WEDNESDAY

7 a.m.: Everybody has something they detest about their job. I find back-to-back sets of games almost torturous. Waking up after getting three hours (and change) of sleep, dealing with O’Hare Airport, sitting through an hour-long flight delay, finally arriving in Detroit and pulling up to the hotel around 2 p.m. That’s just the start of the day: You haven’t written the first word that’ll appear in tomorrow’s newspaper. The Jazz have five sets of back-to-backs remaining after this one and they can’t get over with soon enough. It’s amazing to me that teams don’t actually go winless in the second game of back-to-backs.

1:10 p.m.: We arrive at the Walt Perrin International Airport in Detroit. I’ve named it such after the Jazz’s vice president of player personnel, who’s one of the many people behind the scenes who work to contribute to the Jazz’s success. Perrin is the lead college scout and lives in suburban Detroit. Most amazing to the two beat writers, he almost reached Diamond Medallion status as a frequent flyer on Delta last year. This is a Ruthian number (125,000 miles) that even those of us who spend our lives on planes can’t fathom.

Of course, Perrin’s not around to catch the Jazz’s annual visit to Detroit. He’s on the road scouting college tournament games. Soon he’ll be attending predraft camps and setting up workouts and filling out summer-league rosters. Every time you watch Wesley Matthews, credit Perrin and Kevin O’Connor with seeing something in the undrafted guard from Marquette that everybody else missed. You can say the Jazz missed, too, but they were on the phone reaching out to Matthews before the 2009 draft was even over.

Now consider the prospect of spending all that time on the road scouting college players  . . . only to see the Jazz trade away your/their newest first-round draft pick (Eric Maynor) to Oklahoma City to get rid of Matt Harpring’s contract and save $10 million in salary and luxury-tax considerations. It’d be like me writing “War and Peace” and then throwing it out the window five months after finishing the last chapter.

O’Connor did make a point back in December of crediting Perrin (as well as Dave Fredman, Richard Smith and the rest of the Jazz’s scouts) with finding a player who proved to be worth $10 million to the franchise.

5:20 p.m.: We’re waiting for Matthews outside the Jazz’s locker room more than two hours before game time. Normally, the media is allowed into locker rooms for a 45-minute period beginning 90 minutes before tipoff. Matthews, though, regularly spends that entire time shooting on the court. He might be a starter on a top-four team in the Western Conference, but Matthews still takes the early bus to the arena for every game. With the Jazz heading to Milwaukee next on this trip, Matthews is the obvious subject for an advance story given his improbable rise as an undrafted rookie out of Marquette.

Kyrylo Fesenko also was on the early bus - - in fact, he’s been told to take the early bus no matter if the world is coming to an end after last month’s miscommunication that left him deactivated for a game - - and was surprised to see us when he walked out of the locker room. We mentioned Matthews’ homecoming in Milwaukee, but Fesenko suggested we write a story about Chuck Norris’ 70th birthday instead.

“Amazing Chuck?” Fesenko said. “Haven’t you heard the jokes? He uppercut a horse and that’s how a giraffe was made.”

6:15 p.m.: The visiting locker room at the Palace of Auburn Hills might be the smallest in the NBA. The debate is between the Palace and Arco Arena in Sacramento. At least the Palace quarters have been remodeled from the “yellow” that Andrei Kirilenko remembers in earlier years. The Jazz players come and go during the pregame period. Fesenko reveals that Kyle Korver told him the Chuck Norris joke before he delivered it to us. Korver says he bought a book of Chuck Norris jokes last summer and has one favorite: “Chuck Norris counted to infinity . . . twice.” Short and sweet and perfect. Mehmet Okur shares that he has his Pistons championship ring at home in Utah. C.J. Miles takes a seat with a brace on his left knee after getting hit by Derrick Rose in the fourth quarter of Tuesday’s game in Chicago. Miles’ knee was flexed inward on the play, but he’ll be good to go against the Pistons.

6:50 p.m.: Each team has a p.r. staff that produces pages and pages of notes for each game. (If you’re interested, the Jazz’s are available at http://www.nba.com/jazz/news/notes.pdf. Just insert a different name in that same space for other teams.) There’s more numbers than you could ever need, but to get the 2 or 3 percent that might prove useful on a given night, they have to produce the other 98 percent that won’t make it on air or in the newspaper.

Some nights are different than others, but Deron Williams often can be found reading the game notes in front of his locker. He was asking earlier this season about why Matthews hadn’t yet qualified to be included in some of the rookie statistical rankings. One day he pulled a pop quiz on the beat writers, asking the Jazz’s record when Matthews hits two or more three-pointers. (The answer is in the game notes: 9-2.)

