Jazz grow up ahead of schedule

Conventional thinking is that a team without much postseason experience would probably lose a playoff series before its players actually get what it's all about. They'd take their lumps and exit early and come back better the next season.

This edition of the Utah Jazz, however, has been able to learn and adjust to playoff hardships on the fly, having advanced to the Western Conference Finals as postseason rookies.

The Jazz will play San Antonio Sunday in the conference finals.

Veteran Derek Fisher, with three championship rings from his days with the Los Angeles Lakers, recently said maybe his teammates are just too young to know they're not supposed to do this.

His young teammates just don't care that they're not supposed to be here; they use such thoughts as motivation.

"Everybody keeps telling us we're not going to win, and we just keep winning," said second-year point guard Deron Williams. "That's our main focus. We're happy that we're in the conference finals, but we think we can go further."

"Our mentality is us against the world," said power forward Carlos Boozer, happily soaking in everything about Utah's 8-4 run so far in his first playoff experience.

"We've been able to grow up. A lot of teams probably end up losing their first playoff series because they don't grow up throughout the series or they expect something going in," Boozer said. "All we expected to do was play hard, and if we play hard and give it everything we have, we can live with the outcome. We can live with our outcome right now."

Forward Andrei Kirilenko says the Jazz achieved their position through hard work. "We had opportunity, and we used it. It wasn't like, again, plate of cheese," he said, using a Russian phrase translated to English, this one meaning to have something handed to you. "Nobody gave it to us. I think we deserve it. We earn it. We fight for it.

"Every round somebody tells us, 'You're done. You're going to be done,"' Kirilenko said. "Conference final, 'You're going to be done.' Maybe. But maybe not. We will take the chance. We will fight and see who's stronger."

And while this seems like quick success, Kirilenko says it began a couple years ago when the Jazz brought in several core players like Boozer and Mehmet Okur and kept them together while adding Williams, Fisher and youngsters.

"It's really luxury in this league to keep the same lineup (for several years)," he said. "I think that's how we're growing up together, that's how we start believing in each other. We know what one of us can do on the floor, and we can communicate. It's worth a lot."

It helps that this team is close-knit. They like each other.