Korver starting to find his groove with Jazz

LOS ANGELES — You probably know the line, about old habits being hard to break.

John Hiatt sang it. Hank Williams Jr., too. And now nine games into his Jazz career, Kyle Korver is in the choir.

"You create certain habits when you play a certain way for so many years," Korver said Sunday, "and it's just a matter of breaking a couple of those."

During his first four-plus seasons in Philadelphia, the 76ers employed a different offense than the Jazz do. Much more of a two-man game; much less movement. Wing players like Korver ran to the closet corner, not cross-court. Defensive principles — like whether to force a ball-handler baseline, or into the middle — were the mirror opposite as well.

But as the Jazz embark of the second half of their 2007-08 NBA season with this afternoon's game against the Los Angeles Clippers — the very same team the Jazz beat just last Friday night at EnergySolutions Arena — Korver is becoming more and more comfortable in Utah.

Old habits are morphing into old news.

New ones are being born.

"For a while," said Korver, who arrived in a late-December trade for Gordan Giricek and a future first-round draft choice, "I was worrying more about the play and where I was supposed to get to.

"The last few games," he added, "I felt a lot more comfortable."

Never was that more evident than last Thursday night in Denver, when Korver — who has taken over C.J. Miles' old spot as Utah's backup shooting guard behind starter Ronnie Brewer — got hot during what wound up being a 13-point second quarter.

As one shot after another fell, what played in Korver's mind was not anyone's catchy lyric, but instead a much-more comforting line that goes, "Here's the way it's supposed to be going."

It went that way, Jazz coach Jerry Sloan suggested, simply because Korver was running the floor precisely how he's expected to.

"As long as he does that, and everybody else does it," Sloan said, "then it makes us a better team, in my opinion."

Still, Sloan — whose 23-18 club is 7-2 with Korver in uniform — is the first to acknowledge instant habit formation cannot be taken for granted.

Rather, it takes time to integrate one's self into a new offense — especially with an in-season arrival.

"Most guys that come in here with this team try to prove that they can shoot the ball," Sloan said, "but with our offense, sometimes it puts a little bit too much pressure on them.