Detroit has a pretty cool stat in their notes: Pistons teammates Ben Wallace (963 games) and Chucky Atkins (690) rank Nos. 1 and 3 in the most games played among active undrafted players. Brad Miller is No. 2 at 774, Kevin Ollie is No. 4 at 657 and Raja Bell is No. 5 at 604. The all-time leader since the ABA/NBA merger in 1976-77 is Avery Johnson at 1,054 games. Matthews now has a milestone to reach.

8 p.m.: The game proves to be exactly what you’d expect from one team that came in 41-22 and another that came in 22-41. The Jazz establish early that they can overwhelm the Pistons in one-on-one matchups between Williams and Will Bynum and Carlos Boozer/Okur and Jason Maxiell/Jonas Jerebko. The Jazz close the first quarter trailing 29-28 after settling for three-pointers and suffering some defensive/rebounding breakdowns. But it’s only a matter of time before they take control.

They strike quicker than anyone could have expected, with the second teamers opening the second quarter with a 14-0 run and the Jazz eventually building a 20-point lead. That they did it against the Pistons’ second team - - which includes both of Detroit’s featured free-agent signees from last summer in Ben Gordon and Charlie Villanueva - - is especially impressive. The Jazz are now-0 on their last two multi-game road trips. Watching them on the road has become a joy, I’m sure, for Jazz fans when it had to be misery in recent seasons. The Jazz also are now 18-1 when they score 110 points or more.

This was a night to talk to the role players afterward and I made it to the lockers of Korver, Price, Wesley Matthews and Sundiata Gaines in addition to Williams. Asked about the 35-14 second quarter, Jazz coach Jerry Sloan noted that it’s always been his belief that teams shoot better on the second night of back-to-back sets because the edge is off from the previous game. Some of Sloan’s best quotes are about bringing Williams and Boozer back from the bench with a minute left and the Jazz holding a 10-point lead as well as about Matthews’ defense on Richard Hamilton.

The situation in Detroit, by the way, is a disaster. The Pistons used to fill every seat at the Palace only a couple of seasons ago. Their attendance softened last season with the economy and the team taking a step back, but the crowd at Wednesday's game suggested a complete collapse in fan support. The Pistons made Ben Gordon one of the highest-paid free agents out there last summer and Gordon delivered 11 points on 4-for-11 shooting off the bench against the Jazz. You have to wonder if Joe Dumars wouldn't try to sign Boozer or Paul Millsap if given a second chance at the whole thing.

1:15 a.m.: It’s time for bed back at the hotel, but here’s one final thought: The first time I saw Oklahoma City play this season, I thought Scott Brooks had to be coach of the year. The Thunder obviously have an impressive array of young talent, but they also found the right coach with the right system and probably are ahead of expectations. It’s been a night-and-day difference for that team with Brooks as coach as opposed to P.J. Carlesimo. With what the Jazz have done in the last two months, however, I think Sloan deserves (and probably will receive) increasing support.

The case for Sloan is pretty compelling: He helped create an environment in which Boozer could return to the Jazz. Not only didn’t Boozer serve as a distraction, he’s enjoyed one of the most productive seasons of his career. Sloan also wasn’t afraid to start an undrafted rookie in Wesley Matthews and trust Matthews with a series of tough defensive matchups night after night. Sloan made the switch in returning Kirilenko to the starting lineup. He’s not too proud to admit the Jazz should have done it sooner than this season. He also helped create a better defensive culture by introducing daily accountability rankings. (This is one of the things that almost never gets mentioned.) Sloan helped keep the Jazz moving forward even as they were sitting out of playoff position in early January. Last but not least, Sloan never batted an eye when the Jazz made not one, but two trades that weakened his roster this season in the name of salary and luxury-tax savings. The Jazz are 8-3 since the Ronnie Brewer trade and 26-10 since the Maynor deal. If I were voting today, I’d probably go with Sloan over Brooks.

--Ross Siler

Two seasons ago, I brought you a behind-the-scenes series of blog entries from a stretch of four games in five days. It was well-received by readers - - no doubt because of the travel disasters suffered along the way - - so I thought I’d resurrect it for this week’s Jazz trip.

I’ll try to bring you some of the perspective of covering the Jazz. There’s also one question sure to keep you tuned in: With an off day between games in Detroit and Milwaukee, where would you opt to spend the extra night?

