Tonight is the night! The Jazz have Houston in town tonight and it will be interesting to see how Jazz perform. The Rockets have several new players to break in and I am sure that will have an effect on the outcome of the game tonight. The additions of Battier and Wells will make Houston tough this year, but I look for the Jazz to win a close contest at home.

The Jazz should be very good this year. The experts from ESPN and CNN have them finishing anywhere from 4th in the West to 14th. and winning between 38 and 49 games. Someone in that mix is correct in their prediction, but who?

The big surprise in reading the preseason pubs is that no one is talking about how good Deron Williams is. All I have read is that the Jazz missed when they passed up Chris Paul and chose Williams with the third pick in last years draft. Whether or not the Jazz made a mistake is debatable, but these guys have seriously missed the boat. Williams is a great PG and will be an incredible, All-Star caliber player for a long time. In fact, he will be the major reason that the Jazz have a big improvement in the win column this year.

Williams is big, strong, passes and shoots well, and has a great basketball IQ. More impressive, and important, is that he plays with a swagger and seems to have the competitive edge the Jazz have lacked for the last few years. With a years worth of experience playing for Sloan, the guy is seriously going to go off. If the guy can lay off a bit on the twinkies, he will eventually be one of the five best players in the league.

So the national media has missed the boat with Williams, but they seem to be on the mark with most everything else. The Jazz must stay relatively healthy in order to really compete. At this point, we just know that AK and Harpring are both going to miss ten games a year with ankle/back/knee problems. The Jazz can weather that storm. What we cant afford is for Boozer or Memot to miss an extended period. Memot has proven to be durable, but Boozer…who knows.

So what does this blogger think?

Ronnie Brewer will make a bigger than expected impact on the wing. He is the perfect player for the Jazz system and his play will be crucial down the stretch as he learns what he is doing.

Fisher will be a solid veteran presence and will hit some big shots.

AK will be relatively healthy this year. He will continue to try to do too much offensively and take four or five wild shots a night, but will be the beast he is on defense and cause the other team to play a bit more tentatively inside of ten feet from the hoop.

Boozer will miss no more than five games and average 19 and 10.

Memot will get his shooting stroke back and average 17 and 10.

Harpring will be Mr. Consistent.

Miles, Millsap and Brown will be nice young players and really develop for next year.

Williams will push the Jazz to compete every night. He will average 20 points and 7 assists. He will be the MVP of this team and lead them 47 wins and the Division title setting the table for real excitement next year.