Utah Jazz: Playoff guessing game not much fun

SALT LAKE CITY — Some teams sometimes engage in, and get caught up in, the game — of trying to position themselves, that is, for a certain postseason matchup while trying to avoid a less-favorable one.

Or at least they're suspected of it.

The Jazz?

They want no part of it.

"We have no choice," coach Jerry Sloan said. "I'm not gonna play that.

"I don't know how you can play that game, the way it is," he added with reference to the NBA's tight Western Conference. "Just go play whoever's out there. That's all I know."

Others, however, believe that some do play — and make a virtual sport out of it.

In recent days alone, a Raptors.com blogger wrote that "(Toronto's) Sonny Weems told me ... he thinks the Cavaliers may have rested LeBron (James, who sat out a Thursday loss to Chicago) because they want no part of Toronto in the first round," and an AOLFanhouse writer tweeted that "Celtics co-owner (Wyc) Grousbeck said on TV broadcast ... he'd rather face Milw(aukee) than Miami in first round." Wrote the AOL reporter: "Wonder if that's influencing Celtic play."

Then, out West, there's the matter of the defending NBA-champion Los Angeles Lakers.

San Antonio coach Gregg Popovich openly admitted he's doing all he can to see the Spurs are able to dodge the Lakers in a 1-8 first-round Western playoff series.

"The ones that say, 'We don't care who we play,' they're full of baloney," Popovich told reporters in L.A. "We're all trying to hide from the Lakers in the first round, and that's the truth."

"If you're any other team in the Western Conference, you want to be either the two, three, six or seven (seeds). That way, you're facing the Lakers when it counts the most, which would be the Western Conference finals," TNT analyst and ex-NBA star Reggie Miller said during a broadcast Thursday. "That's why there's so much pressure on, because you want to be able to face them when all the money is on the table. You don't want to face them in the second round, especially with a healthy Kobe Bryant and possibly Andrew Bynum."

Yet such behavior simply is not the way of the Jazz, who for now — with two games to go in their regular season, at Golden State and against Phoenix — are positioned for a 4-5 seed matchup with Phoenix.

And the winner of that series would be in line to face an advancing Lakers team in the second round, not the conference finals.