WASHINGTON — The simple out for the Jazz on Tuesday night might have been merely shredding the refs.
Oh, they seemed tempted. Even delivered a shot or two or three, some veiled, a few not-so-concealed.
After pondering the big picture, however, assessing underlying fault for an 91-87 loss to the Washington Wizards was an easy call.
"You can't blame the officials," captain Matt Harpring said after 13-11 Utah lost to the team with the fifth-worst record (7-16) in the NBA coming into the game.
Instead — while offering a blunt assessment as to why the Wizards did nothing but go to the free-throw line in the game's final three-and-a-half minutes, and they never did make it there in the final two — the Jazz also pointed at themselves for allowing Larry Hughes to score a season-high 38 points, and kicked themselves for not having put Washington away much earlier.
Utah led by four after three quarters and by as many as six at 69-63 with just after 10 minutes to go, but the Jazz allowed Washington to creep back in as Hughes hit a free throw resulting from a defensive three-second technical, two more freebies that followed, and finally a 3-pointer that tied it at 69.
"Once we ran them down and went up in the third," guard Raja Bell said of the Jazz rallying from 14 down in the second quarter, "we had to have that killer instinct and really jump on them, and we didn't do that."
Instead Hughes — who led the Wizards in scoring for a fifth straight time, and has become Washington's go-to guy with both Jerry Stackhouse and Gilbert Arenas out battling injures — had his way.
For that, Jazz coach Jerry Sloan bemoaned the fact Utah did not lend nearly enough aid to defenders Bell, DeShawn Stevenson and Andrei Kirilenko.
"It doesn't make any difference who's guarding him when your big people don't show up and give the kind of help necessary to try to make somebody else beat you," Sloan said.
"Our big people just couldn't get off their rear end and step up and give us enough help to try to turn him back the other way," he added. "If he wanted to go down the middle of the lane, he was able to do that."
Hughes did seem able to drive and slash at will, usually either scoring or going to the free-throw line — or both — when he did.
"He's a really great player," Bell said. "I'll take nothing away from him."
As if Hughes wasn't enough, though, Bell also defended himself.
"You know, as a defender and someone who has to guard someone like that, it's very tough when you play great D and he jumps in the air and screams, and they give him free throws," Bell said. "It's hard to play defense, and it's hard for me to do my job, when it goes down like that."
After Kirilenko hit a 3-pointer to pull Utah within one at 86-85 with 2:43 left, Hughes would go to the line for six free throw attempts. Four of those tries came after Kirilenko - who led Utah with 17 points, while Harpring, Bell and Carlos Arroyo added 15 apiece — converted a free throw that again made it a one-point game, with Washington up 88-87.
The Jazz, meanwhile, closed with Bell losing a battle underneath with center Etan Thomas, Kirilenko getting blocked inside by Thomas, and center Greg Ostertag missing a couple of chippies that would have tied it at 89 with just a minute left.
Utah looked for fouls on both the Bell and Kirilenko plays, but none were called.
"I was blocked, but that's part of the business. Sometimes it happens, you know?" Kirilenko said, adding, "We can't depend so much on the referees, okay? They do what they want to do."
"You know, some nights, for whatever reason, you go in there and you make an aggressive move, and you don't get a call," Bell said. "So, between that and not really being able to get stops when we needed them, that was enough for them to win the game. Enough said on the that. I don't want to get myself in trouble."
Sloan, too, bit his tongue. Or at least tried.
"We did what I thought you're supposed to do: take the ball to the basket," the Jazz coach said.
"You take the ball to the basket, you take the ball hard. That's exactly what they did," Sloan added. "They got the free-throw line, and we didn't. You don't get the call. They get the call. And you go home."
Or, in this case, on to New Jersey, for tonight's third outing in a six-game Eastern road swing - thinking, all the way there, about what should have been, but was not.
"That's another game we should have won," Arroyo said, "and we know that."
E-mail: tbuckley@desnews.com