Jazz captains hope to find spark again

Co-captains Deron Williams and Carlos Boozer both stepped up before the start of the season and essentially announced that the Jazz, for better or worse, are in their hands.

When they were better, off to a 7-2 start to the 2007-08 NBA season that included a five-game win streak, the two indeed had palm prints smeared over Utah's success as much as anyone.

Yet even now that they're worse, having finished what Williams called a "pretty brutal" road trip with back-to-back losses Friday night at Cleveland and Saturday night at Indiana, the two are neither shying away from stepping forward to accept blame nor trying to wash those aforementioned hands of responsibility.

"We've got to find a way to get going. I've got to find a way to get going," said point guard Williams, whose first chance at doing that comes when childhood-idol Jason Kidd and the New Jersey Nets visit EnergySolutions Arena and the 7-4 Jazz tonight. "You know, we won the Toronto game (last Wednesday), but it was sloppy.

"So, we've just to get it back," added Williams, a teammate with Kidd on USA Basketball's winning entry at FIBA's Tournament of the Americas Olympic qualifier this past summer. "We've got to get the sharing, the helping each other out. When we're doing that, that's when we're winning."

Like Williams, Boozer employed the word "selfish" — or at least a variation of it — in describing the Jazz's weekend woes.

"I think we've just got to get back to executing — you know, get back to using each other and passing the ball and moving the ball and setting real screens, not brush screens," said Boozer, whose four rebounds in Indiana were a personal season-low — and contributed to his missing out on a double-double for just the second time in 11 games this season. "You know, we're not doing a great job of executing our plays the way we execute our plays. When we do that, we get layups and open jumpers. And now we're taking contested jump shots and going 1-on-1 a little bit more.

"We need to set screens," Boozer added, "and start being a little bit more unselfish."

What the Jazz perhaps need most, Williams suggested, is to get "our confidence back."

How it disappeared so soon after such a strong start, he couldn't be sure.

"I don't know," Williams said. "We've been an up-and-down team for the last two years, you know? It's something we've fought with, something that's plagued us, something we've got to work on. You know, we've got to be more consistent."

The search to rediscover what's gone absent, he vowed, would start with introspection.

"I've been playing terrible for the last week-and-a-half, turning the ball over every time down the court," added Williams, who averaged 5.0 assists per game on the road trip — exactly half his average before the team took off for Toronto — and who committed 12 turnovers during that same span.

"I have to do a better job of taking care of the ball, and hit shots," added Williams, who also committed six turnovers in a win over Sacramento last Monday and who shot just 4-of-17 from the field in Cleveland. "I've got to get that confidence back in myself."

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E-mail: tbuckley@desnews.com