No surprises in way Jazz have started

If you're a parent, this may sound familiar: Your pre-schooler does something so incredibly precocious that it leaves you marveling, "My child, the super brain!"

And then, moments later, the same kid does something so infantile you despair of him/her ever being able to function in normal society.

That's kind of what the Utah Jazz have done to us this season.

They came out of the chute like Smarty Jones, then bogged down like Glue Hoof.

Which is the real Jazz? We'll know in April.

Not until final grades come out will we have an accurate idea of the quality of this team. For the moment, they have some issues, and the most obvious is the point-guard position.

Despite coach Jerry Sloan's steadfast refusal to blame Carlos Arroyo for the team's travails, he is the key. The Jazz are a point guard-oriented team, and when the guy directing the show struggles, everybody struggles.

By all accounts, Arroyo had a strong training camp and good preseason before he sprained that ankle in the final exhibition game. But after sitting out nearly a month, he hasn't played like the guy who led Puerto Rico to an upset of Team USA.

He's shooting less, he's connecting at a lower percentage, and his turnovers are up. He was supposed to play more this season, especially with Raul Lopez out, but he's playing roughly the same minutes as last season.

With Keith McLeod injured (and he played well before getting hurt — Roland Beech's 82games.com Web site shows McLeod with a significantly better plus-minus rating than either Arroyo or Eisley), Sloan has been forced to go with an Arroyo-Howard Eisley rotation, and it hasn't been effective. Eisley played down the fourth-quarter stretch and in overtime of that loss to Seattle a few days ago, and he played poorly. He took two bad shots at the end of regulation — one drew only glass, the other was an airball — and then he threw a crosscourt pass in overtime that led to a breakaway basket and would have gotten most high school players yanked.

But Sloan stuck with Eisley, which may be an indication that he's trying to send this message to Arroyo: "You want to play clutch minutes, you play clutch from the start." Arroyo, after all, is the starter, and a designated starter — especially at point guard — has to be held to a higher standard.