Do that lob thing again- Jerry Sloan
The Utah Jazz play host to the L.A. Clippers tonight at the ESA. This will be the 2nd meeting of the two team this season. The Jazz KILLED the Clippers on January 17th with a final score of a whopping 108-79. The Jazz won the match-up of the power forwards with Paul Millsap scoring 20 points on 7-11 shooting and holding the mighty Blake Griffin to 10 points on 12 shots.
Swat Lake City turned into Lob Lake City for the night as Jeremy Evans and Earl Watson used the game as a warm up for the Dunk Contest. We had highlights such as Tinsley's wrap-around layup and Evans cheating on Watson with Tinsley for the incredible alley-oop from the pass beyond half-court.
Whats Going on with the Clippers: The Clips are coming off of a HUGE win against our division rivals and the leaders of the Western Conference the Seattle Su Oklahoma City Thunder. Some player apparently had a HUGE dunk in that game also or something.
The Clippers are on an impressive three game winning streak, they have beaten the Nuggets, Grizzlies and the Thunder. Chris Paul is back and things seem to be rolling again in Clipperland. The Clippers like the Jazz had a very home friendly schedule in January. They had fifteen total games with eleven of them being at home. The Clips went 1-3 on the road and 10-1 at home. (lone home loss to Rubio and the TWolves)
Chris Paul is an amazing player but someone who has not seen many wins against this Jazz. The player though that made all those wins possible is now on the Nets considering not opting out of his contract at the end of the year. This season Paul is averaging 18.1 ppg and 8.9 apg and an incredible 44.7% from 3-point land. Our guards will have their hands full defending him tonight.
Whats Going on with the Jazz: The Jazz are on a two game win streak beating Portland at home on Monday and the Kings on Saturday night.Earl Watson absolutely willed the team to victory on Monday. He is the leader of this team that had no leader and no official captain. Earl is the father of our young guys on and off the court. He leads them to play hard on the court and he is trying to convince Jeremy Evans to join Twitter off the court. Earl let Jeremy take a test drive on his Twitter profile last night.
The Jazz are trying to find their rhythm offensively after some ugly games against the Mavs and the Raptors. Against the Kings and the Trailblazers you could see some of the Jazz's mojo coming back. The Jazz had 11 offensive rebounds against the Blazers which kept them in the game when they couldn't seem to shoot for the entire first half. The Jazz now lead the league in put backs with 7.09 % of their total offense and averaging 1.27 ppp on them. The Clippers dead last in put packs only having 5.14% of their offense coming from them and only converting on .78 ppp.
Hustle and energy caused the Jazz to blowout the Clippers back in January lets hope they can do it again tonight. Lets hope there are many many Early-Oops to ooh and aah the ESPN world tonight. Most of all #LetJeremyDunk
Side Note: Al will play tonight and Raja is still out