Game one wasn't so pretty. It wasn't what most of us expected. Game two should be good. After some disappointed Phil and some put down by the media of not putting a good enough effort in the game, I expect them to turn things around and prove them wrong. "I didn't like the way we carried ourselves at the end of the game and the start of the second half," Jackson said. "There's a tendency for this team when they do that to let up in the third quarter. I don't like that. It's about playing hard all the time and playing with purpose." I couldn't agree more.Both teams weren't happy with the way they played, obviously. Jazz coach Jerry Sloan, stated he wants them to play "Nasty." But not in the way you might think, not in a way that it might injure players, “You want to be like an old nasty fly,” Sloan said. “Be a pain in the butt to somebody, but you can’t be a pain in the butt if you’re not on ‘em. That’s all I was talking about. It wasn’t anything bad. Maybe it kind of sounded that way, like we’re trying to do something crazy.” They're a physical team to begin with and foul more than most average teams. Now they want to annoy us?
The first thing Lakers need to do is keep D-Will from penetrating. The majority of their offense goes through him. Stopping him solves most of our problems. It decreases success of Jazz's offense, decreases the number of offensive rebounds they get, and keeps him from giving our bigs foul trouble. Phil has toyed with the idea of using a zone but admits that it might not go so well with their lack of experience in playing that kind of defense. So how do we stop him? I have no idea. Only thing I can think of is to keep the ball out of his hands. Or maybe try funneling him like we usually do but it comes back to the foul trouble predicament.
It's all up to our guards and the old Zen Master to solve this problem of ours. I'm confident that they will. Look for Andrew to redeem himself from the last game. And continued play from the bench and ex bench mob Ariza.
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