HOUSTON — The Jazz are 21-10, sitting atop the Midwest Division and riding a five-game winning streak after beating Dallas 105-92 on Thursday night.
What better time for a shakeup?
None like the present, Jazz officials decided Friday.
Utah made a move in hopes of upgrading its low-post play, signing 12-season NBA veteran Armen Gilliam to a prorated one-year contract worth $1 million — the minimum allowed for a player with his experience.
"A total player is what I want to be," said Gilliam, who joined the Jazz in Houston late Friday night. "I want to make an impact, and help this team win any way I can."
Before the 6-foot-9, 260-pound Gilliam could do that, though, the Jazz had to make room for him. They did that by waiving forward Pete Chilcutt, who struggled in his short stay with Utah.
The acquisition of Gilliam, a UNLV product who was selected second overall by Phoenix behind San Antonio's David Robinson in the 1987 draft, was well timed and much needed, Jazz coach Jerry Sloan said.
"Obviously, you're always trying to do something that we feel like would improve the team," Sloan said. "And it was a tough decision, because Pete had been here. We were really expected him to play a little bit better for us, I guess, than he had, and that was probably my fault for that.
"But we decided to go in a different direction," Sloan added. "We discussed some different people, and Gilliam seems like the guy that might be able to come in and give us some low-post scoring."
Chilcutt, who is 6-10, is known as a big guy with decent outside shooting range. He never showed that with the Jazz, though, shooting just .355 from the floor and hitting just 1 of 10 from 3-point range.
Enter Gilliam, who prefers to do his scoring down low.
That is something the Jazz need behind power forward Karl Malone, who was to have been backed up by Chilcutt. But with Chilcutt falling to the end of Sloan's bench — he did not play in three of Utah's last four games — that task has fallen lately to Adam Keefe, who is not exactly a consistent scoring threat.
"With Karl out of the ball game," Sloan said, "we don't really have any low-post scoring."
And that just doesn't cut it, even when things are going as well as they are for the Jazz as they prepare for tonight's game against Houston, the second stop in a three-game trip through Texas.
"I just think Coach looked at his team, and decided that after the amount of games we've played, that this was an area we needed to improve on," said Kevin O'Connor, the Jazz's first-season vice president of basketball operations. "And Larry Miller gave us the blessing and mandate to improve the team, and that's what we're trying to do."
By releasing Chilcutt, who was a free agent when the Jazz signed him to a one-year deal last Oct. 3, the Jazz will have to eat what is left on a guaranteed contract worth $885,000 — the minimum allowed for a player with his experience, according terms of the latest collective bargaining agreement between the NBA and the NBA Players Association.
It wasn't too hard of a call after watching Chilcutt play. He averaged only 8.6 minutes per game, grabbed 1.7 rebounds and scored a team-low 1.8 points per game over the 26 games in which he played.
"We all were pretty much in agreement when we brought him in here . . . but I just thought he would shoot the ball better," Sloan said. "We all felt that way, and things didn't seem to work out that way for us. So we obviously started looking for other ways to improve out team — that's all."
In Gilliam, the Jazz get a free-agent vet who played the last three seasons for Milwaukee, including 34 games last season in which he averaged 8.3 points and 3.7 rebounds for the Bucks. The 35-year-old Pittsburgh native has also played for Phoenix, Charlotte, Philadelphia and New Jersey, and has averaged 14.1 points and 7 rebounds a season throughout his NBA career — including highs of 18.3 points per game for the Nets four seasons ago.
Gilliam was traded by Milwaukee to Orlando as part of a four-player deal last August, but never did stick with the Magic and their new coach, Doc Rivers.
"I think he got caught up in a numbers game down there, and they were going to go up and down the floor," O'Connor said. "But he's been in the league for a long time, and he 's a guy that's going to give you some scoring.
"I think the Jazz reputation is such that we're no-nonsense, and we're trying to get things done here a certain way, and I think it says a lot for him that he wanted to come here, because he had other opportunities."
"I just thought I should wait until a good team that had an opportunity came available," said Gilliam. "This is a chance a to be a part of a great team. . . . I almost signed (with other teams) twice, but I pulled out at the last minute — because I wanted to be on a winning team, a team that has a chance to be in the playoffs, and be around for a while."
With Utah, Gilliam also can settle into less of an up-tempo offense than that which the Magic prefer — when, that is, the rust wears off. He hasn't played at all this season, but is expected to be in the lineup when the Jazz face the Rockets tonight.
"We're not going to play him 40 minutes right off the bat," Sloan said. "We'll just play him where we can try to get some help from him, and see how much playing time he can demand."
Even on a 21-10 team rolling as well as the Jazz have been lately, it might be more than you'd think. In addition to backing up Malone, Gilliam may also play alongside him some — especially when Utah is looking to punch up its point production against smaller opponents.
"You have to have some big people out there," Sloan said, "and we really haven't been able to score enough sometimes."