Utah Jazz Notes

The Utah Sports Hall of Fame inducted five new members Thursday night, including former Jazz coach, general manager and team president Frank Layden.

The other inductees who were honored at a reception and banquet at EnergySolutions Arena included baseball's Bruce Hurst, football's Todd Christensen, volleyball's Dylann Duncan Ceriani and skiing's coach Pat Miller.

Utah Sports Hall of Fame Foundation president Dick Rosetta, a long-time colleague at the Salt Lake Tribune, estimated the overflow crowd included over 300 family members, friends and fans.

The list of those who attended reads like a Who's Who in Utah Sports: LaVell Edwards, Tom Holmoe, Chris Hill, Jim Boylen, Jerry Sloan, Phil Johnson, Elaine Elliott,  Mark Eaton and many, many others.

I know Layden better than any of the other inductees because he was the head coach of the Jazz for my first two of 16 years on the beat. He was always accommodating, helpful and quotable  -- in other words, a novice reporter's dream.

As we talked before the Hall of Fame ceremonies, Frank reminded me of one of my favorite Layden stories of all-time, and we once again laughed.

The Jazz were playing the Knicks in New York. Late in the game, a TV cameraman got to close to the Utah huddle. Somebody on the bench -- it might have been former assistant trainer Terry Clark -- draped a towel over the camera and ruined the shot.

After the game, a TV producer-type wearing a Marlboro-man plaid shirt and this huge black velvet cowboy hat charged into the Jazz locker room. He started shouting, "Who's messing with my guys? Who's messing with my guys?"

Calmly, Layden looked around and told a secruity man to remove the gentleman from the locker room. (I'm paraphrasing, of course). The guy was being led to the door -- still shouting -- when Layden suddenly yelled, 'Hey."

The room became dead silent.

"Where did you win that hat? Layden said.

The Jazz locker room exploded in laughter and the TV guy started screaming again as security pushed him into the hall.

The Utah Sports Hall of Fame induction festivities began with a roll-call of the new inductees. Each walked down the center aisle as music of their choice played in the background. The other four new Hall of Fame members picked out an old high school or college fight song.

Layden's choice?

"When Irish Eyes are Smiling."

Next time, I'll tell you what the Jazz's most famous Irishman -- John Stockton -- thinks of Layden's induction into the state's Hall of Fame.   

-- Steve Luhm

The good news for the Jazz is that they couldn’t have ordered up a more perfect opponent for Friday’s home opener. The Clippers are 1-34 all-time at EnergySolutions Arena, losing both games last season by a combined 43 points.

The Clippers fell 109-107 to Phoenix on Wednesday, dropping to 0-2 to start the season. Baron Davis had 12 points and 12 assists but has shot just 5 of 21 (23.8 percent) through two games.

“I’m always confident when we go home, period,” Deron Williams said. “We’re a good home team, and coming off a tough loss like this, we’re going to be ready to go. Despite a team’s record, it’s a big game for us. You don’t want to start a season off 0-2, so we’ll be ready.”

* * *

Mehmet Okur talked after Wednesday’s game about his mildly sprained left knee and ankle. He injured both trying to take a charge just 24 seconds into the game against Nene on the break. Okur said Nene stepped on his foot as he went down.

Okur headed to the locker room, where he retaped his ankle and iced his knee before returning to the court. He finished with 13 points on 5-for-11 shooting in 31 minutes, going 0-for-5 in the second half.

Okur said it was “hard to tell” if he’d be able to play Friday against the Clippers. He didn’t feel anything during the game, but was sore afterward and expected more of the same this morning.

He added that he was more concerned about the ankle than the knee. “I just wanted to keep going,” Okur said, adding, “It could have been worse and hopefully I’ll be OK [Thursday] or Friday.”

Jazz coach Jerry Sloan was happy with the play of Kyrylo Fesenko, who was forced into action in the first quarter after Okur went out and finished with six points and two rebounds in 11 minutes for the game.

* * *

Even with the snow storm that hit Denver, the Nuggets drew an impressive crowd to Wednesday’s opener and rewarded them with a halftime set by 1990s rap group Naughty By Nature. The Nuggets also had the lead singer from The Fray perform the national anthem, thus making for one of the oddest pairings in music history.

--Ross Siler

If you felt like you’d seen Wednesday’s game from Carlos Boozer before, that’s because you had. Back in April, Boozer went 7-for-23 in an equally miserable game against the Nuggets at Pepsi Center, finishing with 15 points and 11 rebounds.

Jazz coach Jerry Sloan said matter-of-factly after Wednesday's game of Boozer, “There’s a lot of pressure on him,” thought Boozer downplayed that suggestion when it was relayed to him.

“I feel like I was just out there playing, trying to make things happen, trying to be aggressive, trying to do what I can do to help our team win,” Boozer said. “Sometimes shots ain’t going to go in. We’ve got to play defense and we didn’t do either.”

Paul Millsap also struggled, going 5-for-11 from the field with four fouls and three turnovers in 23 minutes. Millsap finished with 10 points and five rebounds.

* * *

Much will be made of the fact the Jazz gave up 114 points to Denver despite all the talk about a renewed commitment to defense. It’s worth noting that when they had that 70-62 lead midway through the third quarter, the Jazz were on pace to allow just 101.5 points.

