Game 1 Jazz vs. Mavericks: You Gotta Love It, Baby!

I completely don’t care that the refs, as @shandonfan put it, waved this off for extreme awesomeness:

The first half: bleh.

The second half: a sight to behold.

The Jazz were running and gunning and the new guys’ shots were going down and they were chest bumping and Mo was talking and Derrick Favors wasn’t backing down from nobody and our four bigs had more rebounds than all the Mavericks combined and Tyrone was not clutching his lapels for dear life and if Marvin Williams keeps this up there will probably be many babies named Marvin born in Utah in nine months.

You gotta love it, baby!

Quotage
** Gordon Hayward, pre-game: I want the ball at the end of the game, and you want to be able to make a play for your team whether it’s a driving dish, whether it’s a driving shot, a pull-up, whatever it may be. Anything you can do to help your team win.
** Al Jefferson, pre-game: Like I been saying all pre-season, if starters’ minutes get cut because of how well the second unit is playing and we win, that’s all that matter. It’s all about getting W’s.
** Derrick Favors on Kevin O’Connor saying he didn’t come to camp in the best shape, post-game: I don’t like people calling me out like that. In a good way. I don’t like people calling me out like that, so you call me out, I turn into a different person.
** Enes Kanter, post-game: After the first half, we came in the locker room and we just said, “We’re better than them. We are better than them.” And we believe we better than them, and we just went out there second half and just fight 48, uh, 24 minutes. And it was great.
** Kanter, post-game: It’s basketball. It doesn’t matter if I get hit, if I get stitches, if I get 30 stitches. I’m just gonna go out there and just help my teammates. That’s my job.

** Tyrone Corbin on Alec Burks’ lack of playing time: Just the way the game flowed. I mean, it’s gonna be a tough situation for a lot of guys different nights…Randy [Foye] was playing well; we extended his minutes there.

Opening night player intros:

 

Random Stuff, etc.
** Jerry Sloan was in the house. :)

** Enes’ rookie days are over:

** We will get into the topic of Enes Kanter’s Yankee Doodle hat tomorrow.

Unintentional Dirty Quote Machines of the Night (UDQM)
** Boler: …the Los Angeles Lakers. Harpring: And they only come once.
** Harpring on Kanter: He’s not soft, he’s going to take it right to you.
** Steve Brown on Enes’ stitched-up chin: It’s all red.
** Boler: Marvin Williams went down, Mo covered for him.
** Boler: You hope Foye can find his stroke from outside.
** Harpring: Kanter’s body looks so good.
** Corbin, post-game: When we’re on the road, we can’t afford to come out slow and let teams get off on us.

(KALL)
(Utah Jazz)
(Derrick Favors dunking via Getty Images)