Utah Jazz: Expectations too high?

LOS ANGELES — He's never been one to burden his team with unfair expectations.

Yet at the start of this NBA 2008-09 season, Utah coach Jerry Sloan sensed he might have something special on his hands.

So he pushed his own rule to the limit, then added a key caveat for safe driving.

And now — with the Jazz facing stacked odds against the Western Conference's top-seeded Los Angeles Lakers in a first-round playoff series that continues with Thursday night's Game 3 at EnergySolutions Arena — he almost sounds as if he wished he hadn't.

That's because the caveat kicked in, and now he senses his club simply cannot live up to what its own fans have come to crave.

"I know they still expect us to win a championship, (even) if we win 30 (regular-season) games. That's the city we're in," he said on the morning his Jazz went into Tuesday night's late-starting Game 2 down 0-1 in the best-of-seven series.

"We have a tremendous following with our fans, and they've been great to us and to this team. That's just how much they want us to win. Nobody feels any worse than I do — because I said this team would be a very good team at the beginning of the year, if we could stay healthy.

"Most people didn't hear that (last) part of it," Sloan added. "They take the first part of it. But that's OK."

The Jazz, as it happened, were anything but healthy this season.

They lost 149 regular-season man games to injury and illness, and played both Sunday's Game 1 and Tuesday's Game 2 with starting center Mehmet Okur sidelined by a strained right hamstring.

Point guard Deron Williams missed 13 early season games due to a sprained ankle, small forward Andrei Kirilenko lost 13 to an ankle that needed surgery and — because of a knee that was arthroscopically repaired — power forward Carlos Boozer missed more than half the season.

"First of all," Sloan said when asked Tuesday morning what he had to say to Jazz fans, "you've got to realize we're playing against one of the best teams in the league — and we're playing them a little shorthanded.

"But that's the way this business is. We can't do anything about injuries — and they've, unfortunately, had to hear that all year long."