In Saturday's second half, Utah couldn't stop Lewis (35 points, 28 in the second half) anywhere.

A lot of people call the hard-nosed Sloan a dictator, and that's exactly what he wants to see from his players with six games left in the regular season. Bad habits like selfish shooting and miserable turnovers as prevalent at inopportune times as what he considers squishy defense.

"Foul a guy once in a while and let him know you're at least close to him," he complained. "I've played a little bit of basketball, enough to know that if you're going to guard people you can't sit back and let them dictate to you.

"You've got to be a dictator whenever they've got the ball and try to take something away from them instead of just giving it.

"You can't sit back and say, 'OK, bring it to me.' You've got to take it to them," said Sloan, whose team has rarely done that on the road lately, having lost eight of its last nine road games.

---

E-mail: lham@desnews.com