There were two sleepy games tonight, but a great one in Salt Lake City. It was tight the whole way, but the Rockets (behind some good mid-fourth quarter play by T-Mac) built a seven-point lead with under two minutes to play. But McGrady missed a couple of shots (badly) and the Jazz capitalized with back-to-back three pointers from Kyle Korver and Mehmet Okur.
McGrady committed a (dumb) offensive foul, giving the Jazz the ball with under 20 seconds to play and down one. Then Deron Williams made two uncharacteristically bad decisions. First, he missed Carlos Boozer wide open in the middle of the lane when Boozer slipped a ball screen, instead passing the ball to a well-covered Kyle Korver. Williams got the ball back and drove into the lane, AGAIN drawing Boozer’s man (Carl Landry) over to help. Instead of wrapping around a bounce pass to a wide-open Boozer under the hoop, Williams tried to put up a shot, which was blocked and saved by Landry. Game over.
I like the fact that Jerry Sloan didn’t call a timeout when his team got the ball back, as that usually favors the better-prepared team. But, on that last play, his point guard looked like a rookie. Otherwise, Williams had a great game (28 points and 12 assists), but when he sees the tape, he’s going to hate himself.
