Jazz-Clippers Preview

if i let you go...do you think you could fly?

huh!

Get ready for the game of the century. The 16th century! This is a game for people who remember the Old Ways. The Clippers come into the season as prohibitive favorites to limp out of the West, but there is always some unexpected anarchy during these early days. Thus, it is no great surprise that the heretofore laughingstock of polite society, the Sacramento Kings, put a six-point whooping on them. As one of our best Scottish proverbs tells us: if you can't get revenge on the goose then get revenge on the gosling. That gosling is the Utah Jazz, a basketball team featuring several men, none of which happen to be Andris Biedrins. May it ever be so.

These are probably the starting line ups, but on the other hand, maybe they aren't? There's always the possibility that Doc Rivers goes insane and starts Big Baby Davis at point-guard and shooting guard or that Enes Kanter falls truly, madly, deeply in love with a pretty girl he sees in the stands right before tip-off and they hit it off and take a romantic stroll to the LaBrea Tar Pits together but at the end of the night she confesses it was actually Dante Exum she liked the entire time and do you think she likes him back? Anyway, the lineups:

Chris Paul	PG	Trey Burke
J.J. Redick	SG	Alec Burks
Matt Barnes	SF	Gordon Hayward
Blake Griffin	PF	Enes Kanter
DeAndre Jordan	C	Derrick Favors

What will happen in this game is anyone's guess, though here are my particular guesses. 

These are the faces of Utah's big man tandem, still getting to know each other, still trying to understand one another's space and spaces, as they behold the first lob of the night. Enes takes it especially hard, since it was he, sweet young man from Turkey that he is, that Blake Griffin how do you say, posterizes. Derrick Favors, always sort of a stoic dude, tells himself not to get even, but to get mad.

This is Quin Snyder when he sees the Jazz storm back to take a slim lead right before halftime. This curious rally was more curiously led by Steve Novak, who is not the stretch 4 the Utah Jazz need, but the stretch 4 the Utah Jazz have. Every time Novak nails a three Enes Kanter hops off the bench and pumps his huge fist in the air. Snyder then tells the guys to pick up the pace, and is caught mic'd up in a huddle revealing secrets of NBA coaching, telling the guys to "push the pace and get easy baskets in transition, and to do the thing where you grab the ball after someone misses it."

The Jazz have taken a ten point lead midway through the 3rd quarter. They are already dumping gatorade on each other, high fiving, low fiving, fist bumping, shaking hands solemnly. Quin Snyder tells them to calm down and that "there is a lot of game left" but he too cracks a tiny smile, for he knows that one day, perhaps very soon, this team may be halfway decent. Gordon Hayward runs his hand through his hair and is actually nice to the kid trying to hand him a towel. He's a playmaker. He was born to get out in the open floor and run.  It used to be that you couldn't run in a Jazz uniform without tripping over Al Jefferson or Paul Millsap. Perhaps those days are over. Perhaps...

But then Chris Paul makes four long-twos in rapid succession and Blake Griffin tumbles to the hoop for some mildly upsetting dunks. Utah's entire frontline is disrespected. Hedo spits in Trey Burke's general direction and a few technicals are called. Steve Novak misses the free throw. Blake dunks five more times. A man in the stands chokes, but manages to spit up the pretzel. His wife rubs his back the rest of the night. They voted for Jon Huntsman.

"I'm so happy we won the game!" J.J. Reddick tells Matt Barnes after the buzzer sounds and the Utah Jazz slink off the court like beaten curs. Matt Barnes thinks back to the days when he and this nice looking boy-man used to be on the Orlando Magic together, when they would stay up all hours of the night talking about the future, and space technology, and how they wish summers could last forever, and how Dwight Howard had a staring problem. 

Matt Barnes finally just musses Reddick's hair and says "Yeah." Then he walks to the showers, whistling a Gladys Knight and the Pips song. 

"Matt Barnes has a strange and dark road to walk," Doc Rivers says to a very sweaty J.J. Reddick.

 J.J. then comes out of a trance and turns to his coach and says, "My middle name is Clay. My middle name...is Clay."

The Utah Jazz go out to In-N-Out Burger. Rudy Gobert's order is all wrong, but the team is more or less happy with their performance. They showed promise, they showed they belonged, they showed up. This team has a lot of talent, a lot of guts, more brains than usual for a young team, and a spirit that is at least above average. It's a long season, but they've already made their point. Even the wretched need not go quiet into this long dark hellish night.