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Show Just Jazzin with John The year ended with the Jazz, playing at home, beating Golden State, Portland and Miami and ending the month of December with 11 wins and 5 losses. That was the third best won-loss record in Jazz history. More meaningful is the fact that half of those games were on the road. The new year began with a grueling four games in five nights road trip to the West Coast. Most experts predicted one win at the most, with that one being the first game of the trip at Golden State. Unfortunately, the Jazz got thumped by the Warriors, 133-120, won the next night in Seattle, Seat-tle, 1 19-109, traveled to Portland to get bombed 118-89, and then finished the road trip against Denver where they surprised the Nuggets with an overtime 123-120 victory. The Jeclde and Hyde Jazz again had a successful suc-cessful road trip with a 2-2 split. Utah is now 7-8 on the road with a 21-11 overall record going go-ing into tonight's rematch with Denver at the Salt Palace. By the way, this game will be the 57th consecutive con-secutive sellout in the Salt Palace, and tickets are getting harder and harder to acquire. The Jazz are currently in second place in the Western Conference, two games behind San Antonio. They also have the sixth best record in the NBA with the season 38 percent completed. This week's column deals with rebounding. What types of rebounds are there? At what point is a rebound earned? Is there a limit to rebounding? re-bounding? These are some of the questions I'm often asked about the statistical category of rebounding. re-bounding. Let's start at the beginning and talk about the individual rebound. For every unsuccessful shot attempt, whether it be a missed field goal or a missed foul shot, there must be a rebound. At all times, the total of all missed shots must equal the total number of individual and team rebounds. re-bounds. The NBA has two categories of rebounds. One is an individual rebound - of which it can be either a defensive or offensive board. The second se-cond type of rebound is called a team rebound. Team rebounds are not required to be broken down as to whether they are offensive or defensive, defen-sive, but this could be easily done. An individual rebound is credited to the player who retrieves the ball after a missed shot, while the clock is still running. It does not matter is the ball hits the floor once or twice, is touched by two or more players, or even rolls out to midcourt The player who obtains control of the basketball gets credit for the rebound. A judgment is made when a player taps a rebound re-bound to a teammate, as to whether the player intentionally, and with control, tapped the ball or if it just happened to go off his hand into the hands of a teammate. Mark Eaton will occasionally occa-sionally tap the rebound out to the guard line where it is picked up by a teammate, and Mark will get credit for the rebound. Another similar instance is a rebound heading out of bounds and a player leaps out to tap the ball inbounds to a teammate. The tapping tapp-ing player is credited with the board. If he happens to tap the ball to an opponent, the opponent op-ponent will get credit for the rebound. Sort of a gift-type situation. Both instances above could be credited either as a defensive or offensive rebound, depending on whose basket the action was taking place. Next week we will continue with the more complicated "team" rebound. |