Sizzling Jazz to face the Heat

After winning eight of their last nine games, the Jazz are one of the hottest teams the NBA has to offer.

Coach Jerry Sloan only hopes they don't cool when Shaquille O'Neal, Dwyane Wade and the Miami Heat visit Saturday at the Delta Center.

"We step right back into the fire again," Sloan, whose 19-17 Jazz opened 11-16, said after a four-game Eastern road swing ended with Wednesday's win at Philadelphia. "That's what it will be every night — because we're trying to fight out of a hole we've gotten ourselves in."

Against Miami, one of Sloan's primary concerns will be how the Jazz handle the Heat's starting backcourt of Wade and point Jason Williams.

"When we play against great players like that, we have a tendency that when we foul them we foul them with silly fouls," he said. "They (the Jazz) have to learn to play them aggressively — and if you make the foul, make it a good foul, so the guy knows we're going to be there the next time."

Shaq is another matter.

"Nobody's going to guard him," Sloan said of O'Neal. "I haven't seen anybody guard him since he's been in the league. And I'm sure we don't have the ability to guard him.

"We just have to make them play us as well. We can't be intimidated by who they are."

MILES AWAY: Shipped recently to NBA Development League-affiliate Albuquerque, 18-year-old Jazz rookie C.J. Miles — a 2005 second-round draft choice from Dallas Skyline High — is learning the hard way.

According to the Dallas Morning News, "There were at least five occasions in his second game against the Fort Worth Flyers when Miles got to the basket but was unable to finish. Instead of going over the top of the defender as he had done at Skyline, he was met and didn't have the strength to hold his position or get the ball to the rim. And defense? Rawle Marshall, assigned to the Flyers by the Mavericks, blew by Miles at will. Former Kansas guard Keith Langford faked Miles so badly on one play that the Jazz rookie wound up on his butt."

"My pick-and-roll defense is terrible," Miles told the Dallas newspaper.

Miles admits sometimes wondering what life would be like if he had honored his commitment to the University of Texas.