Jazz used February to turn team around News Utah Jazz

An eight-game win streak. A 10-1 February that led to Jerry Sloan being named NBA Western Conference Coach of the Month on Monday. Victories in 11 of their last 12 games overall, vaulting them into the thick of the NBA's Western Conference playoff race.

Things really have been going well for the Jazz lately, as point guard Deron Williams readily attests. "I'm happy, man," Williams said after Utah won at Golden State on Sunday night. "My mood is a lot better. Life at home is a lot better. My kids and wife probably like me a lot more. "I hate to lose," he added, "so when we're losing, I'm in a bad mood, a little depressed. We've been winning. I'm upbeat, happy. Hopefully, we can keep it going." Sloan ? whose Jazz have two home games later this week against teams ahead of them in the Western standings, Wednesday vs. Houston and Friday vs. Northwest Division-rival Denver ? sure hopes so. To him, after all, winning games is much more important than winning awards. So is moving up in the conference standings. "I don't pay a lot of attention to it," he said. Others do, and know that on Monday the Jazz stood seventh in the West ? percentage points behind sixth-place New Orleans and a half-game up on eighth-place Dallas. Not that Williams, at least in this stage of the season, would admit to being one of those. "If we just keep winning," he said, "we'll keep moving up. That's how we've got to look at it. We're not trying to catch one team or look at this team and try to catch them. We're just trying to win Basketball games." AWARD CANDIDATE: Sloan's conference Coach of the Month award was the 10th of his career. He got it for a span in which the Jazz matched their record for fewest losses in a multi-game month, with both of their previous such one-loss months coming in 1997. Could he parlay it into more? Last week, two-thirds of the way into the 2008-09 season, ESPN.com's Marc Stein named Sloan his pick for Coach of the Year. Wrote Stein, in part: "After holding the Jazz together through nonstop injuries and somehow keeping them close enough to Denver and Portland to actually win the Northwest Division, Sloan is the choice from a deep field that also features Orlando's perpetually underrated Stan Van Gundy, Houston's equally underappreciated Rick Adelman, Cleveland's much-improved Mike Brown and two living coaching legends: San Antonio's Gregg Popovich and the (Los Angeles) Lakers' Phil Jackson." Stein also mentions Miami rookie coach Erik Spoelstra and Boston's Doc Rivers as candidates. HE SAID IT: Warriors coach Don Nelson, on the Jazz: "I've always loved Jerry Sloan's teams when he's got a full roster and he doesn't have injuries. When everybody's healthy, they're very good." E-mail: tbuckley@desnews.com