Flashback Friday: "WE'RE GOING STREAKING!"

If you're between the ages of 12 and 40, and are a man living in Western society, you should know what I mean. Though, if you don't, there's this video: (totally not safe for work due to full-rear male nudity and frank talk of boudoir activities) (upon further inspection possibly not work safe for another reason: Leah Remini)

Why am I even blogging about this? Well . . . it's because the Utah Jazz are going streaking right now. The Jazz are on the precipice of a 10 game win streak, Frank the Tank would be proud, so would Frank Layden.

In the history of the franchise the team has won 10 games straight only 8 times before:

• 10 in a row during the 1977-1978 season;
• 10 in a row during the 1993-1994 season;
• 14 in 1994-1995 [an even more amazing 23-2 at one stretch];
• 15 TWICE during the 1996-1997 season;
• 10 games in a row during the 1997-1998 season;
• 11 games in a row during the 1998-1999 season;
• and most recently last season, 10 games in 2007-2008

Honorable mention goes out to the 1983-1984 Utah Jazz that only won 8 games in a row, but managed to go 13-1 during a stretch of the season (and followed that up with a 16-3 stretch). The Jazz play the Denver Nuggets tonight and can make it the 9th time in franchise history. If they win, it's great. If they lose, they join the 1989-1990 and 1999-2000 Utah Jazz teams with only 9 wins in a row. The average (over the 35 year history of the franchise) largest win streak in any given season is only 7 games -- a pretty high number, but it could be much higher if it wasn't for those early years where the longest win streaks were only 2-4 games long (4 of the first 10 seasons were like this).

In previous seasons (especially those dominant years of Stockton to Malone back in the mid to late 90s) these streaks included complete road trips against playoff teams, and beating Western powers at home. This streak, admittedly, has been a little different. Sure, this streak happened during the tail end of a difficult period in terms of injuries *and* this streak included wins over the World Champion Boston Celtics, the Los Angeles Lakers and the very respectable New Orleans Hornets -- but as many in the blogosphere will tell you, this streak isn't anything to be too happy about. Simply put, these were all games the Jazz were supposed to win. (This is an obtuse statement, how many people really thought that the Jazz would beat the invincible Lakers *and* Celtics? These were not all games the Jazz were supposed to win.)

That said, you still have to win the games, and the Jazz have done that (for the most part, the streak would be 13 wins in a row if they took care of business on the road in Oakland back on February 8th). As a result, I think that this is a pretty big deal . . . it's hard to win 5 games in a row (the Phoenix Suns have yet to do that this season, and they have at least THREE of HOF guys on their roster: Shaq, Nash and Grant Hill), but to win 10 would be awesome.

During this streak the Jazz have played only three games against 'bad' teams. While some may point to those games against Memphis, Minnesota and Sacramento as reasons not to hype up this streak, let's not forget that the Jazz won those three games by an average of 16 points. So they blew out bad teams during this streak, they didn't just scrape by. They also beat title contenders when the Jazz were missing key guys to injuries during this current win streak. The Jazz (playing without top scorer and rebounder Carlos Boozer) were able to beat both the Boston Celtics and New Orleans Hornets. Furthermore the Jazz defeated the mighty LA Lakers without Boozer, Andrei Kirilenko nor Brevin Knight. So the Jazz beat some great teams while they themselves were not healthy.

Others contend still that since a majority of these games have been at home (and scheduled in 'favor' of the Jazz) that these wins shouldn't count. If that's the case, then I propose that you throw out all the losses the Jazz 'earned' on their poorly scheduled road trips as well. Either the schedule is a factor that absolves teams of some losses (and takes away some wins); or the schedule eventually evens out over the course of a season and all wins (and losses) are created equal. Which is it? I'm going for equality.

Hence, this streak is legit . . . especially since this streak isn't just for the sake of winning games, but also evocative of a greater improvement of play by the Jazz. It wasn't but a few weeks ago that the Denver Nuggets were up 6.5 games on the Jazz for the division lead. In what appears to be the blink of an eye the Jazz are now poised to close the gap with the Nuggets for the division lead. A win tonight against the Denver Nuggets will do more than just consummate a 10 game win streak (#9 in franchise history), but also send a message to the rest of the West that the Jazz are going to be major players the rest of the way. The schedule for the rest of this month isn't horrible, and as a result, some would wish for the streak to go to 15 maybe . . . though I'd be happy with 10 right now.

Go Jazz Go!

