Jazz still steaming after loss to Clippers

The Jazz's win over the Trail Blazers on Saturday in Portland may have been expected — the Blazers came in having lost nine straight — but was savored nonetheless.

Even while enjoying it, however, Jazz coach Jerry Sloan could not help but continue to suffer from the sting of Friday's 106-91 road loss to the Los Angeles Clippers.

"To be good all the time and be able to try to win games like that, you've got to dedicate yourself to it," said Sloan, still steaming about L.A. as the regular season winds to a close — Utah has just nine games remaining, including Tuesday's vs. San Antonio at the Delta Center — and the Jazz continue to cling to outside-looking-in playoff hopes. "You can't just come out and say, 'Oh, well, this is fun and games, it doesn't really matter.' It does matter.

"The effort has to be there," he added, "to have a chance. . . . All I'm asking them to do is compete hard."

Sloan's ire, it now seems, is not just directed at season scoring leader Mehmet Okur, who got off to a slow start in Los Angeles as more than 700 of his Turkish countrymen raucously cheered him.

"I was talking about all of our players," Sloan said of a game in which the Clippers pulled away with a 29-17 third quarter. "I thought we had a very poor outing the second half."

In the Jazz's locker room Saturday, few were surprised Sloan remained livid over Friday's follies.

"We got blown out in L.A.," forward Carlos Boozer said. "He (Sloan) is always going to ask questions — if we want to make (the playoffs), or not. When you lose by that much of a margin, you wonder if our desire is strong enough to get there."

Boozer and the rest of the Jazz can only trust that issue was answered in Portland.

"We came out . . . and hopefully showed him we do want to make it, and our focus is still on making the playoffs," Boozer said.

"We wanted to play well," rookie point guard Deron Williams added, "because we played so bad in L.A. . . . We let the one out there slip away, and we can't have any more like that."

MAGIC NUMBER: After losing Sunday to Dallas, Denver's magic number for clinching the Northwest Division title remains at four. Any combination of Denver victories and Jazz losses, in other words, gives the Nuggets the division and an automatic playoff berth.