That would have been a pretty respectable number against the high-scoring Nuggets.

* * *

How did the Jazz give up that eight-point lead so quickly in the third quarter? Deron Williams missed two jumpers - - a 15-footer and three-pointer - - but the key play probably was a five-second call as Williams was backing down Anthony Carter.

I’ve watched every one of Williams’ games the last two seasons and can’t remember him ever getting called for five seconds. He said after the game that it might have been a first in his NBA career. Chauncey Billups followed that play with a three-pointer at the other end.

--Ross Siler

Nobody thinks the Jazz would be well served with Deron Williams playing 44 minutes a game regularly, yet everybody probably agrees there are some nights where Williams is going to have to go the distance in the second half for his team to win.

Maybe the Jazz wouldn’t have won Wednesday’s opener even if Williams had played the entire second half, but the 2:13 he spent on the bench to start the fourth quarter probably was the game-turning stretch for Denver.

Williams was coming off a 13-point third quarter in which he staked the Jazz to the eight-point lead they quickly gave away. They entered the fourth quarter trailing 82-80 after Williams fouled Chauncey Billups on a three-pointer with 0.4 seconds left.

Instead of sticking with Williams to start the fourth quarter, Jazz coach Jerry Sloan went with Eric Maynor and Ronnie Price in the backcourt. Maynor got beat twice for layups by fellow rookie Ty Lawson as Denver stretched its lead to 11 points.

“I went to the bench, it was 82-80, and then came back in and it was 91-80,” Williams said. “We just never could really get anything going from there.”

It actually was 89-80 when Williams came back, but the point is still the same. After the game, I asked Sloan about the one-sidedness of the Maynor/Lawson matchup.

“He hasn’t been in a lot of exhibition games,” Sloan said of Maynor, “where he’s had the opportunity to play a lot of minutes, probably, and Lawson played some pretty good minutes for them in the exhibition season.

“I think in all fairness to Eric, he’s going to see some of that, he’s going to have bad days. I may not play him, may play him, I don’t know. I’ve got to see where we are as we move forward. He’s played pretty well in practice and had some moments.

“But you can’t let people drive by you. You’ve got to learn to get up and play them, foul them. It’s a sad commentary when you just watch guys shoot layups. Foul the guy and see if he can make two free throws, rather than just giving him a layup and that sort of thing.”

“It wasn’t all him, but for a young guy those are things they’ve got to learn to do.”

In his defense, Maynor had played just 35 seconds at the end of the first half before he was called on at the start of the fourth quarter.

Lawson finished with 17 points and six assists, including 11 points in the fourth quarter. You can add his name to the list of what I’m now going to call The Nuggets Reserves Who Come Off The Bench To Kill The Jazz Club, joining Linas Kleiza and J.R. Smith in recent seasons.

The No. 18 overall pick, Lawson was taken two spots ahead of Maynor in this year’s draft. His 17 points were the most by a Nuggets rookie in his debut since Bobby Jackson’s 27 against San Antonio on Oct. 31, 1997.

 “He made a couple good moves, got to the basket,” Maynor said. “He’s a fast guy. He loves to get to the basket and he was able to get there.”

--Ross Siler

I don’t know if it’s something we’ll do daily, weekly, semi-weekly or what, but part of covering the Jazz this season means keeping tabs on the New York Knicks as well, since the Jazz are owed New York’s unprotected first-round draft pick in 2010.

I have yet to see a prediction that doesn’t have the Knicks’ in the bottom third of the Eastern Conference, if not one of the five worst teams in the NBA. Jazz general manager Kevin O’Connor only can hope the prognosticators have the Knicks pegged right.

The Knicks will open the season Wednesday at Miami, then visit Charlotte on Friday before playing their home opener Saturday against Philadelphia. That’s the start of a four-game homestand at Madison Square Garden.

Most of the Knicks’ hopes are pinned on the development of lottery picks Danilo Gallinari and Jordan Hill. Aside from that, New York will be waiting to learn how much free-agent money it’ll have to spend next summer based on the NBA’s salary cap numbers.

The Knicks are going to start Chris Duhon, Wilson Chandler, David Lee, Al Harrington and Jared Jeffries, according to reports. Another losing season would mark their ninth straight, another low point for a franchise that has had plenty of them recently.

Even if New York finishes with the NBA’s worst record, the Jazz still would have at best a 25 percent chance of landing the No. 1 overall pick from the draft lottery. At least on paper, Sacramento and New Jersey both look worse than the Knicks this season.

The Jazz, though, are preparing with the expectation that they will have a high pick in next year’s draft. They plan to have at least two scouts/front-office members watch each of 12 top prospects play in person.

Furthermore, they want to scout each of those players both in a game and in practice. And they want to have all that done by Dec. 31, just to be on the safe side in case one of the prospects suffers a season-ending injury.

This is supposed to be one of the NBA’s strongest drafts in recent years, with the two names at the top being Kentucky’s John Wall and Georgia Tech’s Derrick Favors.

Should the Jazz somehow land the No. 1 overall pick, be ready for the mother of all controversies. They already have Deron Williams at point guard, but Wall is a special player who happens to play the same position as the Jazz’s star.

Stay tuned as we follow the Knicks and some of the top prospects throughout the season.

--Ross Siler