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I'm not sure how many have already read this, or how many here read Hollinger regularly. I'm sure those who do have a wide range of opinions on him.

However, he posted a quote on his playoff predictions thread that I wanted to bring to light a little here. It is in reference to the quality of play that the Jazz have shown over the last half of the year or so, and particularly the final 1/4 of the season, when we have just kicked it into another gear offensively. Check it out:

The Jazz played extremely well down the stretch. Even with the meltdown in San Antonio included, over the last quarter of the season the Jazz had an offensive efficiency rating of 116.0 -- that dwarfs the Suns' league-leading mark of 111.2. To put that into context, if they had done it for a full season, the Jazz would have been by far the best offensive team of all time.

Now, I'm sure most knew that the Jazz were playing very well on offense, but I doubt many--if not ANY--of you realized they were playing historically well.

This is a team that truly, genuinely, dominates on the offensive side of the ball. And with the improved defense we've seen of late....don't be too shocked if they make a run at the whole thing.

Forgot the link.....here it is:

http://sports.espn.go.com/nba/playoffs2 ... ons-080418

defense wins championships.

LeRydee23 wrote:defense wins championships.

Great teams win championships. The reason the Cavs weren't contenders last year was offense. You have to play both ways. The Spurs are a top 5 offensive team in this league.

LeRydee23 wrote:defense wins championships.

Congrats, you are truly an innovative thinker.

Buckeye-NBAFan wrote:-= original quote snipped =-



Great teams win championships. The reason the Cavs weren't contenders last year was offense. You have to play both ways. The Spurs are a top 5 offensive team in this league.

Great point. Except, it would be more accurate to say that the Spurs were a top 5 offensive team. This year they've been rather mediocre.

erudite23 wrote:-= original quote snipped =-



Great point. Except, it would be more accurate to say that the Spurs were a top 5 offensive team. This year they've been rather mediocre.

You can blame that a little on injuries. Parker missed 13 games. Manu missed 8. And they were all a little banged up.

Utah has the easiest 1st round opponent though. I don't think they have a great shot at the Finals, but that's only because there are so many teams in the West. LAL, SAS, UTA, PHO, BOS, DET are the best teams in the league. Then NOH, CLE, DAL, ORL. No one else has a shot at the Finals.

You take a team's best stretch and say "if they did that all year" they'd be the best. No kidding.

so when a player shoots 1-1 from the field, we should realize that they are, in fact, shooting historically well.

The Knicks blew out the Pistons one night like 90-64. Had they played that way the whole season, they would be the #1 seed and 82-0.

Houston went 22-0 at one point of the season. If they'd gone on like that all season, they'd be 82-0, hence making them the best team ever.

Dinky Bits wrote:Houston went 22-0 at one point of the season. If they'd gone on like that all season, they'd be 82-0, hence making them the best team ever.

To get swept on the first round...

Lmao....so this piece of information is not of the slightest amount of interest or relevance?


I see, yeah, how stupid of me to think that someone playing at a historic level for 20+ games going into the playoffs is anything to even notice or think about. Damn I'm dumb.

It's not going to matter, because you're still going to be upset by a badly torn up Rockets team.

^^^^

Dinky Bits wrote:It's not going to matter, because you're still going to be upset by a badly torn up Rockets team.

lmao.

Dinky Bits wrote:Houston went 22-0 at one point of the season. If they'd gone on like that all season, they'd be 82-0, hence making them the best team ever.

haha, nice, the OP just got manhandled. Seriously, who cares? Wake me up when they do it for the ENTIRE SEASON.

EDIT: And LOL at Jazz fans who think they own the place after beating a severely undermanned Rockets team that has 3 rookies in their rotation, a senior citizen at Center(yet somehow managed to stuff the Jazz on many occasions), playing w/o their 1st(yao) and 3rd(Rafer) best player.

Just remember that we took you to 7 games last year when we had scrubs like Juwan Howard, Kirk Snyder, Luther Head, Chuck Hayes, and Vassilis Spanoulis on our squad.

If Yao and Rafer were healthy we'd demolish the Jazz.

I'm PRETTY sure whoever follows the league knows how good a team Utah has. Why do their fans keep begging for more respect and recognition? They aren't overrated or underrated in any sense. Teams know what they're up against when they face them.

Storm Surge wrote:-= original quote snipped =-


haha, nice, the OP just got manhandled. Seriously, who cares? Wake me up when they do it for the ENTIRE SEASON.

What's funny is the inherent stupidity in the assertion that you quoted. The Rockets had one of the best stretches in the history of the game.....and all sorts of attention was paid to it. It was the lead in to sports center for the last week plus that it stayed alive, it was all over ESPN, nba.com, Foxs, SI...etc etc. No one said at the time that the Rockets were the best team ever, or that they were suddenly going to win a championship, but they paid respect to an amazing stretch of basketball.

However, if you ask the casual observer, or even the average producer/webmaster in charge of running media ops, to comment on how well the Jazz have played offensively for the last two months. They would likely say somewhere better "pretty good" to "excellent". Its doubtful any one would think that they played at a pace that would blow away the best full-season accomplishments of the greatest teams in NBA history.

This doesn't suddenly make the Jazz the favorites, or even mean that they are the best offensive team in the league (which, imo, they are), but it certainly is worth a little consideration and discussion.

You have no idea how humorous it is to see people come in and compare shooting 1-for-1 from the field to a quarter season's worth of rarely-ever-seen magnificence.

The Lakers finished the season 8-1 so they are definitely going to go 16-2 in the offs and win the champeenchip.