Jazz fight Mavs — litterally — but still lose game

DALLAS — They lost, but not before leaving Dallas with a fight.

A couple, actually.

The Jazz rallied from 17 points down and got to within one multiple times in the fourth quarter, but fell 88-81 to the Mavericks on Saturday night at American Airlines Center.

Afterward, in a floor-level area of the arena close to the Jazz's team bus, a fight reportedly broke out involving Jerry Stackhouse of the Mavs and Utah rookie Kirk Snyder.

Before the postgame brawl, the 24-52 Jazz found themselves down by 17 late in the third quarter — then nearly watched the 52-24 Mavs blow their big lead.

In the end, though, that's not what mattered most.

"I'm not happy just 'getting in the game,' " Jazz rookie Kris Humphries said. "It says 'L' in the paper either way — lose by one, or lose by 20."

"You don't (care) about how you got there," Snyder added before his fight. "You just worry about how we finished."

On three occasions kin the final quarter, it did become a one-point game.

With five minutes and 20 seconds remaining, Howard Eisley hit a 3-pointer to make it 72-71 Dallas. With 2:55 to go, Snyder made a 3, and the Mavs were up at 79-78. Less than a minute later, with 2:18 left, Mehmet Okur made two free throws, and Dallas was ahead 81-80.

That, though, is when everything began to unravel for the Jazz.

After 24-point game-high scorer Dirk Nowitzki of Dallas missed a jumper, Snyder blew a layup.

On the Mavs' next possession, Dallas controlled long two offensive rebounds — one off a Jason Terry 3-point miss, and the other stemming from a Michael Finley miss — before calling a timeout with 1:05 left.

Coming out of the timeout, Snyder made a defensive error, leaving his man for a double-team. That permitted Josh Howard to score a Terry-fed layup, putting the Mavs up by three and leaving Jazz coach Jerry Sloan astounded.

"I've never told our guys, in 80-some guys that we've been playing (including the preseason)," Sloan said, "that I want to double a guy out on the floor.

"You still have to be able to understand what we're doing," he added. "We felt sorry for ourselves, came back, and lost ourselves on the defensive end of the floor.