Utah Jazz: NBA footing bill for Europe trip

LONDON - Their exhibition trip to London and Madrid this week, including Tuesday night's game against the Chicago Bulls, isn't costing the Jazz a dime.

The NBA, thank you very much, is footing the bill for that.

Last time the Jazz and Bulls got together for a preseason game, though, it proved more expensive than a taxi trip from Heathrow to Canary Wharf.

It was Oct. 18, 2009, at the United Center in Chicago, a Saturday night, and Jazz point guard Deron Williams sprained an ankle.

The injury was so severe Williams wound up missing 13 regular-season games, and to this day the ankle — his left — still is not quite right.

"It doesn't hurt, really," Williams said shortly after arriving in London late Sunday morning. "It just, like, aches. I don't now what arthritis feels like, but . . ."

Doctors knew right away that the inversion sprain - sustained when after attempting a 3-point shot Williams landed on the foot of then-rookie Bulls point guard Derrick Rose - was a bad one.

"They told me. They told me how bad it was," he said. "I didn't want to believe it."

Even now, Williams suggested he prefers to not ponder the play.

"I don't like to think about it," he said.

Yet the Jazz point does remember it enough to know Rose meant no harm.

"You watch it, it doesn't look like he tried to step under me on purpose," said Williams, who scored 19 when the Bulls lost at Chicago back in December. "He just closed out, and I came down on his foot."

Rose, for his part, still seems to feel bad about what happened.

So, too, does Bulls coach Vinny Del Negro.

"I want to play against him and make myself better, and it hurt when you see a good player like Deron go down like that," Rose, who expressed remorse shortly after the play occurred, said Sunday. "I contested a jump shot. He came down. It wasn't intentional or anything like that . . . I felt bad for him."

"He (Williams) is such a fantastic player, you hate to see that happen," Del Negro added. "It sets you back a little bit when that happens. There's no question."

The Jazz went 8-5 in the 13 Williams missed.

CHELSEA ROCKS: Rose joined Andrei Kirilenko and Mehmet Okur of the Jazz — all wearing their respective jerseys — in promoting the game Sunday at Stamford Bridge stadium, where the trio was introduced to a crowd of 41,732 at halftime of Chelsea's 2-0 Premier League football (a.k.a. soccer) victory over Liverpool.