Man, the first quarter last night was a thing of beauty for the Utah Jazz — and basketball purists. The Jazz sliced and diced the Portland Trail Blazers, spread them out, isolated them and cut them up, laying them bare at both ends of the court in front of about 20,000 people.

Seriously, the new buzz words for the past several seasons in the NBA are cliches by now… all I’ve heard lately from teams is how they need to find players who can “create their own shot.” Yeah, well… I’m old-school. I admit that. But I remember when basketball was a beautiful team game –when it was systems that created shots. And that’s what I saw from the Jazz last night.

Jerry Sloan has never been coach of the year? What a joke. He’s one of the last holdouts who plays the game the right way, who has a system at both ends of the court and sticks to it — and makes sure his players do, too.

Did you see the Jazz just handing the ball to a player last night, asking him to go one-on-one to get a shot? And it’s not as if they couldn’t do that, either. Deron Williams could do it any time. But he works within a proven system that provides great shots for everyone — and Williams has no trouble getting his within that system.

Rick Adelman does this. So do Phil Jackson and Larry Brown. They understand that moving the ball, moving bodies and demanding that players be disciplined within a team framework is critical to winning basketball. For all you young people who think basketball is nothing but isolations and clear outs, who think you win by just handing the ball to your best guy and staying out of his way — well, get your hands on a video of last night’s game.

A lot of fans think that just because John Stockton and Karl Malone were in Utah so long running pick-and-rolls, that what Utah does is pretty predictable. But no way. Even in those days, the Jazz would come at that play in so many different ways, from so many different angles. You’d have to stop all sorts of back cuts, off-the-ball screens and player movement before they got to that play.

And you wonder why Malone and Stockton stuck around for almost two decades, playing in nearly every single game that whole time? Well, they were never asked to carry the same load that a Brandon Roy carries on a nightly basis — the task of taking the ball in the middle of the floor and constantly trying to beat multiple defenders on the way to the basket.

I get so frustrated with people who think that’s how you play winning basketball.

Look, last season the Houston Rockets ate the Blazers alive in the playoffs — and Portland came away saying it needed one more player, in addition to Brandon Roy, who could get his own shot. Meanwhile, the Blazers had been carved up by a team with NO players who could get their own shot but instead played a team game, stayed within a structured group of sets, ran plays, worked to get each other open.

Is nobody paying attention to this? Your system is supposed to get you shots, too — but it doesn’t happen here very much.

And at the other end of the court, well, it’s the same thing. For most of the first half, the Trail Blazers couldn’t get an open look. They had trouble getting to the basket and getting open threes. The Jazz got out to Portland’s guards while still being able to seal off the inside as well as anyone the Blazers have played.

Rudy Fernandez, Andre Miller, Martell Webster and Steve Blake combined to go 8 for 39 from the field. Jerryd Bayless was 5 for 12, but made that many only because he was relentless in his pursuit of cheap buckets late in the game when the issue was decided.

In the second half, things became a little more equal because Carlos Boozer left in the middle of the third quarter with a calf strain, right about the time Williams went to the bench with his fourth foul and Utah was pretty bad at the foul line. Besides, the trailing team, especially at home, always gets that run in the second half.

(By the way, it was a typical LaMarcus Aldridge game — great statistics at the end of the night but if you were watching the game, you wouldn’t like what you saw. For most of the night, Boozer just annihilated him. If he hadn’t gotten hurt, he’d have thrown Aldridge off the Broadway Bridge by the fourth quarter.)

But don’t let that obscure what happened in this game. The Jazz gave the Trail Blazers a very big lesson on how the game is supposed to be played. And it’s real important that everyone understand that.

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Tags: Brandon Roy, Carlos Boozer, Deron Williams, Dwight Jaynes, Houston Rockets, Jerry Sloan, Larry Brown, NBA, Phil Jackson, Portland Trail Blazers, Rick Adelman, Utah Jazz

Last off-season, I couldn’t get many people to agree with me that Sergio Rodriguez was going to be a good point guard in the NBA. He was pretty much buried in Portland and needed the good training camp he had to ensure he’d be the back-up point guard to Steve Blake.

But I was checking the stats this morning and looked him up in the category of assists-per-48-minutes. Among players who have played in eight or more games, here’s the way it stacks up:

1. Chris Paul, NOH 14.9

2. Sergio Rodriguez, Por 13.4

Now, be mindful that Deron Williams is at 15.9 in seven games, a rookie named Kyle Weaver at Oklahoma City has 15.6 in seven games and Chucky Atkins, in five games at Denver, has 15.0. But seriously, how much more can you ask from your backup point guard than for him to that highly ranked in the league in assists per 48 minutes?

He gets people the ball in the spots where they can score. Consistently.

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Tags: Chris Paul, Deron Williams, Dwight Jaynes, NBA, Portland Trail Blazers, Sergio Rodriguez

Williams hasn’t played a regular-season game yet but is getting close. Odds are, though, he won’t be in the lineup tonight when the Jazz and Blazers meet in Salt Lake City.

This is one of those barometer games for the Trail Blazers. Generally, to beat Utah you have to really take care of business — you have to be physical, you have to defend the basket area, you have to play transition defense, you have to execute your offense . . . uh, I guess you pretty much always have to play well to beat the Jazz — particularly on their home floor, which the Blazers did last season.

I like Utah games. Jerry Sloan has his teams ready just about every night and that means not only mentally but physically. And it was obvious, from the peeks at practice we got this week, Nate McMillan believes his team needs to get a little more physical. Tonight will be an excellent test, to see if the Blazers will respond to that challenge. My guess is that it will get a little rough and tumble tonight.

It will also be fun to see if Nic (yeah, why not drop the “Nicolas” by now? He’s family) Batum responds to being a starter and how well Travis Outlaw plays off the bench. I would expect the bench and starting units to be a little more fluid.

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Tags: Deron Williams, Dwight Jaynes, Jerry Sloan, Nicolas Batum, Portland Trail Blazers, Travis Outlaw, Utah Jazz