Utah Jazz notebook: Still-hurting Okur wanted no rest

LOS ANGELES — The Jazz took Sunday off from practice. It was, however, anything but a day of rest for Mehmet Okur.

Utah's starting center went through two separate treatment sessions Sunday in hopes of bouncing back from his rough return to the lineup Saturday and in an effort to continue the healing process with his still-hurting strained right hamstring.

Before Monday's tipoff, Okur said it was well worth the extra effort, which included applications of ice and steam, stretching and 30 minutes of jumping and jogging in a pool.

"It was more sore (Sunday)," Okur said. "I knew it was going to feel better and finally I start to feel better, so I knew I was going to play (in Game 5)."

Okur ended up with xx points and xx rebounds on Monday.

Okur said he wasn't looking at Monday's game against the Lakers as a possible Jazz finale. With an opt-out clause in his contract, he could join a total of nine current Utah players as a free agent this offseason.

Healing and helping his team were on his mind in L.A., not his future in Utah.

"I don't really know anything yet," Okur said. "I just want to go out there and play hard and try to help my team to try to win the ballgame.

"I don't know yet about next year."

There's a good reason why Okur looked rustier than most bolts on the tractors at his coach's Illinois farm when he finally joined the first- round series in progress after missing four games.

It's because, Jerry Sloan pointed out, the 6-11 big man simply hadn't played in awhile. Okur missed 1-1/2 weeks of games and practice until rejoining the team Friday for light workouts. He started Game 4 but was mostly ineffective, going scoreless in 13 minutes.

"Obviously," Sloan said, "things didn't work out the way we'd like for them to."

But Sloan didn't act terribly surprised.

"Well, he hadn't played (in a week). A lot of guys look that way," the Jazz coach said Monday morning. "We had some guys miss 40 games look like they hadn't played in 40 games. That's the nature of injuries.

You've got to work around that."

Which is precisely what Okur tried to do.

BREAK TIME: Hoping to help recharge his players' batteries was the main reason Sloan didn't hold practice Sunday.

"I think it was a good time to give them a day off," Sloan said. "We had about eight or 10 days where they hadn't had a day off and I thought it was an opportune time for 'em to take off and re-gather themselves and get ready to play again."

The idea, he said, came from the older player in the Hall-of-Fame coach.

"I would have wanted a day off if I was a player. That's basically one of the reasons I gave it to them," Sloan added. "If you you're mentally trying to stay involved in the game, I think it's good for you to refresh yourself and then come back and go at it again."