Utah Jazz vs Los Angeles Lakers Live Streaming

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3:30 pm EDT Sun May 2, 2010

For Carlos Boozer and Deron Williams, this third time isn’t particularly charming. For the third straight postseason, the Utah Jazz have run into the Los Angeles Lakers. Kobe Bryant and Pau Gasol ended Utah’s last two playoff runs, and the franchise with 15 NBA titles again is blocking the Jazz’s pursuit of their first. Although Utah finished just four games behind the top-seeded Lakers in the overall Western Conference standings, Boozer knows his scrappy but injury-tagged team isn’t given much of a shot to hold off Bryant and his playoff-tested crew in the second-round series, which starts with Game 1 on Sunday at Staples Center. Bryant didn’t exactly spend the Lakers’ 39-hour gap between playoff games studying up on fifth-seeded Utah after Los Angeles finally eliminated Oklahoma City’s Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook in six games. Boozer and Williams are more experienced than the Thunder’s dynamic duo and more familiar with the Lakers, although they’re on equally short rest after knocking off Denver on Friday night.

These franchises have more in common than their geographically bizarre nicknames—which would actually make a whole lot more sense if they swapped. The Lakers have met the Jazz in five previous postseasons dating to 1988. The winner reached the NBA finals each time, from Utah’s Stockton-and-Malone powerhouses in the late 1990s to Bryant’s last two Los Angeles clubs. The Lakers are virtually unchanged from last year, with only Ron Artest added to the mix of last season’s champions who routed Utah in five games in last spring’s first round. The Jazz came back impressively from that disappointment, jumping into the conference title picture this spring behind a breakout season from Williams, a first-time All-Star.