TUESDAY

9 a.m.: You can’t go wrong with any trip starting in Chicago. I went to college at Northwestern and still feel a strong connection to the city. When the Jazz came here in December 2008, it was minus-10 degrees and about as cold as I can remember. It’s in the 40s this season, so we’re on the right end of a 50-degree swing in temperatures.

It’s a small world sometimes on this beat for me. My wife’s best friend went to high school in Juneau, Alaska, with one Carlos Boozer. Her younger brother was one of Boozer’s teammates and now coaches at the newly opened rival high school in town. Whatever folks in Utah think of him, Boozer is revered in Juneau, especially after returning home to host a basketball camp in the summer.

I had another small-world moment catching up with my best friend and his wife here on Monday. For whatever reason, I’ve ended up with a disproportionate number of friends in life from Madison, Wis. My friend’s wife went to Memorial High, the alma mater of one Wesley Matthews, and her mother taught at the school. They’ve followed his career from high school to Marquette and now the NBA. So I’m supposed to pass along well-wishes to Matthews from Ms. Shelton in the computer lab.

10:30 a.m.: There’s a trend around the league in which a number of teams - - New York, San Antonio and Boston are the first that come to mind - - have stopped holding morning shootarounds. Considering the Jazz were one of the last teams to stop flying commercial and the last team to turn out the lights for player introductions, I expect they still will be getting out of bed for shootaround in 2020.

This morning, they’re at the Moody Bible Institute, which is a few blocks off Michigan Avenue. The NBA used to hold the annual predraft camp at the college. It also served as a training camp home to USA Basketball in the 1990s. In fact, there’s a picture of the 1996 Olympic team in one of the trophy cases. Jerry Sloan, of course, was an assistant on Lenny Wilkens’ staff. The other two assistants? Did you remember Clem Haskins and Bobby Cremins? What makes the picture (besides that Anfernee Hardaway once was a Dream Teamer) is that Sloan and the other coaches are wearing shorts and loudly striped shirts.

Shootaround is decidedly uneventful. We ask Sloan about Othyus Jeffers’ homecoming in Chicago as well as about Kosta Koufos’ assignment in the D-League. Sloan talks a little about how Hasheem Thabeet’s assignment from Memphis to the Dakota Wizards might have changed some perceptions as far as players being more willing to go down.

“Those are things you’ve got to get over,” Sloan said. “You’ve got to get your mind into basketball and playing.”

Jeffers’ head, meanwhile, seems to still be spinning. He didn’t realize his first trip with the Jazz would be taking him back to Chicago until he saw the itinerary Saturday. He says he has 150 friends and family members - - yes, 150 - - coming to tonight’s game. That’s a different stratosphere than what we typically hear whenever guys go home. Fortunately, most of them got tickets on their own, although we did laugh when Jeffers mentioned to Derek Garduno from the Jazz’s p.r. staff that he might need to buy “a couple.”

Hoping that Jeffers gets into tonight’s game. He’ll have his own cheering section with that many fans.

11:30 a.m.: Run into Mehmet Okur at the John Hancock Tower on an emergency trip to Best Buy for a phone. He is wearing a blue Utah Jazz sweat suit. Way to blend in, Memo.

1 p.m.: Packing up at the hotel, transcribing quotes, making calls and getting caught up on things. Thanks to Dallas’ 12-game winning streak, the Mavericks now own a six-game lead in the Southwest Division. This is significant to the Jazz, who won the season series against the Mavericks. Should they finish with identical records, though, the Jazz would lose a potential tiebreaker to the Mavericks as long as Dallas is a division winner and the Jazz are second in the Northwest behind Denver. This is one of the rules that I’d like to see changed in the NBA, as much as the league wants to reward division winners.

6:15 p.m.: The first thing you notice walking into United Center is that the Bulls have decided to dress up the corridor along the floor level with a series of life-size action shots of some of their all-time greats. Jerry Sloan’s panel occupies the spot to the left of the Bulls’ locker-room door, with a shot of Bob Love to the left of Sloan.

Not that Sloan saw it, of course. He walked from the bus to the Jazz’s locker room from the opposite direction. He was decidedly low-key about the whole thing. “I don’t think it affects me too much,” Sloan said. “It’s like my friend always said, ‘I’m going to eat hamburgers anyway.”

That quote pretty much sums up what Sloan’s all about. He’s the only NBA coach who eats in the press room among us commoners before every game. Even when the Jazz went to Madrid, Spain, in the preseason, Sloan didn’t deviate from his usual routine despite being halfway around the world.

