Pure Hollywood

May, 9, 2007
May 9
11:50
PM ET
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If you didn't watch Golden State vs. Utah, shame on you.

One Utah point guard, Deron Williams, was on the bench with foul trouble one minute into the game. His backup, Dee Brown, played valiantly for a few minutes, before he nearly snapped his back under Mehmet Okur, and was strapped onto a gurney for further examination. Walking off the court with help, he looked like he was about to pass out.

Cue the knight in shining armor, Derek Fisher, who has been away attending to a dire family matter. He arrived at the stadium well after the game was in session and Brown had been wheeled off. He barely stopped walking from the entrance tunnel straight onto the court and into the game, where he made several huge plays.

Right now it's in overtime. More to come.

UPDATE: OK. Wow. It's over now, and Utah managed to win in overtime. My favorite of a dozen key plays came with Utah down two, and less than ten seconds left. Coming out of a timeout, everyone knew the ball would be in the hands of Deron Williams. He caught it, blew by Matt Barnes, and pulled up for a perfect mid-range jumper. Tie game. After Derek Fisher hounded Baron Davis into a tough miss from three-point land, it was overtime. The deeper home team then took over and was never really threatened after Deron Williams hit a deep three.

After the game, Derek Fisher told us that his daughter underwent surgery in New York this morning to repair life-threatening retinoblastoma. Retinoblastoma International reports that "87% of the children stricken with this disease worldwide die." The surgery went well, then Derek got on a plane to the game.

He told the sideline reporter that he is telling the story now (the reason for his absence has been a secret all week) so that parents would take their children to have them checked. This is what he told TNT's Pam Oliver:

"It was very, very serious. My daughter's life was in jeopardy. She has a form of eye cancer called retinoblastoma. And the only reason I'm saying this now is because there are kids out there that are suffering from this disease, and people can't really identify it. It's a very rare disease. And I want people out there to take their kids to the opthamalogist, make sure they get their eyes checked and make sure everything's OK, because we could have lost my little girl had we waited any longer."

What a guy. What a terrible thing for his family to go through, and what a great piece of news that apparently the surgery has been successful.

That's not the only weighty off-court storyline, as Jerry Sloan pointed out post-game. There's also Dee Brown to worry about, and Sloan says that his health right now is way more important than this game. Can't argue that.

Now, about that game. What was it like? Here are some things I noticed as I was watching:

  • Jerry Sloan would rather have Andrei Kirilenko play point guard (and, in fairness, he's not bad at it) than play Deron Williams with two fouls. It seemed pretty crazy at the time, and I have been harping on this all playoffs, but in fairness to Sloan, Williams did win the game for Utah with four fouls plus two more that would have been called on a different night.
  • Worth remembering that the play which messed up Dee Brown's spine something awful was a foul on Dee Brown. Didn't look that way on my replay, but that was the call. You never get that call, it seems, if you leave your feet. By the way I thought there were plenty of questionable calls both ways tonight.
  • Utah was so dominant on the boards, that by the second quarter there were some plays where it really looked to me like the Warriors stopped trying to get rebounds.
  • It took ages for Utah to get to their bread and butter offense: Carlos Boozer in the post and Mehmet Okur shooting threes. Credit Golden State with taking those away much of the night. (Although pretty much the instant Derek Fisher checked in, Boozer finally got the ball in the post.) But I guess if you're Dallas, watching and learning, Utah showed what it is, exactly, that Golden State's defense will give up: layups. Lots and lots of layups, mostly, it seems, to Paul Millsap off offensive rebounds.
  • Matt Barnes battles.
  • I love everything about Andrei Kirilenko except, perhaps, his perimeter offense. He has a pair of stones and is willing to put the ball on the floor or let it fly, but neither succeeds at quite the rate you'd like.
  • Remember that childhood game "Monkey in the Middle"? Andrei Kirilenko could be the world champion year after year after year.
  • When I was a kid, and there was a timeout very late in a very exciting game, sometimes the broadcast people would forego the commercial, and say they were just going to "hold it right there" and we'd all soak in the crowd noise that much more. This would have been a good night for that.
  • The only two Warriors who had positive plus/minus statistics: Monta Ellis, who was at an even 0, and Andris Biedrins, who was +5. The only Jazz player to have negative plus/minus was Andrei Kirilenko. Mehmet "18 rebounds" Okur, Derek Fisher, and Deron Williams were the top three in that statistic.

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