Okur getting legs, confidence back

He still struggled from long distance.

But Jazz center Mehmet Okur's double-digit scoring from the regular season made a debut postseason appearance Saturday night, when he scored 16 points in Utah's 98-85 Game 4 first-round NBA playoff series win over Houston.

At least one teammate thinks he knows why it did.

"He's getting his legs underneath him," veteran forward Matt Harpring said after Utah tied the best-of-seven series at 2-2.

"The first (two series games), he was a little surprised (how much it takes away from your legs) when you bang and you're physical, playing hard," Harpring added. "I think now he's getting his legs back, and he's getting used to playing Yao."

Okur has drawn praise throughout much of the series for his work on Yao Ming, the 7-foot-6 Rockets center from China who stands about seven inches taller than the Jazz pivot from Turkey.

"Memo's played his heart out, especially defensively, the whole series," Jazz point guard Deron Williams said.

For the series' first three games, however, Okur was so occupied with Yao that he averaged just 5.7 points — and never managed more than seven in any one game.

Saturday, the normally solid 3-point shooter had continuing woes with his trey tries, hitting only 1-of-6 from the long-distance line. But Okur made six of his other seven shots from the field, and wound up scoring just 1.6 points off his regular-season average.

Perhaps more importantly than the numbers, the big Turk's confidence also was back.

Teammates noticed, too.

"Great players get out of their funk," power forward Carlos Boozer said. "They find a way to score, and Memo definitely did that."

"He said he felt good," Williams added. "We gotta be happy about that."

BY THE NUMBERS: The Jazz finished the regular season with five players averaging double-digit scoring.

So far in the playoffs, they have only three: Boozer, who at a team-leading 22.3 points per game in four postseason appearances is averaging more than a point above his regular-season average of 20.9; Williams, whose playoff average of 16.5 is a pinch above his 16.2 from the regular season; and Harpring, who at 14.5 is averaging nearly three more points in the postseason.