Since Malone defected to the Lakers and Stockton retired to the jianghu, the Jazz's Sloan, the uncrowned king who spent half his life and called the wind and rain in the league in the 1990s, has not tasted the taste of the playoffs for four years.
Every April, there is always a rumor that Sloane is about to retire and erect a statue in front of the Triangle Sports Center. When these rumors were rampant, Sloane himself was always noncommittal and silently planned his blueprint.
Kirilenko, an all-rounder with a good offensive and defensive approach and a bouncing superman; Oku, a Turkish heavy gunner who is good at maneuvering and accurate projection; Boozer, an ace forward with strong and strong and excellent shooting; Williams, who is both powerful and conscious, known as "Kidd II"; Brewer, a bench bandit; and Fischer, who has three championship rings. Ever since Utah was no longer able to carry the Jazz through the first round of the playoffs, Sloane had been following his own philosophy and filling the world with the heirs he needed. Finally, Sloan's persistence paid off in the 06-07 season.
That season, the Jazz became the league's biggest dark horse, and they started with a record of 12 wins and 1 loss. Delong and Boozer's brave performances have brought back the charm of blocking, especially the latter, who finally showed the desired ability in his third year with the Jazz, and his brave rebounding and interior singles greatly enriched the team's strength. Oku's 38 percent three-point shooting percentage and repeated kills made opponents jealous of his presence in every corner of the court.
Other role players, such as Hapling and Fisher, have also broken free from the impact of injuries or state declines from the previous season, providing strong support for the team on both offensive and defensive sides.
But the long regular season made it impossible for the Jazz to maintain the joy and excitement of the beginning of the season, and as time went on, the dark horse that ran wildly gradually slowed down. After the All-Star Game, the Jazz's next record was only 15 wins and 14 losses, including a wave of 4 straight losses and a wave of 5 straight losses in the sprint to the playoffs, and in the 5-game losing streak, 4 opponents had a winning percentage of less than 50%. In April's most important qualifying game, the Jazz showed a clear fatigue of lack of staying power, eventually being overtaken by the Rockets, losing valuable home advantage. And in that decade, the Jazz had never won a series without home field advantage.
Faced with the dilemma of the tiger's tail, Sloan publicly stated: "We should be criticized, let the criticism hit us more violently." He knows that only by waking up his players before the playoffs and settling the problems can the team possibly surpass the Rockets' glimmer of hope.
The first is injury, which is also what worries Sloan, several core teams of Deron, Boozer and Oku have suffered different degrees of injury suspension during the season, which directly affects their competitive status. The team's old sick numbers Kirilenko and Guirisek only made a hasty comeback in the 81st game of the regular season.
The second was the defense of opposing point guards, a problem the Jazz hadn't solved all season. Star players such as Maddy, Kobe Bryant, and Reid have repeatedly taken advantage of the Jazz's weak second position, whether it is Brewer, Guirisek or Haprin, all of whom have had to make cameo appearances in the No. 2 fischer because of Delon's presence, are not rubber sugar defensive players.
Sure enough, in the first two games of the playoffs, under the excellent performances of Yao Ming and Maddy, the Jazz folded twice in Houston.
Throughout the history of the Jazz, they have never achieved a turnaround in the 0:2 deficit of the series, but the Jazz have always been good at home games, so when the series moved to Salt Lake City, it also became a turning point in the entire showdown.
The Jazz could not limit Yao Mai's two strong points, but they relied on tenacious defense to make the rocket's other players chaotic. Yao Mai scored 50 points in the third game, but the rocket's other seven players only scored a total of 17 points, and the two stars were very tormented in isolation. The Jazz eventually pulled back a city by 81:67.
In the fourth game that followed, the aggressive Jazz became more aware of their tactical thinking. They can't match Yao Ming's height, but the team's interior players Boozer and Okur both have excellent mid-range shooting ability. In order to defend Oku, who can shoot three-pointers, the Rockets have sent Hayes to the periphery to defend, but Boozer kept moving on both sides of the bottom line, shooting one after another extremely high-curved mid-range shots above Yao Ming's head, making the little giant can only look at the ball and sigh.
The Jazz equalized while the Rockets tried to adjust their plans in a time of crisis. In the Battle of Tenno Mountain, Maddy scored 25 points and also delivered 16 assists, setting a career high. Under his resurgence, the Rockets won 96:92.
Trailing 2:3, Sloan and the Jazz were on the verge of being eliminated, but instead of being knocked down by negative emotions, they burst out with more energy, not only equalizing once again. It also made the "home team's winning rule" into a joke in the seventh.
In a life-and-death battle in Houston, the Jazz dominated the game in the final moments, with consecutive rebounds in the frontcourt, Okur's three-pointer and Boozer's free throws, giving the Jazz a 103:99 run. Boozer scored a game-high 35 points and 14 rebounds, and Delon scored 20 points and 14 assists, ending Jeff Van Gundy's coaching career with the Rockets while giving the Rockets six straight losses in the series since 1997.
In the Western Conference semifinals, the Jazz's opponent was the Warriors. There is no doubt that this is a showdown between tradition and cutting-edge.
The Golden State people's fascination with running bombs is simply more crazy than the sun. They chased speed in a frenzy, and whenever there was a chance to shoot from three points away, whether the timer ran for a few seconds, whether it was 20 points ahead or 20 points behind, his disciples would not hesitate to take a jump shot.
In fact, this style of play is indeed a mess, but the Warriors have been winning. After winning 13-4 in the final five weeks of the regular season, Nelson Sr. and his children made a big face for the "run and boom" in the playoffs: eliminating the 67-win regular season old cow and creating the third black eight miracle in NBA history.
Sloan's Jazz doesn't look as invincible as the Mavericks, but one thing Sloane is smarter than Avery Johnson is that he won't take the big men off the team and let Delon Williams and Boozer run against the opposite side. Aside from minor defensive tweaks to Nelson Sr.'s misplaced tactics, Utah played entirely at his own usual pace: finding opportunities through high blocks and empty cuts, or handing the ball over to Boozer and getting the ball into the basket in whatever way he wanted. As a result, the Warriors' magic outside the three-point line in the first round did not last, and the rebounding and defensive holes directly cut the Warriors' throat - when the loss of shooting rate, the Golden State's very unreasonable indiscriminate shooting style became a rope around his neck.
In front of the warriors, Boozer is like Goliath
The Jazz smoothly passed the 4-1 level, and the ultimate challenge to complete the rush out of the West was to beat the Spurs led by Duncan.
The Spurs were the champions of that year, and their style was as old-fashioned as the Jazz: defensive and height-based, the interior was the absolute center of gravity on the offensive end, and a group of functional pitchers on the outside line were used to take out opponents steadily.
If the Jazz had the advantage of deron and Boozer before the Rockets, and against the Warriors they could suppress the opponent with height and confrontation, then the encounter style was similar, and the Spurs were better in every game, and the Jazz were apprentices who met the master. Except for a 25-point win in the third game, the rest of the games were firmly held by the Spurs. Sloane's team ended up in the finals and failed to carry the block forward to the finals. But it's also their best result in nearly 24 years.