.531 |
| Top 4 | 134 | 101 | 0.570 |
| Western Conference | |||
| NORTHWEST | W | L | |
| Division | 161 | 138 | 0.538 |
| Top 4 | 147 | 91 | 0.618 |
| PACIFIC | W | L | |
| Division | 143 | 154 | 0.481 |
| Top 4 | 126 | 113 | 0.527 |
| SOUTHWEST | W | L | |
| Division | 162 | 132 | 0.551 |
| Top 4 | 133 | 103 | 0.564 |
My All-star team from the NW would be: Deron, Roy, Anthony, Durant, and ?? Boozer? Nene? Aldridge? Healthy Oden?
Are you ready for a lot of Jazz basketball this month? 17 games in total including one on the 17th itself. The biggest break the Jazz will have is two days. The first comes after tonight's game against LAC and Saturday's game against LAC. I guess the league figured we could use a break after playing LA twice in a week? Maybe they got the LAs confused?
Either way, starting with the 9th against the Bulls, the Jazz play 14 games in 24 days with only one day breaks the rest of the month. They'll have four back to backs with two of those being road-road games. What's odd is that April gives the Jazz two three-day breaks. March also features a rare Sunday game against the Thunder (on the road of course).
Of the 17 games, 10 are on the road. I think we can say that this month will be the season-maker.
It looks like Deron's luggage with his shot in it finally got here from Dallas. Remind me never to fly through there.
It was obvious from the get-go against Houston that Deron was feeling it. His whole demeanor from the beginning was a complete turnaround from the previous ten games or so. You knew that it was going to be his game. The best part was that he wasn't trying to just score and get out of his slump. It came within the offense and he was able to get others involved. Or maybe the NBA preemptively snubbed him for next year's All-star game.
Greg Miller explains the decision to trade Brewer,
But the fact of the matter was that Ronnie’s contract was expiring at the end of the season, we expected him to get an offer from another team as a restricted free agent next summer (similar to Paul Millsap’s situation last summer) that we were not prepared to match, so rather than just letting him go and getting nothing in return, Kevin was able to get Memphis to send us a future first-round draft pick. That gives us the ability to acquire another premium talent that we would have otherwise not been able to have.
Ronnie is a great kid, and we love the work ethic, attitude, and professionalism he brought to work every day. But, we felt like we had enough depth at his position that by letting him go, we could give more minutes to Kyle, CJ and Wesley.
Believe me, we thought long and hard about this.
Personally, it was gut-wrenching to see Ronnie go. From the business side, it was the smart thing to do.
You could plug Boozer's name in there, minus the restricted portion, and it fits just the same. So to reiterate what others here have said, if it's a business decision, then trading Boozer would have been an even better business decision as we could have got some talent back. Maybe there wasn't anything for him? I'm guessing they're going to wait to do a sign and trade for Booze where they can get more back for him. You can't do that with Brewer.