CHARLOTTE, N.C. — He has become a scoring machine, popping basket after basket as if he was playing an arcade game. He had a career-high 31 points on 11-of-17 shooting, and almost single-handedly carried the Jazz through overtime. He is doing practically everything coach Jerry Sloan wants.
And what are the questions Mehmet Okur was asked after the Jazz's 95-91 OT win over Charlotte on Monday night?
How could you possibly pass up that shot at the end of regulation? Did you realize how wide open you were? What were you thinking?
So it went Monday for Okur and the now 3-1 Jazz, who overcame their blunders to open a four-game Eastern road swing and a stretch with six-of-seven on the road with a victory in their first visit to the new Charlotte Bobcats Arena.
"Memo did hang in there," Sloan said in response to the miscue that very nearly cost Utah dearly. "When he got shots after that I was concerned a little bit that he'd back off, but he kept going forward — and that's the biggest thing to do when you make a mistake.
"He stayed with it."
As did the Jazz, who managed to win despite 24 turnovers and paltry 57.5 percent (23-of-40) free-throw shooting. "We kept shooting ourselves in the foot every time, turning the ball over and doing things you wouldn't expect. Then the way we shot free throws was horrendous," Sloan said. "So you have to feel a little bit lucky to be able to come away with a win when you're out on the road and have that kind of, uh, un-production.
"I don't think it's production when you give up 23 points (on) 24 turnovers, then we shoot 50-some percent from the free-throw line."
While he's at it, Sloan also could have mentioned blowing a 10-point lead with less than eight minutes to go.
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Utah was up 79-69 before Charlotte went on a 13-2 run, including an 18-foot Brevin Knight jumper that made it 82-81 Bobcats with 2:36 remaining. Matt Harpring answered with a jumper of his own, but with one free throw from Emeka Okafor and two from Knight, Charlotte was back ahead by two. Andrei Kirilenko fed Harpring for a layup that tied it at 85 with 48.8 seconds left, but Harpring missed the free throw that followed.
The Bobcats blew one chance to take the lead back when Knight, guarded by Milt Palacio, lost his dribble out-of-bounds, and another when starting-point Knight, who finished just 4-of-14 from the field, missed a falling last-second 10-footer along the baseline.
In between the two errors by Knight was the one from Okur, who took a pass from rookie point Deron Williams with both the game clock and the shot clock winding down, passed up a long jumper, than stepped past Okafor for what would have been a wide-open 10-footer from just left of the basket.
Instead of shooting, though, Okur — who had 24 points at the time, marking the third time in four games this season he has scored at least 23 — tried passing to Kirilenko in the lane.
Kirilenko had no clue the ball was coming, though, and the Jazz wound up with a backcourt turnover that allowed Knight that one failed shot at winning in regulation.
"There were like three seconds before the shot-clock violation, and I thought he was gonna shoot and I'd have a chance to rebound the ball," Kirilenko said. "But it surprised me. I tried to catch, but it was so fast it was tough."
"I was gonna shoot the ball," Okur said. "I saw Andrei coming, you know? I thought he was wide open. He was going to the basket, they might call the foul or whatever. It was my fault. That was my mistake. I'm supposed to shoot that."
Okur, however, would make the most of his mulligan.
"Memo did a great job in the overtime," said Kirilenko, who rebounded from his own trying times with 20 points on 8-of-16 shooting.
"All we tried to do," Kirilenko added, "was just play on him — involve him in any pick-and-roll, and let him do what he wants to do."
Okur scored seven of the Jazz's 10 extra-session points on 3-of-4 shooting in the bonus period, including a 3-pointer for the Jazz's first OT basket and a pretty bank jumper that put Utah up 92-89 with less than a minute left.
"I put it behind me," Okur said of the one mistake he made on what otherwise was a do-much-right night. "I told Andrei (Kirilenko), 'We got five more minutes. We've got to fight through that.' "
And they did.
Palacio added a free throw and Williams a uncontested fastbreak dunk to seal the deal for the Jazz, who next face New Jersey on Wednesday.
"It's behind us now," Okur said.
He meant the game, but just as well could have been referencing the one question whose answer so many with the Jazz wanted to know:
What in the world was he thinking?
E-mail: tbuckley@desnews.com