Home cooked: Jazz lose to Seattle

Point guard Keith McLeod was activated at midday Monday from the injured list and started Monday's game against the Seattle Sonics in the Delta Center.

Raul Lopez came off the bench to spell McLeod, and Carlos Arroyo did not play until the end of the third quarter.

The Utah Jazz held an eight-point lead with about six minutes to go in the third quarter.

But the result was the same as it's been for the past month.

One thing went wrong for the Jazz, and then another, and pretty soon the Sonics had their 20th win in 25 games this season, 98-88, and the Jazz fell to 11-17.

"Whenever we had things going our way we kind of fell apart. We couldn't sustain our energy," said Jazz coach Jerry Sloan, calling his team "fragile" and "confused."

The Jazz were doing all right, with Ray Allen shooting just 8-for-21 after a 6-for-8 start, but it was Sonic defense, or perhaps the Ghost of Christmas Past, that hit Utah the hardest.

The Jazz had a season-high 26 turnovers, many of them unforced.

"Unforced turnovers is something that shouldn't happen," said Sloan. "That's where it seemed to fall apart. Some of the turnovers, we just almost handed them the basketball without any kind of pressure on us."

Oddly, with the changes at the point — Howard Eisley being put on the injured list with left Achilles tendinitis — the turnovers were mostly at other positions.

Forward Carlos Boozer nearly had a triple-double with 16 points, 14 rebounds and eight turnovers. He politely refused comment following the game.

Center Mehmet Okur had four turnovers, and Kirk Snyder had five. McLeod had two, Lopez two and Arroyo none.

But the Sonics took over when they tossed out a zone defense.

"The turning point was when they switched defenses on us. It rattled us," said guard Raja Bell. "It took us a few plays to figure out what we wanted to run against it, and then when we ran our stuff, I don't think we ran it thinking it was going to work."

Bell said he still wasn't sure half an hour after the game ended exactly what the defense was. He remembered that every time he ran to a spot on offense, a Sonic was there. But sometimes the Sonics ran with the man they were guarding. His best guess was that it was a matchup zone of sorts.