Jazz Take Game 3 with a More Physical Approach

The Lakers have been arguably the best team so far in this year's playoffs, easily dominating opponents, but on Friday night the Utah Jazz figured out a way to keep Kobe and company in check.

would get theirs, but in game 3 it turned into a completely different series as Carlos Boozer finally woke up by just dominating the paint scoring 27 points and ripping down 20 rebounds. In the two games prior to game 3 in Utah, the Lakers seem to out play the Jazz in every aspect of the game besides rebounding, they would just run and gun and make the Jazz play their style of ball in which Kobe Bryant would light up the scoreboard and both Lamar Odom and Pau GasolDeron Williams also had a pretty good game as well dishing 12 assists and scoring 18 points, but although he had a good game, it didn't come without a price of injury that he sustained in a collision in the paint with Ronny Turiaf in which he landed on one of his wrist and slowed him down a bit. Mehmet Okur continued to be a torn in the Lakers side in game 3 hitting 4 out 7 from beyond the arc scoring 22 points and pulling down 7 boards.

Kobe Bryant played like Kobe only can with 34 points on 10 of 20 shooting, 0 for 6 from deep though, but he played inspired basketball throughout the entire game, one shot in particular where he split two defenders, pass the ball to himself off the backboard and dunked it, amazing!

Pau and Lamar didn't have their best games of the series, especially Pau who just couldn't get it going all game long only scoring 12 with no trips to the line, basically getting out muscled in the key all night long by the Jazz big men.

The biggest difference in game 3 was the physicality in which the Jazz overpowered the Lakers for the entire 48 minutes. They tired to beat up Kobe to stop him from lighting them up, but of course, that didn't work, but it did have an effect on the rest of the squad and resulted in the Lakers first loss of the post season 104-99.

NEXT LAKERS PLAYOFF GAME: Los Angeles Lakers at Utah Jazz Sunday, May 11th 12:30pm PST

TWO CRAZY DUNKS BY KOBE!