Jerry's Kids

The last five Jazz games have been, well, remarkable. Although I am one of the realists who will point out that you can't win a championship if you only play two quarters a game, I think it's great for a different reason: They are playing like a Jerry Sloan team.

During the Carlos Boozer era, the Jazz were not been known for being, to use Logan's favorite condescending adjective, scrappy. (Perhaps pugnacious is a better fit for the Stockton-Malone era Jazz.)

Instead you had players who missed games with phantom injuries. Players getting called out by Deron Williams for giving up in the playoffs because they had vacation plans over the summer. And a team that was psychologically smashed by the Lakers year after year, before they even had a chance to lose the games.

Instead we have a team that seemingly-perennial Jazz-supporter John Hollinger says has "once again established the never-say-die attitude that has made them among the league’s perennial overachievers."

That said, I'm sure Jerry Sloan isn't happy that Jazz have had to come back from double-digit deficits to win the last five. But in the words of the classic player-interview cliché: A win is a win.