Jazz captains not starters

The designation is largely honorary.

Yet when coach Jerry Sloan decided last week to tap Matt Harpring and Raja Bell as the Jazz's captains for the 2004-05 season, the gesture spoke volumes.

Neither is an All-Star. Neither has an eight-digit annual salary. Neither, go figure, has had so much as a single start in any of Utah's first four games of the season.

"I don't think you'll find that anywhere else in the league — that your captains are coming off the bench," Harpring said. "But it is what it is."

And that is this: a reflection of just how much Sloan appreciates lunch-pail players like Harpring and Bell, both of whom have made careers of doing more with less.

"I don't care where they play, I don't look at them as bench guys. That's the bottom line with me," Sloan said of the pair. "They're terribly important to our team, and in order for us to succeed everybody has to do the job.

"And these guys have the toughest job, because they don't know (when) I'll put them in the game."

Four games in, small forward Harpring and shooting guard Bell — as expected — are integral parts of Sloan's regular rotation.

They're both playing nearly 30 minutes per game. They're the Jazz's third- and fourth-leading scorers, respectively, averaging about a dozen points apiece. They've both been shooting the lights out, Harpring hitting at a 64.5 percent clip and Bell right at 50 percent.

Accordingly, they're big reasons the Jazz — who play host to Toronto tonight — have opened 4-0.

But it's neither the numbers nor the roles that impress Sloan most.

"Showing a little bit of leadership is what it's all about, in my opinion," the Jazz coach said. "It's not about how many points you score, or anything like that."

The notion is lost on neither Harpring, a Georgia Tech product who was the Jazz's captain before needing season-ending knee surgery last season, nor Bell, who went undrafted out of Florida International University but quickly caught the coach's eye after signing with the Jazz as a free agent shortly before the 2003-04 season.

"He's shown a tremendous amount of leadership that I didn't anticipate," Sloan said of Bell. "I didn't anticipate it, but I knew it was there last year. . . . He's helped other players become more accustomed to what we're trying to do."

Said Bell: "I'm proud to say that Jerry's got that much respect for me, and that he thinks I'm a guy who represents what he wants to do."