For those of you with small children, I appologize for the Dora the Explorer opening - I have a 6 year old and 3 year old at my house and hear Dora saying "Can we do it? Yes we can!" about 15 time per day so it kind of sticks. But it makes sense for the Jazz right now to keep saying that to themselves. With two games left to play, we actually control our own desitny for home court advantage. If we win both games we end up with the 3 seed and would most likely play Phoenix in the first round with home court advantage and then the winner of the New Orleans/Dallas matchup. If Dallas wins we get home court, if New Orleans wins we win that series in 5 or 6 so either way I like our chances to advance to the conference finals once again. The Lakers and Spurs would most likely be playing for the other spot in the finals and if the Spurs could then beat the Lakers we would have home court advantage for that round as well. It's all lining up nicely for the Jazz and our run to the title.
A few facts / thoughts / predictions about tonights game:
1 - Shane Battier, Bobby Jackson and Rafer Alston are all listed as day to day thus limiting Houston's bench and weakening their defense.
2 - Since the Lakers loss at home the Jazz are 7-0. The average margin of victory over those 7 games is 24. That is not a typo, the Jazz are winning at home by 24 points over the last 7 games. The first 5 of those games were agains the bottom feeders, but the last two against San Antonio and Denver the margin of victory was a little higher at 26.5 maybe showing that the focus was a little higher for the better teams.
3 - Including the postseason, the Rockets have dropped 26 of their last 30 games in Utah.
All of this should mean an easy win tonight. Final score prediction is 106 - 88 for the Jazz with McGrady getting shot at by an elk hunter in the stands who got confused. (That was for you Booner.)
