Utah Jazz: Sideshows are part of Jazz playoff practices

HOUSTON — He gets posted up down low.

Matt Harpring leans on his man, but the big Ukrainian center spins and scores overhead.

It has absolutely nothing to do with what Harpring dealt with in Monday's Game 2 of the Utah-Houston Rockets NBA playoff series, but it has everything to do with the Jazz's future.

And it was just one of the sideshows as the Jazz wrapped up a shootaround and conducted media interviews Monday morning at the Toyota Center here.

As stragglers headed toward the team bus, special assistant Jeff Hornacek was working with backup shooting guard Kyle Korver on — go figure — his shot.

A few minutes earlier, as Jazz coach Jerry Sloan spoke to reporters on one end of the floor, Hornacek was feeding passes on the other to Kyrylo Fesenko.

Harpring was playing the part of both defender on and informal mentor to Fesenko, a rookie center whom the Jazz veteran sees as a project with promise.

"I told him we were going to start working together," said Harpring, who worked as hard during his session with Fesenko as he would during any regular practice. "This last week we started, and every day we're gonna do some stuff to try to get him better.

"He's got some potential," the veteran small forward added. "He's got such raw ability, and if he could just channel it. You know, he's young, a little immature."

Yet Harpring sees enough hope for the inexperienced 21-year-old that he's decided to take the 7-foot-1 Fesenko — who spent most of the season with the NBA Development League's Utah Flash, and who has been inactive for the first two games of the series -under his wing.

Getting the 2007 second-round draft choice to focus, Harpring acknowledged, may be his most difficult task.

"That's hard," he said. "Some of that is he's got to learn how to live in the NBA. He's such a young guy, and I don't think he has anyone mentoring him — telling him how to eat, what do you do in your off time, what are you supposed to do as far as practice.

"I told him (Sunday), 'Just because we practice for two hours a day, that doesn't mean that's all NBA players do. Don't think you're done for the day,' " Harpring added. "I mean, a lot of us come back at night and shoot. Then we go to the weight room, or we get on the cardio machine, and watch film. There's a lot of things that goes along with being an NBA player, and he'll figure that out."

Hornacek, meanwhile, toils with Korver — who hit two big 3-pointers in the second half of the Jazz's Game 1 victory Saturday — on his long-distance shot.