Here’s the thing about basketball. It’s no secret. Bill Simmons wrote a 10,000 page book about it. Before that Bill Russell pontificated on the matter. Gene Hackman and Dennis Hooper even tried to convey the message in film.
Jazz Nuggets Game 3 Fan Reaction
Basketball is a TEAM game. That means the team with most talent doesn’t always win. The team that plays like a team can (sometimes) overcome significant athletic deficits - like starting Kyrylo Fresenko in a playoff game.
I am fairly sure Jerry Sloan knows this just about as well as anyone on the planet so is it really a surprise that the Jazz are up 2-1 in this series after losing both Andrei Kirilenko and Memhet Okur to injury?
Andrew Feinstein at Denver Stiffs is not surprised. He knows just how insanely crazy his Nuggets team really is:
My concern at this point is that not only can't the Nuggets locate that magic light switch that could return them to their swarming, high energy, up-tempo, fearless, intense selves that we know they have in them somewhere (oh where oh where did my "Thuggets" go?!), but that that switch never existed in the first place.
How many times in sports have we seen teams limp their way into the post-season only to get swallowed up by a team with more fight and drive? In fact, we just saw this last season when the Hornets fumbled and stumbled into the playoffs where our Nuggets eradicated them easily. Could this year's Nuggets be akin to last year's Hornets?
For their part, Jazz fans only have to listen to the immortal words of future expiring contract Kyrylo Fresenko:
“Boom Bitches!”
On a side note, I would have thought, “Boom Bitches” would have been filtered out of a Utah team’s vocabulary but not according to Salt Lake Tribune beat writer Ross Siler.
On a further side note, Ross Siler has a ridiculously close resemblance to Coby, the son of Denver head coach (now battling cancer) George Karl. Spooky, huh.
picture via Siler's twitter
And no, Coby is not that tall. Ross is that short.
Just one more side note - when the Nuggets were last in Phoenix for a late season game, Coby Karl was seen by this writer wearing a Velour (or Velvet) coat while riding pine behind the actual Nuggets players. True story.
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