Considering they had wrapped up a tough series against Houston less than 48 hours earlier, the Jazz gave a pretty good showing Sunday afternoon in Los Angeles, cutting the margin to four in the fourth quarter and having a chance with less than two minutes left.

In fact, they might have won if Deron Williams hadn't used up all of his shots two days earlier, if Carlos Boozer hadn't turned the ball over seven times before fouling out, if Kobe Bryant hadn't shot 23 free throws (and made 21) if Mehmet Okur hadn't gone 0-for-5 from 3-point range, if the Jazz hadn't gone ice-cold in the fourth quarter (6-of-26) and if Matt Harpring, Kyle Korver and Ronnie Brewer had made their wide-open 15-footers ...

Bryant is a terrific player and worthy of the MVP Award he's expected to get this week, but 23 foul shots? ...

The most impressive part of the Jazz performance was their 25 offensive rebounds and nine blocked shots ...

Let's hope Jazz fans don't give Derek Fisher a bad time when he returns to EnergySolutions Arena later this week. Maybe he did want to get out of Salt Lake and play for the Lakers again, but he's still the same good guy Jazz fans cheered so wildly for in last year's playoffs. Boo Kobe instead ...

Not a lot of people are paying attention to the Deseret First Duel, at least not as many as the folks at Deseret First Credit Union would like. But the rivalry series between BYU and Utah is coming right down to the wire, just as organizers had hoped.

Going into the final three-game baseball series between the Utes and Cougars next week, the score is 31 for BYU to 28.5 for Utah. That's surprising, considering the Cougars won the major sports worth the most points — football and basketball. The Utes have kept it close by dominating the minor sports such as women's volleyball, women's soccer, women's basketball and men's tennis ...

How about the David Beckham Show at Rice-Eccles Stadium Saturday? Local fans couldn't have asked for much more as they saw the world's most famous soccer star score a pair of goals in a draw between Real and the Galaxy ... Well, except for a Real victory ...

No surprise last week when the genuises who run the BCS rejected the proposed plus-one format and decided to stick with the current format, which produces a real championship game every four years or so. I'm not expecting a playoff system any time in my lifetime, but the plus-one — the top four teams playing off to get in a championship game — would have been a big improvement ...

What the NCAA should do is make a rule against these big-time schools padding their schedules against FCS Subdivision (formerly Division I-AA) schools ...