"My Friends call me Chip"

When Carlos Boozer’s elbow came into direct contact with Steve Nash’s grill Wednesday night, it brought out several interesting facts besides flying teeth: 1- Boozer didn’t actually chip the tooth, he simply knocked the crown off Nash’s lateral incisor #9 (which also happens to be one of my favorite Beatles tunes). It was originally chipped in 2003 when Karl Malone, as a Laker, gave him two tickets to the gun show with a roundhouse elbow to the choppers. 2- It made me relive the classic Brady Bunch episode where Peter (Boozer) defends Cindy’s (the Jazz) honor against the school bully Buddy Hinton (Nash) by knocking his tooth loose. 3- Nash with a chipped tooth looks strikingly similar to Jim Carey as (Lloyd Christmas) in Dumb and Dumber.

Nash and Lloyd have other similarities too. Lloyd was known for his goofy hair and drove a limo. Nash is also known for goofy hair and could own a fleet of limos. Nash is the head of his team and does everything he can to keep his team playing together. Lloyd’s parrot’s head ‘fell off” and he had to scotch-tape it back on. Nash has big dreams of taking his team to the finals and winning championships. Lloyd had big dreams of opening a worm store and going to Aspen “where the beer flows like wine, and the women instinctively flock like the salmon of Capistrano”.

One final movie came to mind while watching the Sun’s game: Groundhog Day. Four of the last five games have seemed like I was watching the same thing over and over. Jazz look great early on. Jazz keep it close until the final moments. Jazz choke. Maybe, as in Groundhog Day, the Jazz need to learn from their mistakes and play a complete game from start to finish and then maybe they can move on. Hopefully Boozer’s elbow, while painful for Nash, might evoke memories of the great Jazz teams from the past linking Malone to Boozer and Stockton to Williams and put these last five games in the rear view mirror. The sooner the better.