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Before the Jazz ventured — and later veered — off into the purgatory of the 2010-11 season, Al Jefferson was a happy man. He said he was excited to be on a winning team, a team that could do some damage in the postseason, and he looked forward to helping that team win even more and do even more damage.

"It's good to be here," he said. "It's good to be with these guys, on a team that wins and knows how to win, veteran guys who have won big games, guys who expect to win big games. It's Deron's team. I'm here to help. I'm happy, man. I'm thrilled. … Al Jefferson's here to win a championship."

Nearby, Deron Williams was saying: "This could be the best team I've ever played on."

Fast forward to Thursday, when the Jazz were cleaning out their lockers at EnergySolutions Arena a full month before they usually do, no playoff berth earned, Jefferson looked like an empty man who had carried heavy burdens and waded through muddy waters, and to no good end. Losing 43 games and winning just 39 will do that to the most hopeful of players.

After reflecting on what went wrong, how the team and the entire environment — Jerry Sloan leaving, Williams getting traded, early wins turning into late losses — had changed, Jefferson was asked about the future, about the bright prospects of the ongoing mixing of youngsters Gordon Hayward, Derrick Favors, and Jeremy Evans with oldsters Devin Harris, Paul Millsap and himself.

He suddenly was a happy man again.

And he wasn't the only one.

"Sometimes when I think about it too much, I get too excited," he said. "Just to see the things that Gordon do, see the things that Derrick do, see the things that Jeremy do, [they] just got better and better … with all the other guys, I just think it's going to be something real special. That's why I'm so excited to get started again. What we got here and what Kevin [O'Connor] is going to continue to do, the sky's the limit."

For all the recent pain of a historic freefall, the Jazz's starting out 27-13 and finishing in a spiral to 12-30, it's the promise of the future that boosted them Thursday and will lift them over an offseason that could be complicated and elongated by labor strife.

Favors, 19, and Hayward, 21, are too young and too loaded with burgeoning talent, apparently, to fret much over whatever damage the suits will inflict on one another in the coming months. Everyone — from opponents like Kobe Bryant to friendlies like Millsap, Harris, and Jefferson — realizes that, from a competitive standpoint, the Jazz vets will fly as high as the kids take them. Not that they'll do it alone, but this much is the stone-cold truth: If the Jazz are going to create deep runs into the playoffs in the seasons ahead, they'll be led by those embryonic stars — and maybe guys yet to be drafted — who have only just begun to emerge.

Hayward, who attributed his progress to the seasoning and confidence that come by way of increased playing time, is willing to accept that responsibility of leadership.

"I'm going to do whatever I can to improve, and come back ready to play," he said. "I hope [my teammates] do the same. … I've always been a natural leader, not vocally, but by example. I'll continue to do that. I'm very optimistic. We have a lot of guys willing to put in the work and the time."

Favors, who said he will focus on "getting bigger" and "working on my whole game" during the offseason, also acknowledged the promise within himself, as well as on the team collectively, and that the two are deeply connected.

"I agree 100 percent," he said. "I just have to keep working hard, keep improving, and we have to keep developing good chemistry. Just go out there and have fun and play our game. If we do that … sky's the limit."

When two players, one a veteran and the other a rookie, pull the sky's-the-limit card at the punctuation of a sub-.500 season, it reveals either abject delusion or authentic possibility. It could go either way here, but even that, at the end of this particular season, is positive enough.

"We can be good," Favors said.

"I think it's going to be scary," said Jefferson. "We can be that good."

GORDON MONSON hosts "The Gordon Monson Show" weekdays from 2-6 p.m. on 104.7 FM/1280 AM The Zone. He can be reached at gmonson@sltrib.com.