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Bench Warmer
It was their first face-to-face hookup since Beijing, with nearly half the regular season already gone, but trust us -- Wednesday night was a nonevent if you lunge at the obvious and try to reduce this to Chris Paul versus Deron Williams.
You really can't play the Paul-or-Williams game when neither is on the floor.
There simply was no comparison in the fourth quarter because, well, there was no Paul and no Williams. These "great friends" who communicate "every day," as Paul says, both were granted total rest when we wanted to see them most, because there was little point in either of them playing after the third quarter with the Utah Jazz already up 20.
Yet we suspect you won't be terribly surprised to hear the Jazz didn't mind one bit that the 11th regular-season installment of this rivalry -- now 9-2 in D-Will's favor -- failed to deliver anything close to a classic. Coach Jerry Sloan's teams, for starters, have never stopped to feed story lines to the media. Then there's this: The Jazz are too busy to think about much else these days beyond trying to make sure they make it to the playoffs.
"There's no way you can't be worried in the West," Williams said, "because of how tough it is."
How tough?
The banged-up Jazz, who began the season with championship aspirations, awake Thursday as the West's No. 9 team, percentage points behind Phoenix. That's after playing through the ongoing absence of Carlos Boozer and Williams' head cold Wednesday to pull away for a 116-90 rout of Paul's New Orleans Hornets, who, not surprisingly, appeared to leave their best game somewhere in Los Angeles after Tuesday night's breakthrough victory over the Lakers.
How worried?
Williams volunteered the concern even though the Jazz are only two games back of the No. 4 Hornets, concern that stems largely from the fact that he and Boozer have played only two games together. Missing the playoffs is a fear shared by several perennial contenders, Phoenix and Dallas among them, but the standout moment for the Jazz in the latest installment of Williams' lifetime of unavoidable comparisons to his Olympic teammate was probably the sight of C.J. Miles twisting an ankle after stepping on the foot of New Orleans' James Posey in the third quarter. Such is the focus on Utah's team health, which essentially started with the ankle sprain Williams suffered in the preseason.
"It's been a recurring theme for us," Williams said of Utah's Houston-like succession of injury problems this season. "I don't know what's going on, if it's bad karma or if you put the hex on us."
Not sure whether Williams was referring to ESPN.com specifically ... but we can confirm he did his postgame interviews clutching throat spray in his right hand and lozenges in his left. He sounded sincerely grateful to have made it through 28 minutes with a quiet eight points and eight assists after arriving for work with "no energy" and having trouble breathing.
"I was [getting] dizzy," Williams said, "trying to chase the blur around."
D-Will was obviously referring to Paul there and, obviously again, never seriously considered staying home in bed as he jokingly claimed was his preference. Part of that certainly was Paul's presence at EnergySolutions Arena -- in what turned out to be a steady fade from the Hornets that virtually reduced Paul (26 points) to a one-man team by the end -- but also the reality that Williams can't sit now unless he's truly a mess.
Boozer will undergo a knee operation Friday in Los Angeles that he estimated -- after missing the past 24 games -- will keep him out until Utah's final "20 or 30 games." The Jazz (21-15) already have lost 97 man-games to injury this season and, although just 3½ games behind first-place Denver in the Northwest Division, find themselves fighting daily urges to give into the inevitable questions: What next? Why us? The "hex," as Williams called it, even extended to one of their athletic trainers, Brian Zettler, who has continued to work despite recently suffering a torn biceps tendon while working out with a few players in Chicago.
"I've never been on a team that's been hit [by injuries] like we have," Jazz sharpshooter Kyle Korver said.
The stern and famously consistent Sloan, though, will just keep telling his guys that no one outside of snowy Utah cares, which might work with what could be the deepest team he's ever had. Paul Millsap posted another stat line Boozer would have happily claimed with 27 points and 14 boards. Utah's active zone defense in the second quarter derailed the Hornets, and the home team wound up pounding New Orleans in a ridiculous way on the boards (55-26) to record its third successive victory by at least 22 points over the Hornets in this building.
"I tell the players, 'I'm sorry that you got hurt, but there's not a thing I can do about it,'" Sloan said. "You've got to go forward. That's the only thing I know. That's what I've tried to convey to our players.
"We've been fortunate here. Our organization for 18 years had very few injuries when John [Stockton] and Karl [Malone] were here ... I understood all along we were fortunate our guys stayed healthy. That's life in the NBA. If you don't like it, there's other jobs."
Few of the Jazz's final 46 games are bound to unfold as comfortably as this one did, with the Hornets predictably fading after four tough road stops in six days, but it's difficult to imagine the team with perhaps the most intimidating home-court atmosphere in the league missing out on the postseason entirely. The Rockets are actually in even worse shape physically than the Jazz. Western Conference visitors, furthermore, are now 0-11 here this season in spite of Utah's health woes.
It becomes even more difficult to imagine if Millsap continues to be a double-double machine in Boozer's absence (19 in a row) ... and if Boozer makes good on his insistence that he'll be back in the season's second half to "help lead my team to the playoffs."
While conceding that he won't have a firmer idea of his recovery timetable until after Friday's procedure, Boozer looked and sounded rather upbeat for a guy who's been absorbing criticism like he did in his first season in town, when suspicion appeared destined to follow him.
"I had to go through the same thing three years ago with my hamstring," Boozer said, dismissing suggestions that he has drawn out his recovery to protect himself for free agency in July ... suggestions that would certainly appear to be misplaced now that the 27-year-old needs surgery.
"I mean, c'mon. If I could play, I would play all day long. People thought I was doggin' it or whatever, but I'm not that kind of dude. If I can play, I'll play through anything. And I've already played through a bunch of stuff that people don't know about.
"I know I'll be back before [the end of the season]. We've been able to stay above water without me, so when I get back for those 20 or 30 games, hopefully we'll be able to take off."
