Ready To Jazz It Up Again

[RonnieBrewer (Ronnie Brewer)]

Ready To Jazz It Up Again
Coach Sloan Makes Quick Turnaround

January 2, 2007
by Desmond Conner

On the heels of making the playoffs for an incredible 20 straight seasons,
the Utah Jazz missed the postseason three straight times after the John
Stockton-Karl Malone era ended in 2003.

Don't count on this season being the fourth.

One of the most well-respected - and certainly underappreciated - coaches in
the business, Jerry Sloan, in his 19th season with the Jazz, has Utah back
on top again, though he's not one to take credit for the team's success in
any era. The guy has 1,006 victories - 912 with the Jazz - and he won't even
acknowledge he had much to do with any of them.

Anyway, today he's getting it done in Utah without a bona fide superstar.
But the team is fueled by another exciting 1-2 punch. With second-year point
guard Deron Williams and fifth-year forward Carlos Boozer, Utah is one of
four teams - all in the Western Conference - that have yet to lose 10 games
in this young season.

The finally healthy Jazz sit atop the Northwest Division at 22-9 but probably
haven't yet put the NBA on notice because it's still early. And of course,
they are still a young bunch that haven't played together very long and face
many challenges the rest of the way. They can still get punked, as they did in
San Antonio Thursday night, when the Spurs put the clamps on the high-scoring
offense and beat the Jazz, 106-83.

Some might see the Jazz headed toward the playoffs a year early, but after
a three-year hiatus Sloan has made it clear to his team that it's time to
go back.

What this team has done so far - such as winning 12 of its first 13 and
beating the likes of Phoenix, Detroit and Houston along the way - has to
encourage Sloan.

"Well, we're fairly competitive," he said by phone from his home Saturday
before the Jazz rebounded to beat Portland by 10 at the Delta Center that
night. "We've won some games where we've had a little luck at the end, but
I think overall, yeah, I think the guys are pretty much on the same page.
They're trying to win."

What's impressive here is the fact that most of the players doing work for
Utah are second-round picks.

Sloan and vice president of basketball operations Kevin O'Connor really have
an eye for talent. The Jazz have a franchise-high seven second-round picks,
including the 6-foot-9, 266-pound Boozer, who averages 21.5 points and 11.6
rebounds, and center Mehmet Okur (16.3, 7.7). The Jazz dropped $138 million
to sign both as free agents before last season.

Let's face it, Utah is probably not a free agent's first choice when looking
for a new team, but bringing in those guys and re-signing former All-Star
forward Andrei Kirilenko, a late first-round pick in 1999, was big.

Getting the sweet-passing Williams out of Illinois was big, too.

Losing Boozer for 49 games last season because of a bad hamstring - not to
mention just about everybody else at some point to some injury - was a
devastating hit.

"I think the huge thing is, as I've said all along, even when John and Karl
were playing, we were lucky in that we really didn't have injuries," Sloan
said. "Injuries play a part in this game."

The Jazz still finished 41-41, three games out of the playoffs, an impressive
turnaround for a team that was 26-56 in a 2004-05 season in which the cries
for Sloan to step down were getting louder.

"Last year when everybody was injured and Jerry was forced to play a lot of
the young guys, they couldn't win games," Celtics coach Doc Rivers said.
"It's no coincidence, now that they're healthy. Matt Harpring is healthy,
Kirilenko, Okur, Boozer missed almost the whole year. All four of those guys
were out for most of the year. Now they're all back. And Deron Williams is
starting to play to his pick. He was a high draft pick [third overall in 2005]
that had a lot of promise. I think he's certainly been one of the best point
guards in the league."

His Stockton-esque numbers: 16.8 points, 8.5 assists and 3.5 rebounds.

"To play this game, point guard is so valuable and so important to what
you're trying to do," Sloan said. "Deron is a very intelligent person, and
he's an intelligent basketball player. Now, that has come not without a few
headaches here and there. That's just part of the business. But he's been
doing a very good job.

The Jazz also have backcourt depth and veterans to help him along, including
Derek Fisher, in his 11th season.

But the Jazz are deep all around. Among the trees is 6-8 rookie Paul Millsap
out of Louisiana Tech, the only player in NCAA history to lead the nation in
rebounding three straight years. The Jazz drafted him in the second round.
He's averaging 4.3 boards in just under 16 minutes.

The Jazz have all the pieces in place to get back to the playoffs:
a talented, healthy cast and a great coach. They just lack the experience of
playing together.

"We've got to learn how to be tougher and stay with what we want to do and
not let anybody take it away from us," Sloan said. "If the other team does
that, then they're going to dominate you, and that's what San Antonio did.
They stuck the defense on us they know how to play because they've been
through the big games. They've been through those wars. It's interesting,
but our guys will hopefully get better having had that happen to them."


Contact Desmond Conner at [e-mail].



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