Sloan also was asked about the feeling returning to Chicago all these years later. “It’s like any other place now,” he said. “Just try to go win a ballgame, that’s the bottom line. I had my fun here. I don’t think anybody had any more fun playing basketball than I did. It was more than you could ask for.”

It’s a pretty quiet scene inside the locker room. Andrei Kirilenko sits in front of his locker reading with a wrap around his back. Boozer watches video from the Bulls’ previous game. Deron Williams is perplexed that the Bulls don’t start the clock counting down to game time until 60 minutes before tipoff. It’s 90 minutes almost everywhere else, and NBA players have pregame routines timed to the minute. Jeffers has a maroon velvet blazer in his locker - - not bad for a guy who arrived in the NBA on Thursday.

8:05 p.m.: How do I watch an NBA game? For starters, I take notes on every possession, regardless whether a team scores. You’re always on the lookout for the game-turning moment as well as the night’s trend. You keep track of fouls, substitutions, timeouts, lineup combinations, everything. You’re always watching for the back-to-back baskets that will turn into a 12-2 run. You pay attention to body language and the way players communicate with one another. And when you need a laugh, you just look over at whatever Kyrylo Fesenko is doing.

It’s pretty easy tonight. The Jazz turn up their defense late in the third quarter, which they close on a 15-4 run to take an 11-point lead into the fourth. The Bulls close within six points in the fourth a handful of times before C.J. Miles goes on a 12-point binge in less than three minutes, hitting three three-pointers. The Jazz score 132 points, which is their most on the road in what proves to be 12 years. They shoot 54.2 percent and outrebound Chicago 42-32 and come up with 11 steals, including five by Wesley Matthews. Williams’ assist to turnover ratio is 17 to 1.

There’s always something you miss, though. The Jazz now need to win just five of their final 11 road games to clinch a winning record on the road this season. Did you know the last time they had a winning road record came in 2000-01 when they went 25-16? Miles, meanwhile, scored a season-high 26 points and came three points shy of matching his career high. Did you realize that his six three-pointers are two more than he’s ever made in a  game in his career?

9:30 p.m.: Not even five minutes after the Jazz walk off the court, Sloan emerges from the locker room to talk to the media. Sloan has to be the fastest coach in the NBA when it comes to doing so, which is much appreciated on our part. What’s not so appreciated are the local radio reporters in every town who insist on asking the first question of our coach and our players even though we’re spending 100 nights a year on the road covering these guys and going to (almost) every practice and game in an eight-month span.

Talking to Williams at his locker, I spy a bag of Jack Link's beef jerky under his chair. I ask if he was fueled by jerky for the game and that highlight dunk on Derrick Rose. Williams says he’s planning to dig in now. I’m not a beef jerky fan, but on his way back from the shower, Williams insists on pointing out the nutritional benefits. Namely, that it’s a pretty good source of protein and is 97 percent fat free, according to the packaging. With the Jazz playing back-to-back games, Williams is especially interested in the protein boost. In case you were wondering, I’m pretty sure the jerky was teriyaki flavored.

Miles, meanwhile, was excited about his night. “I felt good from the first shot I took,” Miles said. “I was able to find some open gaps and guys found me and I was able to knock them down. That’s pretty much all it was.” Miles talked about sliding along the wings when the Jazz were running pick-and-rolls and trying to stay available as a shooting option for his teammates. “We have guys that can make shots,” Miles added, “and as we showed earlier this year, it is contagious. When guys are hitting threes, it’s usually a domino effect with the team.”

Williams also couldn’t resist teasing Jeffers about breaking out his best jacket when he knew he was going to visit with mom after the game. A little earlier, Bulls executive vice president John Paxson came into the Jazz locker room to greet Jeffers. Paxson’s son played against Jeffers during the year Jeffers spent at NAIA Robert Morris. Never hurts to know NBA executives, right?

12:40 a.m.: The traffic in Chicago can be so crushing that we’re spending the night at a hotel by O’Hare Airport. The hope is to get five hours of sleep before flying to Detroit for the second game of the back-to-back. The Jazz have beaten the Pistons nine consecutive times and four straight seasons in Detroit. There is nothing worse than back-to-backs, though, and you have to love the NBA scheduling the Jazz to play at Chicago, then Detroit, then Milwaukee. Never mind that Milwaukee is 90 miles up the highway from Chicago and would make so much more sense for a back-to-back. We’ll see if the streak against the Pistons continues and what kind of shape we’re all in tomorrow.

--Ross Siler