What’s Really Good? No seriously...what’s good...

Seeing as the Raps have come up winless in their to-be-wrapped-up-tonight sojourn out West, one may see this as a big negative. Possibly because…it is. However, rather than drone on about the negatives (I’ll wait till after the Utah game for that), let’s look at the positives. It’s a short, at times meaningless, list.

1. Bosh: Wonderboy has been averaging 24.7 pts, 13.7 rbs and 5 assists on 50.0% shooting in 39.3 mins on the West Coast swang. He’s been getting to the line about 11 and change times a game, while hitting 79.4% of the freebies. And he clearly still cares about winning as witnessed by the half-court cussing of TJ at the end of the Denver game. That cussing that has gotten zero publicity…so he’s still lovable to all.
2. The PG’s: TJ and Jose (screams ‘Buddy movie’) have been combining to average 24.7 pts and 12 assists with a 2.8 assists to turnover ratio (meh), all on 49.2% shooting. And as bad as their defense may seem at times, these are marginally better stats than their opposites: for comparison’s sake, per 48 minutes Ford/Calderon have totals of 25.2 pts and 12.2 assists while Baron, Smush, Andre and their backups have gone for 22.2 pts and 8.7 assists on 46.0% shooting. See, I told you. Better numbers.
3. The Third Quarter. Consistently our best quarter, where we are +5, just enough of advantage to set up a 4^th quarter let down. The Raps are also +5 in the second, but that mostly has to do with the giant 41 point quarter against G.S.

See. Positives all over the place. For the record, the last positive for tonight is that Kirilenko’s ankle sprain will likely keep him out of the game for 9-1 (yup...) Utah. Expect Daron and his light enough to pass-ass to step up and Boozer’s beige-ness to put up the usual numbers as well: it’ll be a light-skinned celebration. Crude skin colour observations aside (go beige!), the Jazz are known as a meticulously coached team (‘juxtaposition’ is the word that pops up when I think of Sloan and Mitchell on the same court), so expect some Jazz (singular or plural…the greatness of the nickname) to elevate their game, causing Sam to make the usual post-game, “We practice that ALL the time…” comment while explaining another team deficiency that led to the L. Predictability is one of the benefits of having a ‘player’s’ coach…