This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2005, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
A little more than six months later, the Jazz delivered something resembling the improved product that owner Larry Miller promised.
Sure, it took a couple of wildly lucky shots to beat a Dallas team that had played a double-overtime game the night before, but there was a lot to like about the way the Jazz took control of this thing - the way they so rarely did last season.
"We should play this way all year," said Mehmet Okur.
Yeah, that would be acceptable.
Before the team's final home game of the dismal 2004-05 season, Miller grabbed a microphone and told the Delta Center crowd, "We'll do everything we know how, through the draft, through free agency, through rehabilitation of our injured players, and come back bigger and better and stronger than ever."
And so it was Wednesday night that the franchise opened the '05-06 season with nine new Jazz Dancers (someone else counted) and four newly arrived players among the 11 in uniform for Opening Night, which resulted in a 93-82 victory.
Naturally, the fourth-quarter star was the only player who appeared in all 82 games last season.
The strongest impression everybody took home was of rookie point guard Deron Williams, who's now only 15,803 assists behind John Stockton on the all-time list and only about 1,000 more games like this from getting his own statue on the Delta Center plaza. Yet the Jazz would not have won this game without the new Okur.
Maybe he's not officially new, like the kind of additions Miller promised: Williams (draft), Devin Brown and Milt Palacio (free agency), Greg Ostertag (trade) and Andrei Kirilenko (rehab).
But this is not the same, old Memo. He's nothing at all like the out-of-shape, out-of-sync center who launched his first season with the Jazz last November. That version of Okur never could have played 37 minutes Wednesday or scored 15 of his 27 points in the fourth quarter, most of which the Jazz desperately needed.
"I told everybody here, I'm ready to roll," Okur said.
Looking back, Sloan believes he should have tried to accelerate Okur's conditioning last season simply by playing him more, instead of waiting for him to get into shape. Okur solved the dilemma himself this time.
"It's been a long summer for me," he said. "I know what I did wrong last year."
The Jazz played all kinds of games like Wednesday's last season, when they frequently "just caved in," according to Sloan. "This year, we got in a tough situation, and we fought back."
The shot everybody will talk about came with 1:30 left, when Okur's twisting, two-handed fling to beat the 24-second clock somehow banked into the basket for an 87-80 lead. Yet the more important shot was the one that came on the Jazz's previous possession, when Okur took a pass from Williams in a one-point game and knocked down a long three-pointer.
"Memo can shoot the ball; there's never been any question about that," Sloan said.
In the days before the opener, Miller declared the Jazz "stronger at every position," as evidence that the front office had lived up to his April promise.
He was not about to make any outlandish forecasts about making the playoffs, saying the Jazz are still too young to win regularly on the road. But improvement starts at home, where the Jazz were only 18-23 last season - even with Okur's last-second shots that beat San Antonio twice.
"I do have expectations of getting a lot better this year," Miller said, "and really building a foundation for where we go."
At the moment, the project looks fairly promising.
Of course, Williams will not bank in 61-footers every night and Okur and the Jazz will not always finish this strong. But after everything this team went through last season, this sure was a good way to start.