Not even the greatest teams from the John Stockton/Karl Malone era ever won a road Game 7, as the Jazz did in beating Houston in the 2007 first round. That breakthrough victory in many ways is what the Jazz still are building on today.

"That type of stuff you have to go through," said Carlos Boozer, who had 35 points and 14 rebounds in the 103-99 Game 7 triumph. "You can't make that kind of stuff up. You have to go through it to become a better team. We went through it and we won it.

"I think that teams that go through it and lose it, they don't gain the same thing. We went through it and won it on somebody else's floor. We have confidence in each other. We grew up a lot that postseason."

After finishing 41-41 the season before, the Jazz opened 2006-07 with a 12-1 start, going on to win 51 games and capture the Northwest Division. Back in the playoffs for the first time since 2003, the Jazz dropped the first two games in the series.

They faced elimination after losing Game 5 in Houston and trailed 88-83 with six minutes remaining in Game 7. Yet the Jazz came back to win as Andrei Kirilenko and Mehmet Okur hit key three-pointers and grabbed a series of late offensive rebounds as a team.

Looking back on the Houston series, Deron Williams said, "I thought that's what really set the tone for this team." Even with Kirilenko breaking down in tears after Game 1, even after losing three times in Houston, the Jazz's confidence kept growing.

"We're a resilient team, we never gave up," Williams said. "We knew we were in a lot of those games. We were there down the stretch, we just didn't come up with a couple plays, a couple stops. It was something we did in that Game 7."

"You surprise yourself and you also surprise a lot of people if you put a lot into it," Jazz coach Jerry Sloan said. "I thought we went in there, we kept our head on, tried to stay focused on what we were doing."

The Jazz's run to the conference finals did come with an asterisk, as No. 8-seeded Golden State stunned Dallas in the first round. Could the Jazz have advanced had they played the 67-win Mavericks with MVP Dirk Nowitzki in the second round?

"We had a nice team, too, and we were feeling really great about ourselves at the time and we were really playing hard," Okur said. "It's tough to say now. It's been a couple years, but I would say we were feeling good."

Williams said he had been hoping to play Dallas instead of Golden State, knowing the matchup problems the Don Nelson-coached Warriors would present. The Jazz did also win two of three games from the Mavericks in the regular season.

"In order to have bragging rights, I think we probably won that because we beat the team that beat them," Sloan said, "and that's how you evaluate it, I think. But Dallas, they were a terrific team."

The Jazz eliminated Golden State in five games, including one of the signature moments in franchise history. With his infant daughter battling a rare form of eye cancer, Derek Fisher flew in from New York in time to will the Jazz to victory in Game 2.

"Just his presence gave us a huge lift," Boozer said. "We just knew he was coming back that day or the next day, depending on how his daughter did. You've got to remember he was going through a whole different ordeal."

Only one step away from the NBA Finals, the Jazz's run came to an end with a 4-1 loss to the eventual champion Spurs in the conference finals.

Much as they have been since February 1999, the Jazz were unable to win in San Antonio and were eliminated with Williams charging unnamed teammates with having already made vacation plans before a 109-84 loss made it official.

As one-sided as the series was, it also comes with a question to consider: What if the Jazz had won Game 4 at EnergySolutions Arena, instead of suffering a 91-78 loss that saw San Antonio shoot 25 fourth-quarter free throws and fans litter the court in frustration?

Had the Jazz won Game 4 -- the Spurs were coming off a 26-point loss in Game 3 -- they would have been assured a Game 6 back in Utah. Would the series have gone seven games? Could the Jazz have somehow reached the Finals?

"It's a possibility; it's a strong possibility," Williams said. "I thought we got cheated." The words sounded so good, he said them a second time: "We got cheated."

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Jazz exceed all expectations in rebuilding a playoff-caliber team