HOUSTON — The Jazz made it through their first practice after the NBA All-Star Game with full participation by starting small forward Matt Harpring, who missed two of three games before the break with a muscle-related injury in his lower rib cage.
Harpring had hoped to fully heal with four days of rest, but before practicing Monday night he suggested he wasn't sure he had.
"I thought I would feel a lot better having all that time off," he said, "but it's still sore."
Still, Jazz trainer Gary Briggs deemed Harpring "probable" for tonight's game against Houston.
Meanwhile, Karl Malone reported to his first practice after the break sick with a cold. Malone said he just needed "a sweat," and suggested he would be good to go against the Rockets.
Malone spent part of the break on his Arkansas ranch, but because he was not feeling well he skipped participating as planned in a weekend monster truck rally at the Delta Center.
WHO CARES?: Some with the Jazz seemed ambivalent about NBA commissioner David Stern's weekend announcement that the first round of this season's playoff would be expanded from best-of-five games to best-of-seven.
"I don't make the rules. I just play by them," Malone said when asked what he thought about the change. "It doesn't matter to me."
But acting head coach Phil Johnson feels it may make it tougher on the underdogs.
"In a seven-game series," Johnson, "the best team has more chances to win."
REALLY, WHO CARES?: Malone sounded unmoved by much Monday, including the prospect of playing the Rockets in a back-to-back set tonight in Houston and Wednesday night at the Delta Center.
"I don't think nobody really cares," Malone said of what is a relative rarity in the NBA these days.
Johnson remembers having plenty of back-to-backs against the same opponent "in the old days — because there were so few teams."
But now?
"It doesn't make sense, to me," Johnson said, "when there's 29 teams.
"I don't know if it's an advantage, or disadvantage — whatever. But it seems kind of silly, to me, when there are so many teams in the league."
NO SLOAN: The Jazz traveled here Monday without head coach Jerry Sloan, who tonight serves the sixth of a seven-game suspension for shoving referee Courtney Kirkland.
Sloan returns Friday night, when the Jazz are host to Michael Jordan and the Washington Wizards.
E-MAIL: tbuckley@desnews.com