AAAARRRRRGGGHGGHGGHHHH!!!!!!

Ok, I couldn't have been more wrong with my predictions for the Jazz in the last post. I just re-read it for the first time since I posted it and let just say I'm not quite as positive as I was on April 5. This season's Jazz have been a bigger disappointment then any other Jazz team I have ever seen. We started out with the best record in the league and were consistantly coming through in the clutch and beating down the NBA's best. During the last month of the season we were consistantly being bitch slapped by the NBA's worst (even at home).

In the last post I was excited to just be in the playoffs again. Now I'm trying to decide which is worse, being in the playoffs (on a national stage) and playing as pathetically putrid as the team is or not making the playoffs and getting a lottery pick.

We blew any chance of getting home court advantage by basically quitting during the last few weeks of the season. We lost a few games we shouldn't have and the whole team felt sorry for themselves and stopped putting forth effort. That, mixed with Jerry Sloan's inability to make intelligent, logical coaching decisions in clutch situations, set us up for absolute failure. That's the momentum we took into the playoffs. Great.

Here's the current situation. We are down 0-2 to a tough Houston team, Memo is playing awful and Kirilenko is, literally, crying about his playing time. Although it is good that we are coming home for the next two games, we are in such a state of turmoil and have dug such a tremendous hole that I just don't see us getting out of this series. In fact, we will be lucky if we can send the series back to Houston.

I think there's little doubt (based on how we have played so far this series, not to mention the last month of the season) that the Rockets will win the series. If the Jazz win a game it will be game 3. But if the Jazz lose that game then break out the brooms because we'll be looking at a sweep. If they do win that game, however, then the chance of winning game 4 will bump up from none to slim.

I'm going to go out on a limb and believe that my team will win at least one game in this lop-sided series. The Jazz will win game 3 but will lose games 4 and 5. My prediction: the Rockets over the Jazz in 5 games.

Oh well, at least the Lakers are down 0-2 and the Mavericks are down 0-1 to the Warriors (THE FREAKIN' WARRIORS!!).