Editor's note: Utah Jazz owner Larry Miller will give his views on the Jazz and the NBA to the Deseret News regularly throughout the playoffs.
IAM GOING into this year's playoffs with a different feeling than in years past. I don't know if that is because I've had too high of ex-pec-ta-tions in the past, which in time led to big emotional letdowns, and didn't want to set myself up for that again, or as I choose to think, that we really are a better team this year. I believe that we have been the best team in the West, and probably the league, since the All-Star break.I believe that Karl Malone has played like a man with a mission all year long. He has learned how not to just put up big numbers, which he has done all his career, but now how to win games. His focus has been laserlike. He deserves to be the MVP.
If John Stockton has lost any quickness or strength to age, he's made up for it with ever-greater intelligent play. By the way, I won't - nor will he - concede he's lost anything in the first place.
It was interesting to see a few people give up a little on Jeff Hornacek after his two for eight and three for 10 performances in Games 1 and 2 of the playoffs. I hope his nine for 12 performance in Game 3 answered those who don't dare to believe. I've learned to never give up on Jeff. He'll always be there in the end.
Besides the three players I've mentioned above, we've been getting great contributions off the bench. Big Dawg (Antoine Carr) and Howard Eisley come to mind first. Also, I told Jerry Sloan that somewhere in these playoffs Chris Morris would come up really big for us. Very often he does so many things that don't show up on the stat sheet.
I must add in closing that the Lakers and Rockets look very good right now, better than I expected they would at this point in the playoffs. Also, who knows who and what will emerge out of the Phoe-nix/
Seattle series. It's tough to call after the "Jekyll and Hyde" games in Seattle.
In the end, I like who and what I think we are. We're deep, and we're driven. I would love to win the championship this year for a lot of reasons. One of them would be to prove that hard work still pays off, even in 1997.