This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2016, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
The Jazz's most recent victory in a playoff game occurred long enough ago to be commemorated in a book.
"Furious George," the memoir of longtime NBA coach George Karl, is receiving attention mainly for his criticism of Carmelo Anthony, his star player for parts of six seasons in Denver. But the Jazz figure prominently into Karl's career, at a few junctures, and one of those checkpoints involved the Jazz's last playoff win — in a game, not just a series.
The 2010 playoffs, during which Karl was absent from the Nuggets due to cancer treatment, matched the Jazz and Denver in a first-round series.
Amid injuries to Andrei Kirilenko and Mehmet Okur, the Jazz won the series in six games. Karl basically blames former Jazz star Adrian Dantley, the Nuggets' interim coach, for Denver's fade but also says Dantley was in an "unfair" position.
"AD, who'd been hired by the previous Nuggets coach, had a low-key, introverted style," Karl writes. "I don't know if my teams take on my personality, but at least they respond to my personality. But AD — a go-his-own-way guy — was not about to become a yeller or a motivator."
The Jazz took a 112-104 victory in Game 6, behind Carlos Boozer's 22 points and 20 rebounds, then were swept by the Los Angeles Lakers and haven't won a playoff game since then.
Karl's trip to the 1996 NBA Finals with Seattle also brings the Jazz into the book. The Sonics of Gary Payton and Shawn Kemp met the Jazz of John Stockton and Karl Malone in the Western Conference finals. After trailing 3-1, the Jazz forced Game 7 — and Seattle guard Nate McMillan was bothered by a back injury.
"But we showed plenty of guts in Game Seven," Karl writes. "Before the game I made two points: Malone will try to win it by himself and we've got to play dirty. We shot up Nate and he made it through twelve minutes. Payton-Kemp outplayed Stockton-Malone. We won 90-86. We were Western Conference champions. We sprayed, spilled and drank champagne in the locker room, a first for all of us."
The Sonics lost to Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls in six games in the NBA Finals, as the Jazz would do the next two seasons.
Overall, "Furious George" (written with Curt Sampson) is what I expected from Karl, always one of the best interviews among NBA coaches of his era. It should be fun for longtime Jazz fans to read, considering how coaches Frank Layden and Jerry Sloan competed against him.
The book is written pretty much how Karl speaks, skipping around chronologically and pausing to tell stories. And he gets his points across. Karl labels Anthony, J.R. Smith and Kenyon Martin "the spoiled brats you see in junior golf and junior tennis" — among other shots in a book with the secondary title of "My Forty Years Surviving NBA Divas, Clueless GMs, and Poor Shot Selection."
Twitter: @tribkurt