If John Stockton is sick and Karl Malone spends the fourth quarter on the bench, it usually means the Utah Jazz are in serious trouble.

Against the NBA's elite teams, that still would be the case. But against an undermanned Atlanta team Monday at the Delta Center, the Jazz used a 27-7 second-half run to dispatch the Hawks, 104-86.Not that Malone and Stockton didn't contribute. If the Mailman hadn't been around to score 28 points in the first three quarters, a 27-7 run might not have been enough to catch the Hawks. And Stockton, though he is suffering from a cold and played just 21 minutes, finished with nine assists and was on the floor for most of that decisive stretch.

It helped that the Hawks were without Kevin Willis, probably their best player, who was traded to Miami on Monday shortly before game time. Without his rebounding, Atlanta was trounced on the boards, 52-37. But Willis' absence actually may have worked in the Hawks' favor, at least for a while. At the start of the game they seemed determined to pick up the slack, while the Jazz may have been expecting them to succumb quietly.

"We were geared up to play against Kevin Willis and then thought that maybe these guys would come out and just show up, but they didn't," Malone said.

They didn't to the tune of 57 first-half points, a total that had Jazz coach Jerry Sloan a tad upset.

"We were struggling defensively again and our offensive selections weren't very good in the first half, and I was pretty upset about that," said Sloan, who quietly collected his 400th NBA victory.

Sloan's displeasure must have made an impression at halftime, because the Jazz held the Hawks to fewer points in the second half than they'd scored in the first quarter . After shooting 49 percent in the first half, the Hawks barely topped 30 percent in the second.

Ex-Jazz forward Tyrone Corbin, now with Atlanta, thought the Hawks' personnel situation deserved more credit for the loss than the Jazz defense.

"We were in a little situation here where we were shorthanded because of the trade today," Corbin said. "Towards the end I think we ran out of gas a little bit."

Along with Malone, the guy who deserves the most credit for keeping the Jazz in contention is John Crotty, the point guard with the unenviable job of backing up perennial All-Star Stockton. When foul trouble limited Stockton to seven first-half minutes, Crotty stepped in and kept the Jazz from coming unglued offensively.

"John Crotty did a terrific job off the bench," Sloan said. "This is a guy who has really picked up his game. In the first half he kept us in the game."

Crotty finished with 12 points, five assists and six rebounds. He was two of two from the three-point line and made the highlight shot of the contest, grabbing Bryon Russell's airball in midair and scoring on a reverse layup.

"More and more you realize, 'I can do this, I can do this,' and playing with that kind of attitude you're not afraid of making a mistake and helping the team win," Crotty said.

Others who stepped up: forward David Benoit, who finally hit some outside shots, including a three-pointer, and finished with 13 points on six of 12 from the field; and guard Walter Bond, who made five of six shots, including three three-pointers, for 14 points.

The Jazz's three-pointers are what ultimately buried the Hawks. With the Jazz up 73-70 late in the third, Crotty drilled one to make it a six-point lead. With one second on the clock and Atlanta within five at the end of the period, Benoit hit his trey. And Bond opened the fourth quarter with back-to-back threes.

"It's demoralizing when people start hitting those shots on you," Crotty said of the three-point barrage.

"We got a little lax on defense and they hit probably six or seven three-pointers in that one stretch there and we didn't hit any shots, and it went from a four-point game to 20, just like that," Koncak said.

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Koncak's comment shows the devastating effect a rain of threes can have on a team. There were actually just four Jazz threes in that run, but to the Hawks, it looked like more.

Stacey Augmon led the Hawks in scoring, with 24, while Andrew Lang added 17 and Ken Norman chipped in 15. Corbin, apparently enjoying a familiar floor, had his best shooting night of the young season, scoring 10 points on five of nine from the field.

The Jazz now travel to San Antonio, where they will face the Spurs on Wednesday night in a rematch of playoff opponents.

GAME NOTES: Russell came into the game having missed all five of his field-goal attempts this season, then missed his first six before making his last two . . . Utah's Antoine Carr continues to have trouble adjusting to the NBA's new rules; he picked up three personals in the first 2:48 of the second quarter . . . Malone got a technical for what appeared to be a taunt of Koncak. That's a $500 taunt, the NBA says.

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