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Utah Jazz: team has struggled while on the road
Victories away from home have not been plentiful for Jazz
By Tim Buckley
Deseret News
SAN ANTONIO — As the Jazz prepare to embark on the second half of their 2009-10 NBA season, coach Jerry Sloan has a checklist of items he insists are necessary to take on the trip.
First, and perhaps foremost: Victories away from home.
The Jazz finished the season's first half with a loss Sunday night at Denver, dropping their overall record to 23-18 — and just 7-12 on the road.
With the second half getting under way with Wednesday night's visit to San Antonio, and 22 games away from EnergySolutions Arena still to go among the 41 remaining, they haven't managed to muster even as many as two straight road victories at any point this season.
"We need to figure out some way to win more games on the road," Sloan said. "That's one of the biggest things.
"If you are going to be in the playoffs and you aren't gonna have homecourt advantage," he added, "you better figure out how to win some games on the road."
And as things stand now — if they indeed get there — the Jazz are far from being in position for holding homecourt advantage in any postseason series.
"We'd always like to be better than we are right now," said point guard Deron Williams, who along with the rest of the Jazz woke up on the first morning of the season's second half for them sitting seventh in the NBA's Western Conference. "You know, you don't want to be sitting in the seventh spot. But there's a lot of basketball left."
There is, and with that in mind Sloan has a broader wish list, too, for the second half.
"Hopefully stay together, and play better on the road … and be in every game we play in," he said. "We've had those opportunities. We just haven't been able to finish them."
More specifically, though, Sloan wants a team willing and able to rebound from its lows.
"It's not whether you get beat or not, because you're gonna lose games in this league, you're gonna lose in life some," he said. "But it's how you fight back. You can curl up in the corner in the fetal position and say, 'This is too tough for me,' but that's not what people respect."
The cohesion issue is especially critical, suggested Sloan, who readily acknowledges the roller-coaster nature of his club so far this season.
They had one stretch starting in November with victories in seven of eight outings, had a season-high-matching four-game win streak before losing Sunday to the Nuggets and have registered victories over the likes of longtime nemesis San Antonio (three times already), Portland, Orlando, the Los Angeles Lakers, Dallas and, just last Thursday, LeBron James and the Cleveland Cavaliers.
Yet they've also fallen to lowly Minnesota (twice), Sacramento and Memphis, among others.
"We've had some ups and downs, had some injuries and things," said Sloan, who also bemoaned a few close losses because the Jazz "couldn't finish." "But the most important thing: We've kind of stayed together.
"The group's been together, pretty much, through all of that. And hopefully we can stay healthy and see what happens. We can't do anything about (injuries), but, still, the job is to try to win when guys are not able to play."
By 'stay together,' Sloan means to remember that "When you get out on the floor, you can't do it by yourself."
"We all sometimes think," he added, "we have to be the guy that makes the shot, instead of making the extra pass. And I've always thought making the extra pass makes people happier."
Coaches too, especially when they come on the road.
