• Salt Lake City sits quietly in the middle of the Wasatch Mountains. It is sleepy, it's beautiful and it's peaceful. Which is why its geography and the rhythms of the NBA schedule make it a giant trap. Year after year, Eastern Conference teams and even those Mississippi River West teams that make routine three-game trips to the far West, finish off trips in Utah as they head home. Now, the NBA will never schedule regular season games on Sunday in Utah because of the role of the church here and how the Mormons devote Sundays to family. TNT has exclusive rights on Thursdays and the NBA always tries to end long trips on Saturdays or Sundays. So, often teams come in here on back-to-backs, in the altitude usually off a game on the coast where they lose an hour on the trip. It has happened for four teams just this month in Utah. Oh, and the Jazz had the last two days off. What is my point? For a lot of reasons the Cavs scored a great win tonight.
• Sasha Pavlovic is sick, Ben Wallace turned his ankle, LeBron tweaked his arm again on a dunk and Mo Williams was in foul trouble guarding one of the biggest point guards in the league. Zydrunas Ilgauskas is in Cleveland, Delonte West is showing off his wardrobe. Do I need to go on?
• Biggest thing to take out of the game was how the Cavs executed in the halfcourt in the fourth quarter. They did not need LeBron on the ball to get it done. Sasha executed some good offense, especially the give-and-go and LeBron caught the Jazz sleeping on lob for, I don't know, the fifth time in the game. Mo was the trigger man and it made the Cavs much tougher to defend.
• It was not a great defensive game, I mean the Jazz got 62 points in the paint and you could see how their size, even down two bigs, bothered the Cavs. However, their rotations and pick-and-roll coverage down the stretch were very strong. The Jazz missed three open 3-pointers but Deron Williams is not that great of a 3-point shooter. They covered Kyle Korver and made sure Mehmet Okur, who was terrible in this game, had to run everywhere to get open.
• The Cavs have the No. 1 seed in the East again and Mo is coming off his best week of the season. The coaches vote for the All-Stars on Monday, there's a compeling case. If the West coaches were voting, he'd probably be on Nate McMillan, Don Nelson and Jerry Sloan's ballots. I cannot see how the coaches can't put Mo on there especially since they can't vote for Z. No way the top team at the time of voting can't get two players on the team.
