The Utah Jazz made several records during their dismal 96-54 loss in Game Three of the NBA Finals. Their 54 point loss was the lowest scoring total for a single team (since the shot clock was introduced), ever. The includes regular season games, playoff games and finally NBA finals games. Their 23-point second half was also the lowest output in the history of the NBA Finals. Pretty impressive really, when you consider that Utah had the best record in the NBA Regular season, but they did set the previous playoffs low or 64 points against the San Antonio Spurs in Round Two of this years playoffs.
The Chicago Bulls also set a new record for the NBA Finals series. The largest points win, that of 42. When you think about it, if the Bulls would have been given another five minutes, they could have easily doubled the Jazz.
Anyway, that's in the past. in the books, but still in the past.
Scottie Pippen was smothering on defense. His two steals do not reflect the amount of pressure that he applied to the Jazz, who committed 26 turnovers. Seven of those were Malone's, and five belonged to John Stockton, who had a terrible game by his standards. Anyone who has read anything of mine, knows that I don't have any love for the Jazz, but Stockton is certain Hall of Fame material, he can't just collapse like this in the NBA Finals. Malone is another certain Hall of Famer, who scored pretty well, (22 points on 8-11 shooting, 6-6 from the line in 34 minutes), but his is a big guy, as we have seen by the way that he shoves people out of the way and fouling them hard without getting called, but that's another story all together. For Malone's team to win, he has to play well by making them better. He has to crash the boards (he only grabbed 3 rebounds) and not allow Chicago so many second chance points off the offensive boards, while grabbing some for himself. Karl Malone is scoring freely like Michael Jordan, but one difference between the two players, is that Michael helps make his team better by scoring like that. Another difference is that the rest of the Big Three for Chicago ( Pippen and Kukoc), is stepping up, sometimes together, sometimes just one, but another main supporter is there continuously helping. Hornacek and Stockton, ( the rest of the Utah Big Three ), have not been stepping up in the losses. John Stockton has to take the leadership role, which we have seen so many times before, and control the tempo of the game. That is what we saw more in Game Four.
