Three long hours …

For the next four-to-seven games, Deron Williams will get up close and personal with Los Angeles Lakers star Kobe Bryant.
But won’t take the Jazz-Lakers second-round NBA playoff series, which gets under way Sunday with Game 1, for Williams to learn what Bryant is all about.
The Jazz point learned that first-hand this past summer, when he was a teammate of Bryant’s on the USA Basketball entry in FIBA’s Tournament of the Americas.
‘He was a great teammate, one of the most competitive guys I’ve ever been around,” Williams said today. ‘He works so hard on his game, and he’s the best player in the world.”
Williams recalls one specific day to illustrate his point.
It was the first that national-team members were required to report at a particular point in the summer, and select-team members that were in camp as well had already reported.
‘He (Bryant) was already working out with them,” Williams said. ‘I heard the day we had our first practice he went over and grabbed one of the coaches and was like, ‘Let’s go shoot a little bit.’ He shot for like three hours.”