Unselfish Jazz fall to Spurs

SAN ANTONIO — All too often this season, the Jazz have played selfishly — not enough passing, too much single-minded play.

Not so Sunday.

Five from Utah scored in double figures — and they still didn't win.

This time, ironically enough, it may have been one pass too many that got the best of the Jazz in a 101-94 loss to the San Antonio Spurs.

With the Spurs up by two and just less than a minute remaining Sunday, Mehmet Okur pulled down a Tony Parker miss and put the Jazz in position to tie a San Antonio team that had led most of the way and by as many as 14.

Down on the other end, Utah went around the horn.

Eighteen-point team-high scorer Keith McLeod passed up top to Andrei Kirilenko, who swung the ball to Matt Harpring on the right wing. Harpring dished inside to Mehmet Okur, who might have put a shot up from there that, if good, would have made it 93-93.

Instead, Okur decided to make one more pass with 40 seconds remaining.

The Jazz, though, were too bunched up in the lane to make it work.

San Antonio's Robert Horry anticipated Okur's short shovel to Kirilenko. Horry stuck out a hand, tapped the ball and wound up on the floor with it in his control.

"Probably it wasn't the best decision," Kirilenko said afterward, "but we tried. We tried hard."

"We were trying to make something happen for somebody else," Jazz guard Raja Bell added.

"Sometimes, that (a turnover) happens. You can't fault anybody for that. That's just one of the things that happens when you're playing hard."

No matter how hard the Jazz tried, though, they still could not break their San Antonio jinx — not even after watching two-time NBA MVP Tim Duncan of the Spurs exit in the third quarter with a sprained right ankle, sustained when he landed on the foot of teammate Rasho Nesterovic.

Utah — which just a couple months back snapped an 18-game losing streak to the Spurs with a last-second win at the Delta Center, a victory that could largely be credited to the play of Okur — lost its 13th straight in San Antonio.

The Jazz are now 0-8 in the SBC Center, their last win in this city having come Feb. 28, 1999, at the Alamodome.

For that, they blamed only themselves Sunday.