It was, sending the Nets into the fourth up 72-57.

But it wasn't necessarily the payback on fate that it might have seemed. Rather, the Jazz say it simply was the result of a breakdown in the basics.

"We practice that over and over," Collins said.

"We've always had a rule in the last second or so: get next to your man," Sloan added. "We weren't even close to the guy."

And the Jazz weren't ever close to the Nets in the fourth.

With Jefferson scoring 17 and dishing 12 assists, and with Vince Carter scoring a game-high 21 points featuring one highlight clip after another, and with Jason Kidd posting 11 points along with his seven assists, and with center Nenad Kristic trumping his season scoring average by scoring 18 on 7-of-9 field shooting, New Jersey had no trouble holding its lead.

Jefferson did the most damage, finishing one rebound shy of a triple-double and making it seem something wasn't quite right with primary defender Kirilenko.

"We had a lot of guys that weren't 'all right,' " Sloan said when asked about Kirilenko, who complained afterward of nothing more than bloody knees. "They make you look like you're not all right — sick, or something."

Sloan did change things up a bit to try to overcome the Nets' big advantage, inserting No. 3 point Milt Palacio at the start of the final quarter instead of rookie Williams and benching Mehmet Okur, who had been averaging 23.5 but finished Wednesday with only two points, for all of the last period.

But none of that worked as the Jazz could not come closer than seven in the fourth.

Harpring, for one, suspects he knows why.

"When you're on the road," he said after the Jazz finished the second outing in a four-game Eastern swing that resumes Friday at Toronto, "it just takes a couple plays to get behind. . . . The next thing you know it's an eight-point game, 10-point game.

"Now you're trying to play catch-up, and that's not our style, really. We're good with the lead, or we're good with a close game — but when we try to play catch-up, we start forcing things.

"We've just got to trust our offense," he added. "It works."

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E-mail: tbuckley@desnews.com