--The Jazz averaged 106.2 points a game in the regular season but have averaged just 86 a game against the Rockets. Deron Williams said after Tuesday's Game 5 loss that the Jazz have to look to run instead of settling into half-court game.
Jazz coach Jerry Sloan faulted his team's shot selection, saying the Jazz settled too easily for outside jumpers. The Jazz went 0-for-14 from three-point range in Game 4, followed by 2-for-9 in Game 5. "We've just got to realize what's a good shot and what's a bad shot," Williams said, "when to make the extra pass and when to shoot it."
--The Jazz had rookies Morris Almond and Kyrylo Fesenko sing "Happy Birthday" to guard Jason Hart at Tuesday's pregame shootaround. The biggest surprise to some of the Jazz players was that the Ukrainian Fesenko knew all the words.
"Fes will act like he doesn't know words, but he knows them," Williams said. "He's one of those guys, when the cop pulls him over, he doesn't speak English all of a sudden."
Hart joined Matt Harpring as the only 30-year-olds on the Jazz roster. The Jazz were the NBA's fifth-youngest team on the last day of the regular season and its second-youngest playoff team after Atlanta.
--The Jazz trailed 43-32 at halftime of Tuesday's Game 5. That marked the first time in 12 playoff games against the Rockets dating to last year's first-round series that the Jazz went into halftime down.
QUOTE TO NOTE: "He must have had surgery." -- Jazz coach Jerry Sloan on Tracy McGrady and the possibly exaggerated reports about the condition of his balky left knee.
