Jazz-Lakers: Utah Shines in Season-Ending Loss

The Los Angeles Lakers return to the Western Conference Finals after a long four-year drought. But that’s not the real story.

With their victory on the road, the Lakers prevented the 22-1 home-team winning record from reaching an amazing 23-1 in the NBA Semi-Finals. But that’s not the story either.

The Lakers led the Jazz from wire-to-wire. Their lead was as much as 19 points in Energy Solutions Arena in Salt Lake City where the Jazz were 37-4 in the regular season.

Yes, that was quite a feat to pull off, especially considering the dominance of home teams in this year’s Semi-Finals. But, no, that’s still not the story.

The real story is how this young Jazz team and their long-time veteran coach, Jerry Sloan, hung in there and won the second half even though they lost the game.

No, one doesn’t usually write or praise the losers. Most fans want to read about the winners. They don’t want to read about how a team almost won. After all, this is the NBA, where amazing happens. This isn’t horseshoes.

But that is what this report is about – the Utah Jazz – the losers and about how amazing happens in the NBA.

If you had to pick anything that was truly amazing about last night’s game in Utah, it has to be how the Jazz made an amazing comeback. And what they did in the final two minutes, which was more amazing than anything the Lakers had done over three-and-a-half quarters.

With their two most experienced players, Kobe Bryant and Derek Fisher, leading the charge, the Lakers jumped out to an incredible 19-point lead at halftime, 62-43.

The youth and relative inexperience of the Jazz was underscored by the way the veteran Lakers took command and scored at will.

But in the second half, Sloan made his youthful crew understand that they had to hold the line and use all that youthful energy to make a run at the Western Conference’s number one seed.

And that’s exactly what this young Jazz team did.

Although the Lakers tried several times to extend their lead in the third quarter, the tenacious Jazz defense wouldn’t break. And by the end of the quarter the Jazz had shaved three points off the Lakers lead, 86-70.

With only one quarter to go, it looked as though the Lakers would surely breeze to their first conference finals since 2004.

But not so fast, Kobe and Company.

These young Jazz players – Deron Williams, Ronnie Brewer, Carlos Boozer, Andrei Kirilenko, Paul Milsap and Kyle Korver – are tough competitors. Combine them with a couple of hard-nosed veterans like Matt Harpring and Mehmet Okur and no one is breezing to anything – not in Energy Solutions Arena.

They would not be denied.

The Lakers could not extend their lead past 17-points, 89-72, at the nine-minute mark of the final stanza. It was all downhill from there for the Lakers.

Owning the offensive boards and out-rebounding the Lakers front line as though the crew from L. A. had their shoes glued to the floor, the Jazz made their run. Playing a stiff zone defense that cut off the Lakers scoring machine, the Jazz cut the Lakers lead to nine points, 91-82 at the six-minute mark.

Kobe Bryant made a 3-point play to boost the lead back up to eleven, 99-88, with four minutes left. It remained that way for the next minute-and-a-half.

Then Amazing Happened!

Starting with Deron Williams 24-foot three-pointer, the Jazz began trading two-point free-throws for three-point jump shots. By the 20-second mark, the amazing Jazz had made five straight three-pointer. The first one by Williams, then two by Okur and then two more by Kirilenko.

They had cut the Lakers lead to only three-points, 106-103. Then, after Bryant completed two free throws, Paul Milsap made it a two-point game,107-105, on a dunk with just 13 seconds remaining.

Another Jazz foul, and Derek Fisher made one out of two free throws. So, the Jazz needed just one more three-pointer to tie the game and send it into overtime.

Of course, OT at Energy Solutions Arena this year is a virtual Jazz victory. And that would have forced a Game 7 in Los Angeles.

But Mehmet Okur missed a 24-foot three-pointer. Williams got the offensive rebound with two-seconds left. He flung the ball in the air with two seconds on the clock. It rimmed around the basked but…

Well, fortunately for the Lakers, this time Amazing didn’t happen. But that’s not to take away from what this youthful, gutty Jazz crew had done.

They gave the Lakers all they could handle and much more. It was only their youthful inexperience in the first half that defeated them.

But their overall performance in this series is something they can be proud of and something they can definitely build upon for next season.