Recap #74: Golden State Warriors 104, Utah Jazz 128: Hatin' on Salt Lake City, Utah

Originally posted Mar 31, 2010 10:38 PM PDT

I'll keep this quick as Tony.psd and I were at a private season ticket holder event this past afternoon (more on that tomorrow morning) that kept me from the job that (barely) pays my bills and I've got a ton of work too catch up on. After tonight's 24 point loss making it quick is probably a good thing.

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With only 8 dressed (again) the Warriors sure could have used "CJ TOO!" tonight.

JUMP for the 74th recap of the 2009-2010 Golden State Warriors season!

Hatin' on SLC, Utah

Before we get to the game, since we've got a national audience tonight plus some folks from Utah I'd just like to publicly reveal myself as a real deal Salt Lake City, Utah hater and not just because of that horribly officiated 2nd round of the 2007 NBA Playoffs. It dates back to this road trip my main man and co-GSoM conspirator DJ Fuzzy Logic and I took from the Bay Area to Ann Arbor, Michigan nearly 5 years ago. Digging deep in the legendary Hyphy Bloggin' Network Archives:

Utah

I've always had a soft spot in my heart for Salt Lake City. Everyone likes to clown them, but I've always thought all those lake landscapes were kinda cool. I mean Andre Kirilenko (a Utah Jazz player) is a great fantasy hoops draft pick- how bad could this town be?

We finally got to the SLC at about midnight. Half awake we stumbled like drunk men up to the front counter of another AAA discounted motel. Before we could even say "We'd like your most luxiourious suite here at Motel 6" the motel clerk warned "The whole town's booked up for a retail convention. 95,000 people here in Salt Lake. Sorry."

Who would have thought that both Wendover and Salt Lake City- two spots in the middle of nowhere- would both be booked on the same night? Was it just our bad luck? Or was the adventure just beginning?

We had no choice but to sleep in Fuzzy's Volkswagen in the motel's parking lot for the few remaining hours of the night. I didn't think we would make it through the night without 1) the entire Salt Lake City's police force beating us up and throwing us in jail, 2) a motel guard kicking us out of the parking lot and calling the Salt Lake City police so that they could beat us up and throw us in jail, or 3) some Salt Lake resident beating us up and calling the Salt Lake City police force to beat us up and throw us in a jail.

That night's soundtrack didn't help either. I swear I heard rattle snakes and raccoons. I didn't actually see any raccoons, but before that night we had 10 bottles of water that Fuzzy's mom packed for us. After that night we had 1 bottle. There was only one logical explanation for this mysterious disapearance- the racoons stole our great California bottled water.

At least I can now claim from personal experience- VW front seats don't make the best beds.

The next morning we decided to take a quick tour of the city before we continued on I-80 East. We were a little worried about the traffic from those 95,000 people invading the streets of the SLC, but we looked at it like this- when would we EVER be in Utah again?

So what did we see? A ghost town. I don't think we saw 95 people outside total roaming the mean Morman streets of Salt Lake. We started to realize that the only convention in town was the King Klan Konvention (marinate on that abbreviation for a second).

Disgusted by the Konvention that forced us to the VW Suite, we were happily surprised to see the love the Jazz fans at the Delta Center gave to the Golden State Warriors BLOG, another member of the Hyphy Bloggin' Network (HBN). 

Rating: 2 stars. The multiple wives state probably would have gotten a 3 for that mysterious luv for our Warriors from those Jazz fans at their home arena, but the lies about all the hotels in town being booked were shady like Martha Stewart on eTrade.

See Harold and Kumar... Episode 0 [The Free Shai World Report] and i-80 east... [Two Turntables and a Blog] for much more. (Seriously why didn't we all retire from this goofy blogging game back then? We weren't funny then and we aren't funny now. Well at least we're good looking- EXTREMELY good looking to be more accurate.)

Oh yeah I guess there's some game I should write about too...

Game Shots

• First thing's first and this is very important to remember. The Utah Jazz are a very, very good basketball team. The Golden State Warriors... um, not so good.
• Second thing's second. What was ESPN thinking when they decided to nationally televise this game?
• Good news Warriors fans. Warriors lost, Wizards won. Check out my man Mike's good words over at Bullets Forever in Wizards snap 16-game losing streak, beat Hornets. That's more super lotto balls for us here in the Bay Area. Don't think it means much? Well it could be the difference between Rudy Gay and Ike Diogu or more recently Stephen Curry and Jordan Hill.
• Anytime you can go 2 for 10 from the field and still wind up with a +26 plus/ negative for the game it's just your night. Deron Williams racked up 19 assists with a whopping 9 in the first quarter. It really didn't matter how poorly he shot.
• I love me some golden curry, but Stephen Curry is just nowhere near Deron WIlliams' league right now. The off-night shooting is completely excusable for one of the league's most efficient shooting guards, but the turnovers, especially that palming violation in the first quarter, are the first thing that need to go if Curry is ever going to be in DWill's league. Curry's just too smart of kid to let that happen.
• Give the Jazz credit for not pulling a Chris Cohan and making a trade just to reduce payroll. I'm talking about Carlos Boozer. When the Jazz matched Paul Milsap's offer from Portland this past offseason everyone speculated that Boozer was on his way out to save some dollars. But that's not what happened at all. The Jazz played this season to win (what a concept!) and they're reaping the benefits with 50 W's already this season and 25 points (85.7% FG) and 13 rebounds tonight.
• Corey Maggette's real estate investments at the charity stripe just keeps appreciating in value. 15 FT's tonight- oh my! 12/15 on FT's tonight- OH MY! (Sorry too many NBA Jam flashbacks).
• Chris Hunter got inadvertently hit in the snoz by the free throw line real estate mogul himself and it looked like it hurt- a TON. Let's just say it resulted in a big puddle of ketchup on the baseline. Hope the good man is feeling better.
• Live by the 3, die by 3. The Dubs were 4-26 from downtown tonight which works out to 15.4%. OUCH- not as bad as poor Hunter's nose though. 
• Tonight's Warrior Killer award goes to Kyle Korver who went off for a season high 21 points on 8-12 shooting. I guess I can't make jokes about him still being in the league, now can I?

I'm handing tonight's award to Anthony Morrow aka Chocolate Rain and AMMO. 

I never realized Morrow was so tall.

Since Reg-gie! Reg-gie! Williams has caught fire there hasn't been that many minutes to go around for Morrow and he hasn't crossed the 20 point mark in 10 games. All of the Dubs had a negative plus/minus tonight, but he was the "least negative" at -6. He only hit 1 of 4 tries from downtown and wasn't his usual NBA Jam style HE'S ON FIRE, but it was nice to see him drop 21 points and collect 5 rebounds in a little over 28 minutes of action. 

Now let's sleep this L off.

Make sure to check back tomorrow morning for a report on today's private season ticket holder event!