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Coming into Game 2, they were your classic no-hopers.

The Utah Jazz
entered its first-round NBA playoff series without its starting small
forward. In Game 1, it lost its starting centre.

Someone named
Kyrylo Fesenko was in the starting lineup Monday night. Radio guys ran
around trying to figure out how to pronounce his first name. (Think of
former Princeton University coach Pete Carril’s last name.) A Sunday
headline in Utah’s Deseret News read: “Face it, Jazz season all but
over.” Veteran Jazz coach Jerry Sloan just shrugged. “We’ve been doing
it all year,” he said.

Facing a
prohibitive deficit if they lost, the Jazz summoned the toughness of
their coach and made it a series with a gutsy 114-111 victory over the
Denver Nuggets that sends the series to Salt Lake City even at a game
apiece.

“We’re
short-handed, but our season’s not over yet,” said Jazz point guard
Deron Williams, who led his team with 33 points and 14 assists.
“There’s a lot of basketball to be played.” Now it’s the Nuggets who
must regroup. Their defense was absent-without-leave for much of the
game. You don’t win in the playoffs that way.

“We just gave them
too many layups,” acting Nuggets coach Adrian Dantley said. “They got
to the rim too easy.” Carmelo Anthony, the hero of Game 1, fouled out
of Game 2 with 32 points. But after making 18-of-25 shots in Game 1, he
made half as many, 9-of-25, in this one.

The Jazz spent much
of the time between Games 1 and 2 talking about being more physical
with Anthony, although Sloan tried to downplay it, saying he couldn’t
change the laid-back personalities of swingmen C.J. Miles and rookie
Wesley Matthews.

The Nuggets should have listened.

The Jazz came out
flopping, as if the notion they could play Melo physically with their
willowy defenders had actually been an inside joke.

Four of Anthony’s
personal fouls were offensive – in both senses of the word. The
flopping worked, as it often does in the NBA, because – let’s be honest
– the referees reward it about 10 times more often than they should.
Guy falls, whistle blows. It’s a Pavlovian response.

While Utah may take
credit for Anthony missing many of the same shots he made Saturday
night, sometimes basketball isn’t that complicated. Sometimes the
defense is responsible for shots not falling and sometimes it’s not.
Sometimes shooters just get hot. And sometimes they get cold.

Getting offensive

Dantley tried
repeatedly to point this out as people asked what was wrong with the
Nuggets when they lost their regular-season finale by 22.

In Game 1, he said
Monday, “We played the same way we did against Phoenix offensively, but
Melo made shots.” The same was true of Utah in the first half of Game
2. Williams made all five of his first-quarter shots, and Carlos Boozer
was 8-of-11 by intermission. The Jazz shot a stunning 68 percent from
the floor in the first half.

Although the
Nuggets’ defensive priority had been to play Williams better in
transition, Ty Lawson seemed to be the only defender who could stay in
front him and he picked up two fouls in nine first-half minutes.
Although Williams seemed to score at will, the Nuggets did induce him
into seven turnovers.

Boozer is almost
impossible to defend when he’s hitting his fadeaway jumper because he
gives ground to create space for his shot.

Midway through the third quarter, the Jazz was up 14 and looked ready to pull out the classic shorthanded victory.

But even on a night when his shot wasn’t falling, Anthony refused to submit.

After he fed J.R.
Smith for a 27-foot 3-pointer to cut the deficit to seven, Melo faced
up Boozer at the other end, batted his pass into the air, caught it,
dribbled upcourt, had it slapped away, chased it down, got it back,
dribbled into the lane and laid it in over two defenders.

Then he danced back
up the floor urging on his teammates: “Let’s go! Let’s go!” Smith
pointed to the nonexistent watch on his wrist as if to say, it’s about
that time.

Not this time. The Jazz did what it had to do. Now it’s up to the Nuggets to return the favor.

New York Times News Service