A new-look starting lineup helped the Utah Jazz down the Vancouver Grizzlies, 98-80, Wednesday night in the Delta Center. Greg Foster started at
center in place of Greg Ostertag, and Adam Keefe was in Bryon Russell's spot at small forward.Then again, it probably wouldn't have mattered who Utah coach Jerry Sloan started. He could have gone to battle with sixtysomething "Hot" Rod Hundley, the Bear and a Jazz dancer in the lineup with Karl Malone and Jeff Hornacek and expected similar results.
Vancouver, frankly, looked like a lottery-bound team playing its third game in four days.
Which, of course, it was.
"I don't think we had any juice right from the beginning," is how Vancouver coach Brian Hill put it.
He'd get no argument from the Jazz. Utah had a 20-point halftime lead and was never threatened the rest of the way. Malone tied his season-high with 26 points despite playing with a sprained left ankle, while Hornacek added a season-best 19 points to lead the Jazz to the easy win. Shandon Anderson scored 13 points off the bench.
The level of competition may not have been the strongest, but it was still an important victory for the Jazz psyche. Utah is now 3-4 on the year.
The shake-up in the rotation was not the panacea for Utah's season-long shooting woes - the Jazz still only made 43.8 percent of their shots and missed half their layups - but it seemed to serve its purpose. The Jazz, as the 19,851 fans in attendance can attest, played with more intensity and appeared to have better chem-is-try than they'd had in any other game this year.
"It was the first time all season I'd seen them pat each other on the back when they made a good play," said Sloan.
Added Keefe: "It seemed like people were able to forget about their own little world and start seeing the team thing. When that happens, you have guys pulling for each other."
Whether the lineup change had anything to do with the renewed team spirit or not, Sloan liked what he saw.
Hill gave Sloan's new starting lineup a two-thumbs-up review, too.
"When you make a change (in the starting lineup) like that, you do it for a reason: to bring more energy, more offensive rebounding, defensive intensity," said Hill. "That's what those guys bring. Foster and Adam Keefe are two of the better offensive rebounders in the league."
Keefe was playing in his 226th regular season game for the Jazz but in his first as a starter. He finished with a game-high nine rebounds to go along with four points. Foster, after getting burned defensively early by Bryant Reeves, settled in to score 10 points on 5-of-6 from the field.
They each played intensely for the 22 minutes they were on the floor.
"I just wanted to come out and play with controlled abandon," said Foster. "That's what we need: to play hard, to play with some energy and emotion. We did that tonight, but we still didn't play our best game."
Russell and Ostertag gave the Jazz a lift when they came off the bench - even if they both are still struggling with their shooting touch. The pair were on the court during the entire second quarter when the Jazz put the game away by outscoring the Grizzlies, 29-12.
"I thought I played good tonight," said Russell, who finished with eight points and three rebounds but was only 2-for-9 from the field. Both of his made field goals were 3-pointers.
Ostertag's shooting was even worse than Russell's. He made only 1-of-9 shots from the floor and 1-of-6 free throws. As bad as Ostertag was, he still scored three times as many points Wednesday as he did in the previous two games combined. He had a grand total of one point last weekend against Denver and San Antonio.
On the bright side, Ostertag played solid defense in his 26 minutes Wednesday. He tied Keefe for the game-high with nine rebounds, he blocked three shots and he even took a charge in the second quarter.
"The one thing that was really important to us is that we were a lot more active defensively,"
said Sloan. "We had 26 deflections in the first half and 16, I believe, in the third quarter."
The new starting lineup will get a second shot Friday night, Sloan said. That's when Seattle comes to town to give the Jazz a much stiffer test.