Jazz post lopsided win over Portland

EUGENE, Ore. — His club sure looked resolute Thursday night, pushing the pace against the Portland Trail Blazers and appearing quite confident.

Yet halfway through the preseason, Jerry Sloan has about as many decisions to make as he did before training camp opened.

"Still," the Jazz coach said as Utah prepared to play Portland in a late-starting exhibition, "we have to decide who we'd want to start and who we'd want to have come off the bench."

Not to mention who is going to make the opening-night roster, who will be waived and who, if anyone, might open the season in the NBA Development League.

Another step toward gathering all the information needed to make those calls came Thursday night at historic McArthur Court on the University of Oregon campus, where the Jazz handily beat the Trail Blazers 92-73 in their fourth outing of a seven-game exhibition season.

Sloan, though, did not know much after all was done than he did before it began.

"It's still clouded a little bit," he said afterward.

Some of those decisions, however, will come much easier than others.

Andrei Kirilenko made his fourth straight start of the preseason Thursday, evidence — no big shock here — that can you can probably pencil in the one-time All-Star as a starter when the regular season gets under way Nov. 2 vs. Dallas.

Kirilenko finished with nine rebounds and a game-high 19 points on 7-of-12 shooting from the field in 32 minutes Thursday.

Also making his fourth start in as many outings was big man Mehmet Okur, who came off the bench in all but 25 of 82 games a season ago. That is a clear indication Sloan is contemplating making a starter out of Okur, who pulled down a game-high 10 boards with 11 points in 28 minutes.

The rest remains rather murky.

"We're just trying to hopefully put the best guys together, see what we come up with," Sloan said. "I don't know exactly how it's going to work out."

With usual starting power forward Carlos Boozer missing his fourth consecutive game due to a strained left hamstring and frequent forward starter Matt Harpring still out due to offseason knee surgery — both absences were expected, and Harpring did not even make the trip so he could attend Wednesday's funeral for Atlanta Hawks center Jason Collier — Sloan's potential starting front line vs. the Mavericks is something of a mystery.