Game 5 Recap: Utah 104, Oklahoma City 97

Game at a Glance:

The Jazz win despite repeatedly not taking the Thunder for real. The Jazz did not think much of the Thunder to start the game, and Jerry Sloan had to call a time out in the 1st quarter with the score 0 - 8 in favor of the road team. The Jazz plowed their way to a 58 - 29 half time lead (a 20+ - 2 run after that time out). After the half the Jazz started to turn the ball over and miss foul shots -- eventually the Thunder got back in it; then the Jazz finished them off. The game was not as close as the score indicated, it's quite easy to beat a team when only four guys show up (Kevin Durant, Jeff Green, Desmond Mason and Earl Watson) -- and those guys were hardly impact players. Jerry Sloan won his 1000th game with the Utah Jazz franchise, apparently, that's kind of a big thing.

[ Yahoo!Sports.com Game Recap -- ESPN.com's boxscore -- NBA.com's game highlights -- NBA TV Post-Game Interview with Jerry Sloan ]

Jazz Quartet -- Top Four Players of the Game:

Andrei Kirilenko	Brevin Knight	Carlos Boozer	Kyle Korver
Photographed by Melissa Majchrzak for NBAE/Getty	Photographed by Melissa Majchrzak for NBAE/Getty	Photographed by Melissa Majchrzak for NBAE/Getty	Photographed by Melissa Majchrzak for NBAE/Getty
AK had a double double (16 and 12) tonight and added 2 assists and 2 blocks. He would have had more assists but Paul Millsap mishandled some easy ones. In my opinion he kind of started to 'force' things on offense after Desmond Mason started to score on the other end of the court -- with varied rates of success.	Brev' continues his solid play off the bench, he had 11 assists in 28 minutes of action last night. His jumper was off (1-4), but he made his free throws. He added 3 steals and had some really good outlet pass/assists to guys who were streaking. (Not in that Will Ferrell / Old School type of way though)	Carlos gets robbed of a double double for the nth game in a row, finishing with 21, 9, 5 assists and a steal and block each. He seems to really feast on bad teams, and continues to do so this season. He was looking to pass more and was robbed of a few assists because of the long arm deflections of the Thunder.	Kyle Korver had a game fit for his name. He shot 5-7 from the floor, and would have gone 4-5 from three on top of his made three had the threes not been negated by mental mistakes like guys getting caught for three in the key. He ended up with 13 points (5-7, 1-2, 2-3), 4 rebounds, 2 assists and 1 steal off the bench.

Hon. Mention: This could be renamed the "Ronnie Brewer Award" if this keeps up. Ronnie gets just edged out by Korver tonight. Brewer had 2 more assists, but Korver had 2 more points while shooting 4 less times. Kyle also had a steal, and Brewer did not. Also, Korver had 3 other three pointers robbed from him tonight because of Millsap fouls or turn overs. (Three in the key, etc) When Deron comes back expect Ronnie to be in the Jazz Quartet quite a bit as the season goes on . . . but if Ronnie keeps getting edged out, I may retroactively change it to Jazz Quintet. (something I wouldn't want to do)

Digging Deeper:

This game was not close, what kept it close was a combination of the Thunder's lack of respect for the unsaid rules (scoring the ball on what should have been the last possession of the game, etc), their tenacity in the passing lanes (they got a lot of deflections and 10 steals), and their never say die attitude. They were down big at half, but stormed back to cut it to 15 going into the 4th quarter. The game did not look close, but the Thunder never gave up. So they get props from me. Early on it looked like our benchwarmers (Morris Almond, Kyrylo Fesenko and Kosta Koufos) may get some extended burn in this game, but they did not even get off the bench.

Kevin Durant only really scored on open jumpers . . . methinks that he's going to fit that Rashard Lewis mold in a few years if he doesn't diversify his game. He did have this nasty cross over that planted CJ on his butt, as Durant threw it down. Durant's team mates Desmond Mason and Earl Watson started cookin' in the 3rd quarter, when their team made their run, but the Jazz just got a lot of easy buckets down the stretch.

The Jazz did miss 10 free throws in the game, and were very sloppy in the 2nd half. Carlos Boozer had 6 turn overs and Paul Millsap had 5. A 16 rebound to 11 turn over ratio from your power forwards isn't going to get it done against teams with better bigs. (No disrespect intended to Johan Petro and Nick Collison, starters who ended the game with 8 points and 8 rebounds combined for Oklahoma City.)

Winning 5 games in a row is pretty special, starting the season undefeated is also pretty special -- doing both with our best player out is really special. Sloan has been going 9 deep all season long, and our bench has been producing: 42 points, 25 rebounds, 15 assists, 6 steals and 3 blocks last night. That's a key component of how the Jazz have been winning games. Credit goes to Jerry Sloan for picking up the 1k wins in SLC. He has to be doing something right to win all those games -- it's not like he just had Jordan, Shaq and Kobe get him all those wins.

Next Game: Friday November 9th, 2008 -- Utah Jazz @ New York Knicks [3:00 PM EST]