"It's a great lesson for people to see just what teams can do when they stay within what they're trying to do," said Sloan, whose Jazz will see the Timberwolves again on Wednesday night in Utah. "They kept executing. They kept running their plays. They kept running them hard. They kept setting screens. And this is what we always thought was important for us.

"But we came out so lethargic that we never did get into a rhythm where we really did that," he added. "We had one or two plays where we set great screens, and we got layups off of 'em. But those are things you can't do just once in a while to try to win the game. You have to do it all the time, to set a stage for how you want to play."

Instead the Jazz, using Sloan's very own word, played soft.

"They had us pushed out on the floor. Way out, and we were really soft trying to get the ball in," he said. "And they knew it, and they just hammered us."

Utah did get to within three four times in the final quarter, the last time when Paul Millsap used a pass from 25-point game-high scorer Boozer for a layup that made it 101-98.

But Minnesota answered each time, and the final occasion was a dagger that had to sting: With less than a minute to go, after McCants had saved the ball from going from out of bounds, ex-Jazz guard Kirk Snyder drove the baseline for a layup and was fouled by Harpring.

Snyder slid past Boozer, around Harpring and under Millsap for his basket, then hit the free throw that followed.

"I thought he was gonna shoot the jump shot, so I closed out to take away the shot, and he drove," said Boozer, who also had 10 rebounds to pull into a tie for second place with Minnesota's Al Jefferson behind Orlando's Dwight Howard among league leaders in double-doubles. "It was a good play by him."

It was, and it proved especially painful on an afternoon of mostly mediocre play for the Jazz.

"It hurts a lot," Williams said.

"But there's nothing," Harpring added, "we can do about it now."

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E-mail: tbuckley@desnews.com