It's hard to watch the Utah Jazz these days without keeping one wary eye on the San Antonio Spurs.
The Spurs lurk just a game behind the Jazz in the Midwest Division standings. And while Utah plays six road games in the next nine nights, the Spurs play two road games, three at home, with the Sonics in Seattle as the only likely loss."These six games are definitely the make-or-break point because it's so tight down the road," said Jazz guard Chris Morris. "It's a situation where we have to keep winning and hopefully they (the Spurs) will start slipping a little bit."
If San Antonio does win four of its next five, the Jazz would have to post a 4-2 mark on this trip to remain atop the division. Even 3-3 wouldn't be a disaster; the Jazz would return home a half game behind the Spurs, who would then embark on a four-games-in-six-days Eastern swing, while the Jazz play three straight home contests.
The Jazz, of course, don't like talking about a split on this excursion.
"We need to go out and establish ourselves," said Antoine Carr. "We don't want to go 3-3. We want to get them all."
Carr said the Jazz need to "do the same thing on the road trip that we did during this home streak," which was, basically, beat all comers. Utah won its sixth straight Friday night against the Rockets, their 14th in a row at the Delta Center, their 10th of 11 since the All-Star break.
And they think they can play better.
"We're playing pretty well, but we're still trying to find ourselves," said forward Adam Keefe. "We're still kind of looking . . . trying to find out where Chris Morris fits into this team, also Greg Ostertag."
Jazz veteran John Stockton says a long road trip is a good time to work guys into the mix.
"Anytime you go out on the road like that it's a chance to think about nothing but basketball, talk about nothing but basketball, get your team together," he said.
If you were planning a long road trip, you could do worse than open with Minnesota, this afternoon's opponent at the Target Center. The Jazz have beaten the T-Wolves twice this season by double digits and have historically caused them problems.
On the other hand, Minnesota is also the worst team Utah will face on this trip. For that reason, the Jazz can't afford to get casual.
"These are games we must have," Morris said. "It's going to take a lot of energy to go out there and play great games every night."
Since their recent trade with Atlanta, the T-Wolves are starting Spud Webb at point guard, J.R. Rider at big guard, Andrew Lang at center, Tom Gugliotta at power forward and Kevin Garnett at small forward.
Minnesota has played better lately, winning four of nine since the trade. But they continue to be wildly erratic, losing by a franchise-high 41 points at Miami, then beating the Sixers by 13 in Philly the next night.
"If I could figure out why we go from one extreme to the other so much, I'd be rich," said Minnesota coach/GM Flip Saunders.
One thing Saunders has done lately, with Christian Laettner gone, is focus his offense more on rookie Garnett. Since coming from Atlanta, Lang has been impressed with the kid who last year at this time was in high school in Chicago.
"I've never played with anyone that young who can do so much," Lang said. "He's young, but he plays like a man."