To quote The Beach Boys: “Wouldn’t it be nice …”
If you’re a fan of the Utah Jazz and you happened to see them wallop the visiting Toronto Raptors on Friday, you may very well have been humming that very tune.
“Wouldn’t it be nice …”
Wouldn’t it be nice if they could always play as well as they did against the Raptors, hitting 49.5 percent of their shots from the field and better than 56 percent from behind the 3-point line? Wouldn’t it be nice if they could play defense like that all the time, stifling the Raptors into just 40 percent from the field and more turnovers than a pastry shop?
Wouldn’t it be nice if they looked that good all the time?
If you’re a fan, you’re right. It’d be wonderful to see that all the time, after all the Jazz played as well as they had all season. But if you think that’s where they can live the rest of the season, you’re sadly mistaken.
Here’s two reasons why: No. 1, they caught lightning in a bottle on Friday, matching up against a tired Toronto team playing its third consecutive road game. The Raptors put up a great fight in the first eight or 10 minutes of the game but couldn’t withstand Utah’s initial response. By the end of the first half they were ready to “ship this one in,” surmised one Jazz player.
No. 2, the day-to-day vagaries of an 82-game NBA schedule precludes anyone from looking that good for that long.
Beginning about midway through the first quarter and running until the final buzzer, Utah’s players looked like they were playing at a different speed. They were great on defense, which in turn gave way to offense that looked like the Globetrotters against the Washington Generals.
“If a guy didn’t have his shot, he passed it up for a guy to get a better shot. If he didn’t have it, he made another pass,” Jazz forward Marvin Williams said. “We probably had 30 assists tonight.”
Actually, it was 31. But who’s counting, right?
From an aesthetic standpoint, the game was a masterpiece. As Williams noted — and most of his teammates corroborated — it was a virtuoso performance of five guys working together, concerned only about the greater good.
Often, Jazz players refer to making the extra pass as “swing-swing,” meaning to swing the ball to one spot on the floor, then quickly swing it to another, where a man is left open, if only for a split-second.
After Friday’s game, players were using the term, “swing-swing-swing.”
“There were very few play-calls,” Williams said. “That was complete defense and complete unselfish basketball (on offense).”
The truth is, the Jazz have the capability of becoming a great team, but they’re simply not as good as they showed Friday. Frankly, nobody is. In that regard, the game was something of an anomaly.
“You’re not (always) going to shoot it as well as you shot it tonight,” Williams said.
“It’s just the flow of the game, nothing prevents it,” guard Randy Foye said. “Sometimes you make the extra pass and the guy might not make the shot (but) you made one (earlier) and you feel like you passed up (a makable shot).”
In other words, sometimes open shots simply don’t fall and sometimes selfishness unwittingly sneaks in. Sometimes the defense isn’t quite as crisp and sometimes the other team is in a better rhythm.
Still, there’s no denying, the Jazz showed what they can do when everything comes together perfectly … at home … against a struggling team … when everyone is hitting open shots in rhythm.
No doubt about it, it was an exciting game to watch. The players were having fun, the coaches were having fun, the folks in the stands were going nuts and I’m sure fans watching at home were in high-def heaven.
Look, I’m not trying to spoil the moment for anyone, I just want to introduce a little reality into it. Enjoy that win, Jazz fans, but remember this well-worn sports caveat: You’re never as good — or as bad — as you think you are.
Or, as The Beach Boys sang, sometimes you “catch a wave and you’re sittin’ on top of the world.”
Jim Burton is the Standard-Examiner’s sports columnist. He also covers the Utah Jazz and the NBA. He can be reached at 801-625-4265 or at jburton@standard.net. He tweets at http://twitter.com/jmb247
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