Jazz doesn't feel urgency soon enough
Source: OCRegister (Original Article)
SALT LAKE CITY — The red lights should have started flashing and the sirens whining three quarters earlier for the Utah Jazz in the decisive Game 6 of the Western Conference semifinals.
The Jazz’s season had all but flatlined by the final quarter when its players finally, desperately and almost heroically responded to the emergency. With their 19-point deficit trimmed to two in the final minute, they fired once, then twice, missing both in the closing seconds to lose the game, 108-105, and the series to Lakers.
All the air was sucked out of the inside of the EnergySolutions Arena when the sellout crowd held its breath and its hand in a prayer.
Utah’s Kyle Korver dished a pass to wide-open Mehmet Okur, the player nicknamed “Money,” who came up short changed. Jazz guard Deron Williams ran down the rebound, backed up, squared up, fired and leaned left, willing his shot close but not quite. The game was over.
Why the Jazz players waited so long to play in it, fight for it and give mouth-to-mouth to it, they’ll have the offseason to wonder.
Before the game, they didn’t behave like a desperate team facing elimination. They didn’t speak with more urgency, fidget or gnaw off their upper knuckles. Sitting in front of his corner locker, listening to music, Jazz forward Carlos Boozer looked as loose as someone who had just had a 90-minute deep tissue massage — minus the cucumber slices over the eyes.
The entire team looked oddly, well, calm, relying on routine to get it into the game that would make all the difference.
“That’s focus. Well, at least it better be,” said Jazz coach Jerry Sloan before the game. “They know what’s at stake.”
The presumed urgency didn’t show until the final quarter, which opened with the Jazz already buried but not quite dead, trailing 86-70.
The Jazz found itself trailing by 16 points 10 minutes into the game. Falling into “the hole,” which Williams talked about after bankwest mastercard the Game 1 and 2 defeats, …continue reading