Just when we thought Tracy McGrady couldn’t show any less passion, he goes and does something like this…and totally redeems himself! We’re feeling confident as T-Mac leads us back to sunny Salt Lake City, where the beer flows like wine.

Tracy relentlessly took the ball to the basket, finishing at the rim or finding open players on the perimeter. His aggressiveness reminded us a little of Dwyane Wade, except that Tracy had to actually finish his drives instead of relying on the royal treatment from the referees.

At first, we were a little miffed that no Rocket was named to either of the NBA’s All-Defensive teams in spite of the Rockets’ league-best team defense. Then Derek Fisher scored 17 points on Monday night.

Juwan Howard finally found that elusive shooting stroke that’s been missing for a few weeks. J-Ho knows no middle ground, he’s either surprisingly good or surprisingly bad. It takes about three minutes to figure out which Howard has come to the game, despite the fact that his playing time remains the same regardless.

In the third quarter, McGrady turned what looked for sure to be a swooping finger-roll from six feet out into a slam dunk. After two uninspired performances on the road, McGrady was as close to dominant as we’ve seen him. He forsook the contested 20-foot fade-aways, and as a result, finished with his best shooting performance since Game 1. He also added a career-high 16 assists and hammed it up for the cameras on a regular basis. If we were playing that well, we’d grandstand also.

We know we’ve already vented about Utah’s Paul Millsap. But we feel we should also mention that it’s little consolation that if we had taken him with our second-round draft pick last summer, he’d be sporting a corduroy blazer on the sideline.

During a Rockets possession late in the game, Mehmet Okur was spotted holding Juwan Howard’s leg up in the air while Juwan hopped around on his other leg fighting for an offensive rebound. Are we sure this guy is from Turkey? This kind of dirtiness reeks of back-road Arkansas. Throw in the mullet and all the simian arm-waving and you can really understand our confusion.