Standing in front of the Delta Center on a picture-perfect day, a larger-than-life statue of him waiting to be unveiled, retired NBA legend Karl Malone had a message.

It was addressed to fans of the franchise, and delivered by The Mailman himself. Subject: This season's version of the Jazz, losing record and all.

"It will take a while," said Malone, whose 18 seasons in Utah included trips to the 1996 and '97 NBA Finals. "It took a while for us to win.

"But these guys — I don't think there is one guy on this team that don't want to win."

John Stockton heard it. Jeff Hornacek heard it. Mark Eaton, Thurl Bailey and few of Malone's other ex-teammates and ex-coaches on hand heard it as well.

None of the Jazz's current players, however, were within earshot.

And too bad for them — because not many actually showed that will to win early on in a 109-97 loss to the Washington Wizards on Thursday night, and by the time they it way too late to salvage a much-needed victory.

Not that the 32-36 Jazz were using all the hoopla of the evening — Malone's bronze took its place next to that of Stockton's, and his No. 32 was retired to the Delta Center rafters — as an excuse for their sub-par performance.

Instead, coach Jerry Sloan blamed it on a simple failure to prepare.

"Their basic job is to get ready to play basketball," Sloan said, "and I didn't think we came out with that intention.

"You gotta be ready to play."

They weren't, though at least one of Sloan's players seemingly begged to differ with that assertion.

"I thought we had our focus," said forward Carlos Boozer, whose team-high 30 points matched his season-high. "We might have come out a little slow at first, but we picked it up, and we had a chance to win the game."

The Jazz shot just 34.2 percent from the field in the opening half, and went into the break — extra long as 32 joined Stockton's 12, Hornacek's 14, Eaton's 53, Darrell Griffith's 35, the late Pistol Pete Maravich's 7 and retired coach Frank Layden's 1 — down nine at 50-41.

Utah never got closer than within four in the third quarter, and the Wizards — who connected on a franchise-record 16 3-pointers, including a career-high seven from Antawn Jamison and six more from 31-point game-high scorer Gilbert Arenas — led by double digits for most of a 10-minute stretch until a Matt Harpring layup made it 88-80 with 7:15 remaining.

And after Andrei Kirilenko dunked with 2:22 to go, Washington's lead stood at just four, 97-93.