It's hard to blame the Utah Jazz for stifling a yawn or two during Monday night's 105-79 thumping of the New Jersey Nets.
The Jazz, after all, are off to a 9-2 start, the best in franchise history, while the Nets, well, it's tough to comprehend how the Nets ever won four of their first nine games.New Jersey came into this contest billed as the NBA's worst shooting team, at 39 percent, and they did nothing to prove themselves unworthy of that reputation. They had to rally to shoot 32.5 percent for the game; midway through the third quarter they had amassed 13 field goals while firing away at a 26.5 percent clip.
They scored seven points in one stretch of 12 minutes, two points in another span of six minutes. They buried two of 19 three-pointers (10.5 percent), and their bench was a combined seven of 40 (17.5 percent). You can't knock the Nets' versatility, however - they shot jump-hook airballs from two feet as adroitly as they launched three-point airballs.
Not even the meeting of the Jazz's Chris Morris with his old team, the team he spent seven nightmarish seasons with, could perk up this mongrel. For most of the fourth quarter, the fans were more interested in tossing around Jazz souvenirs than in watching Nets guard Rex Walters miss 11 of 14 shots.
Morris did take a couple of shots from his old Net buddy, Rick Mahorn, who is notable nowadays chiefly for having a posterior large enough to be mapped. Mahorn leveled Morris in the second quarter with a mammoth pick, then got ejected late in the third quarter for an elbow to Morris' head. Except that Morris admits he flopped. "Oh, that was a good acting job," Morris said. "I had to fake that because it (Mahorn's elbow) was coming."
By the time Mahorn departed (offering the crowd a digital salute on his way), Jazz forward Karl Malone was also in the locker room, having left the bench in the third quarter, with the score 71-38, to get treatment for a minor leg ailment. The Mailman played fewer minutes than five other Jazzmen, and when's the last time that happened? Malone emphasized that he didn't leave because he was mad at anyone, only because he could see the game was under control, at least on the scoreboard.
"These are the kind of games that are out of control and you get hurt," Malone said.
After Malone's departure the Nets did make something of a comeback, outscoring the Jazz 11-2 over the last four minutes of the third quarter, and 8-0 in the opening minutes of the fourth quarter, to cut their deficit to 20. But Jazz coach Jerry Sloan sent starters Morris and John Stockton back into the game, and they managed to quell the Nets' little uprising.
"The refreshing thing about this was how other guys picked it up, because theyknew I wasn't coming back," Malone said.
One guy who picked it up was Adam Keefe. The kamikaze redhead grabbed a career-high 17 rebounds and hit six of 11 shots for 16 points, second only to Morris' 22.
Stockton said the Jazz's second-half easing up, once they got the big lead, was somewhat understandable.
"Coming back from a road trip, you have a tendency to let down and count on the crowd to carry you," he said.
Sloan was less understanding.
"We got that lead in the third quarter and quit playing basketball," he said. "I was embarrassed for us." The coach continued: "I don't want schoolyard basketball, because that's losing basketball. We can play a lot better."
The only downside to this game for Utah was the loss of rookie Greg Ostertag. X-rays late Monday night determined that the fourth metacarpal bone in his right hand was broken, and he could be out up to six weeks.
The Jazz's other games this week figure to be much tougher. They face Pacific Division leader Sacramento on Wednesday, then Central Division leader Chicago on Friday, both in the Delta Center.