Subs secure win for Jazz

LOS ANGELES — When usual subs Mo Williams, Mikki Moore and Michael Ruffin opened the second half Sunday night, coach Jerry Sloan wasn't just tinkering, like the farmer from Illinois might with a tractor that isn't quite right.

This was more along the lines of an overhaul, requisite when the spitting and sputtering gives way to major malfunction.

Sloan's repair job worked, too, as Williams, Moore and Ruffin helped rally the Jazz past the Los Angeles Clippers 97-92 on Sunday night at the Staples Center.

Besides giving the Clippers their 11th loss in a row, Utah pulled a half-game ahead of 10th-place Portland and back into a virtual tie with idle Denver for the NBA's eighth and final Western Conference playoff position.

It was not positive postseason implications, though, that afterward were foremost on Sloan's mind.

Rather, it was the various negatives that seem to be dragging the 40-37 Jazz down.

"I really don't care who plays," Sloan said. "They can have an attitude, be upset with me all they want. I really don't care about that, either.

"All I want them to do is play," he added. "If they can't play, then I'll let them sit down. Let other people see them pout and act like little babies on the bench."

Sloan's ire seemed directed not only at backup center Greg Ostertag, who played nine scoreless minutes in the first half and none at all in the second, but also at the play of point guards Carlos Arroyo and Raul Lopez.

Starting power forward Tom Gugliotta and starting center Jarron Collins weren't spared, either.

"It was to try to get somebody out there to give us a lift, to see if we could get enough energy to try to play," Sloan said of the decision to start rookie Williams over Arroyo at the point and journeymen Ruffin and Moore in place of Gugliotta and Collins up front.

"You know," he added, "we've talked about trying to play hard and play hard — and I was about as patient as I could be for as long I could be."

Sloan's patience with Arroyo actually wore thin in the opening quarter, when the coach chastised his point for waiting too long to make a pass to starting shooting guard Gordan Giricek.

"You don't have a chance," Sloan said, "when you don't like the guy you're throwing the ball to, so you hold it just a little bit longer and throw it to him a little bit late. I had some of that going on."

While usual backup point Lopez sat the entire half along with Ostertag, Arroyo did return for the start of the fourth quarter.