Utah Jazz Notes

Deron Williams left the Jazz on Friday morning and returned to Utah to deal with a medical situation within his family. Williams would prefer to keep the matter private for now but may make a public announcement later.

Although Williams has voiced frustration in recent days with the Jazz’s 3-5 start, the situation is far from a disgruntled star leaving his team. Williams has a private plane at his disposal and could rejoin the team for Saturday’s game at Cleveland.

The Jazz have excused Williams and said he would miss tonight’s game against Philadelphia. Down to just nine players, the Jazz will give rookies Eric Maynor and Wesley Matthews their first NBA starts, coach Jerry Sloan said this morning.

Sloan added that he will bring Andrei Kirilenko off the bench to help with ball-handling duties. Ronnie Brewer and Kirilenko will fill in as backup point guards behind Maynor, who has played just 31 minutes all season.

“That’s what basketball is about,” Sloan said. “All the teams run into some of those problems every once in a while. It’s how you approach it, you come and play hard and go home and realize it’s not life or death.

“You would hope that they’d put their best effort forward. Whatever the case may be, we need a good effort out of everybody. We can’t win unless we get a good effort out of everybody.”

The Jazz already are missing backup point guard Ronnie Price, who is out with a sprained left big toe. Kirilenko, meanwhile, served as an emergency point guard in the 2007 playoffs with Derek Fisher and Dee Brown both out.

“From beginning of my career, I was playing point guard, so it’s no surprising me,” Kirilenko said. “It’s just last nine years, I’ve been playing once, that playoff.”

“The hardest part is keep tempo every time,” Kirilenko added, “because with D-Will being at point guard, he will always push the ball in the fast break. . . . You kind of get a tendency not to look for the ball and get into fast break rather than get the ball and push it.”

Maynor, meanwhile, was poised to start Wednesday in Boston before Williams was able to overcome his strained back and play. The last time he played at Wachovia Center was Virginia Commonwealth’s NCAA Tournament loss to UCLA.

“I’m excited to play any game,” Maynor said, “but to be able to come out here and get a start, my first career NBA start, I’m very excited.”

--Ross Siler

If you think Jazz coach Jerry Sloan is about to make sweeping changes in the wake of his team’s struggles to start the season, then you should listen to the story Sloan shared at practice Thursday in Boston.

“When things go [wrong], that’s what everybody wants to change,” Sloan said. “They want to change the offense, they want to change the defense, so it makes it easier on themselves. That’s what you hear the most.

“That’s why change is so . . . why not just play a little bit harder? It reminds me of when I was in college [at Evansville]. We had a pretty good team in college, we were undefeated, and the coach wants us to run a half-court press.

“Obviously, that’s what he wanted, so we did it. We were getting beat by 15 points - -10 points, I believe it was - - and he called timeout and one of the guys went up to coach and says, ‘You know, this press is killing us.’

“And my coach says, ‘You know what? I don’t care if you get beat by 40 points’ - - and we hadn’t lost a game. He said, ‘You’re going to run the press and everybody run it right and you get involved in it.’ 

“And in about 10 minutes later, we were 10 points ahead, running the same press. Everybody wants to change, so they can take the pressure off themselves. It makes it easier for them, instead of trying to stick with it.”

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Deron Williams is giving back to Illinois basketball in a big way by hosting the 14-team Shootout at the Hall on Dec. 12 in Champaign. The event will feature seven high school games in one day at Assembly Hall, several of which feature players that have either committed to or are considering playing at Illinois. Williams’ Point of Hope Foundation is title sponsor of the event, but the star guard will not be able to attend the event as the Jazz are hosting the Lakers that night.

--Ross Siler

The Jazz might be the only team that would exercise Kosta Koufos’ third-year option for the 2010-11 season - - a small investment by NBA standards, but nevertheless a $1.3 million one - - and then play him so little in the team’s first seven games.

Koufos had played just 17 minutes entering Wednesday, including a three-second cameo against Dallas. (He did have an a steal in that time). But he came in for the final 5:37 of the loss to the Celtics and had six points and four rebounds.

Be careful about drawing any conclusions from what was garbage time at the end of a blowout. It would be nice, though, for the Jazz to find a way to play Kyrylo Fesenko and Koufos meaningful minutes, even if they had to alternate between them.

The Jazz, however, have been caught in a tough spot of having to win games (in some cases desperately so) while playing several close games that offer few logical learning opportunities. Fesenko had four points, four rebounds and four fouls Wednesday.

--Ross Siler

Deron Williams attempted Thursday to clarify his Twitter message from the previous night stressing the need for change in the aftermath of the Jazz’s 105-86 loss to the Boston Celtics, a game in which they never led and trailed by 22 after three quarters.

“Not like trades or anything,” Williams said before the Jazz’s practice at Suffolk University. “Just we’ve got to do something. We’ve got to find something that works. Whether it’s lineups or what not, we’ve got to do something different.”

“It’s not the end of the world,” Williams added. “I didn’t mean to tweet like it was the end of the world. Just we’ve got to do something. I know the fans watching, I know the fans sitting at home, they’re not happy with us right now. I’m not happy with us, either.”

At the same time, Williams offered a commentary that spoke volumes about the Jazz, sharing a comment made over dinner after watching the Celtics, who had seven players score in double figures Wednesday.

