From Deseret News archives:
Utah Jazz: Lessons learned against L.A.
Deron Williams too.
"It's still in my head," Williams said. "So close, you know.
"There are so many little things you could have done to make a series better, or even win the series — and I think we could have done a couple things better," the Jazz point guard added. "But you've got to move on from that. You know, it's a new year, a new season, a new set of playoffs."
Yet the opponent tonight is the same — the very one that eliminated the Jazz from last postseason's Western Conference semifinals.
Granted, it's merely the preseason opener for both clubs.
Still, the fact Utah is visiting the Los Angeles Lakers in Anaheim tonight brings full circle for some with the Jazz a memory that to this day continues to haunt.
"We're gonna keep that series in our mind, because when we get back to that point in the playoffs — if it's the Lakers, if it's Houston, whoever it is we play — we're going to remember our series from the year before and try to do the right things to get over the hump and get to the Finals," Boozer said Monday. "Not the Western Conference finals, and the semis. We want to get to the (NBA) Finals, and win it."
If the Jazz are to threaten such a run this season, it may be because of lessons learned when Kobe Bryant and the Lakers — who wound up losing to Kevin Garnett and the Boston Celtics in the Finals — eliminated them in six games from a best-of-seven second-round series.
It was one in which the last three L.A. victories were by eight points or fewer, including a 108-105 Game 6 win back on May 16 — not even five full months ago.
The lessons revolve around little things, Williams said, like "playing harder, running the floor a little harder" and, perhaps most importantly of all, playing better defense.
"I think it's all gonna come back to defense," said Boozer, who along with Williams was a teammate of Bryant's on Team USA's gold medal-winning entry in this past summer's Olympic Games. "You know, we didn't get enough stops to win. We had a couple games where if we had gotten a few more stops down the stretch.
"You think about Game 5 in L.A. (a 111-104 Laker win in which Bryant shot 13-of-17 from the free-throw line): If we didn't put Kobe on the line (so many) times at the end of the game we may have had a chance to win that game. It's about playing defense down the stretch of games, without fouling."
Jazz coach Jerry Sloan prefers not to dwell on history.
Yet he, too, realizes and accepts that there indeed is something to be extracted from the experience.
