But Wednesday was not most days.

The rookie point guard spent the hours before the biggest game of the season knowing even less than usual about whether he would start, come off the bench, or play at all because of the uncertain prospects for starting guards Deron Williams and Derek Fisher.

"It's hard," Brown acknowledged, "but there's a lot of things harder to do."

Williams was listed as a "game-time decision" with a sprained right foot, and Fisher had not rejoined the team after traveling to New York with his 11-month-old daughter, who is undergoing treatment for a rare form of cancer in her eye.

Williams wound up starting against the San Antonio Spurs in Game 5 of the NBA's Western Conference finals at the AT&T Center, but Fisher did not make it to the arena in time for tipoff. That left Brown to do his best in a difficult situation; he went through half of a normal pregame workout in case he had to start for Williams.

"It's my job," he said. "I have to be ready every day no matter how many days or weeks it has been without you playing. When it's your time to step up or your time to play, you just have to go out there and play."

Guard Gordan Giricek was in the same situation but said he didn't have much trouble staying focused amid the uncertainty. He started in place of Fisher.

"I try not to bother myself with those thoughts," he said before the game. "It's disturbing, it's distracting. . . . I'm an experienced player, so I try to cut down my emotions and try not to get pumped up too much. Just trying to be calm and take everything the way it goes."

Unstoppable

San Antonio's Bruce Bowen hasn't had much luck containing Williams in the series, to the point of conceding that there might not be much he and the Spurs can do about it.

"At some point, you just have to say the kid is good, and there's nothing you can do at certain points," he said. "You can't come up with gimmicks and things like that. And you just go ahead and rely on what you've relied on the whole season, and that's us coming together, doing a better job when we've been lacking in certain areas."

Next season

The Jazz will head into the summer with nearly $59 million committed in player salaries for 2007-08. That puts them above salary cap projections - the cap for this season was $53.135 million - but below the luxury-tax threshold that teams pay a dollar-for-dollar penalty for exceeding.

They have three free agents to decide about re-signing in Rafael Araujo, Dee Brown and C.J. Miles.

When it comes to signing other teams' free agents, the Jazz could use the standard mid-level exception ($5.215 million last season) available to all teams over the salary cap. The Jazz also have a bi-annual exception ($1.8 million) they could use in free-agent signings.

mcl@sltrib.com