“A couple of us were talking,” Williams said, “we were looking at Boston and . . .Paul Pierce has 10 points, K.G. [Kevin Garnett] has 10 points, Ray Allen has 10 points, [Rajon] Rondo has 14 points, somebody else had 12 points and they’re on the bench happy.

“And they don’t care who the hell gets the glory, they just want to win. Until we figure that out, we’re not going to be a good team.”

The Jazz dropped to 3-5 with the loss and are now 1-3 on the road and giving up 102.8 points a game after stressing improvement in both areas entering the season.

“Especially with all the emphasis on defense and talk about defense,” Williams said. “We haven’t put much of an effort up.”

He added: “We’re not putting up much of a fight against the good teams. You’ve got to put up a fight.”

The Jazz also have absorbed a number of crushing defeats, losing at home to Houston and Sacramento. They blew big second half leads against Dallas and New York as well, though they held on to beat the Knicks. Then came Wednesday’s blowout against Boston.

“It’s definitely concerning,” Williams said. “These losses we’ve had have been bad. This early in the season, it’s not good for us because in my previous four years we’ve started off with pretty good records, if not great records, and then fizzled as the season went on.

“If we continue that trend, we’re just not going to have a good year.”

The Jazz gave up 14 points in the first four minutes of the first quarter and 15 points in the first four minutes of the third quarter. Jazz coach Jerry Sloan benched Carlos Boozer and Mehmet Okur early in the third for Paul Millsap and Kyrylo Fesenko.

“We haven’t been consistent,” Williams said. “I keep saying that, but we haven’t been consistent from game to game or from quarter to quarter. I don’t know what it is. 

“A lot of it is a little bit of selfishness. We build leads and we start looking for our own shot and worrying about scoring instead of getting stops.”

The Jazz will travel to Philadelphia today in advance of Friday’s game against the 76ers. Williams was set to practice and reported improvement in his strained back while Ronnie Price already has been ruled out of Friday’s game.

--Ross Siler

Jazz general manager Kevin O’Connor shared a funny story about his introduction to Twitter during the preseason. He had his phone programmed by one of the team’s p.r. staffers, who set it up so O’Connor could follow the tweets of his players.

His first night with the Twitter-enabled phone, O’Connor was awakened soon after falling asleep by it buzzing. Thinking it was something urgent, O’Connor checked his phone to find it was nothing more than an update about where one player had gone for dinner.

That was the end of O’Connor’s life on Twitter. He had his phone deprogrammed the following day. Probably a good thing considering O’Connor would have been none too happy to see Deron Williams’ tweet after Wednesday’s loss to the Celtics.

“We got to change something bc what we doing ain’t working right now!” Williams wrote. “Don’t know what but something?????” Williams, it should be noted, has nearly 21,000 followers on Twitter, compared to 400 for a certain Jazz beat writer (@tribjazz).

For the first time this season, it seems worth a reminder that Williams is only under contract to the Jazz for three seasons, including this one. It would be quite a waste to squander one such season, especially with Williams at or nearing his prime at age 25.

The first-round draft pick the Jazz are owed by the Knicks has the potential to be a franchise changer, the kind of player who could easily entice Williams to spend his career in Utah. But I’m sure Jazz fans feel it would be nice to make independent progress this season.

You could sense Williams’ frustration after the game. He twice described the Jazz as “soft,” though he’s said that before, so it’s not quite as indicting as it would be from another player.

He was asked about the Celtics and offered an answer that seemed to speak to both the team assembled in Boston and the shortcomings of his team in Utah.

“They’re a great team,” Williams said. “They have a group of guys who know their roles 1 through 10. They come in, they do the job, they get stops. They don’t coast. They hold everybody accountable. That’s what it takes to be a championship team.”

It seems worth noting that the Jazz went into the season pledging improvement as far as defensive accountability and winning on the road. They’re now 1-3 on the road (with two games left on this trip) and are giving up 102.8 ppg overall this season.

Although the sample size is only eight games, the results haven’t been encouraging so far.

The first step is what Jazz coach Jerry Sloan did in the third quarter Wednesday, benching Carlos Boozer and Mehmet Okur for Paul Millsap and Kyrylo Fesenko. The Jazz gave up 14 points in the first four minutes of the first quarter and 15 in the first four minutes of the third.

Rajon Rondo and Ray Allen blew past the Jazz for back-to-back layups in the first quarter with no help in sight. Okur had a sequence in the fourth quarter when he missed a shot at one end and gotten beaten down court by Rasheed Wallace for a layup.

Shelden Williams followed for the Celtics by getting open inside for a dunk. Okur was removed for Fesenko at the next dead ball and Boozer exited less than a minute after that.

The Jazz did so little to take the Celtics out of their comfort zone. Kevin Garnett hit two screen-and-roll jumpers in the third quarter that he's probably taken 10,000 times each since coming to Boston.

“Give them credit for being good defensively,” Sloan said of the Celtics, “but you can’t just be comfortable sitting outside because we’ve never been a great outside shooting team.”

“The rough route is to stay in there, set screens and defend better and then the rest of it will come to you - - if you’re tough enough,” Sloan added. “If you aren’t tough enough, they’ll just keep burying you.”

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For those who want to make payroll comparisons between the Jazz and Celtics - - since the on-court comparison was so favorable - - Utah’s payroll projects to be $82.2 million this season (not counting luxury tax) while Boston’s projects to be $84.5 million.

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I know the Jazz’s marketing slogan this season is “Be the X-factor,” but why do I keep thinking it should have been “Addition by subtraction”?

--Ross Siler