"I feel really good since the (mid-February) All-Star break," the Jazz owner added before Utah won for the sixth time in its last eight games, "because, to me, at least we know what we can do with the starting five. . . . One of my questions was has he (Sloan) somehow lost touch with the athletes? And I think (with) what's happened since the All-Star break, particularly — and that kind of coincides with (rookie point guard) Deron (Williams) starting — I feel really good right now about what Jerry's doing."

Sloan, in turn, feels good about the starting lineup he's been able to use — Williams, Andrei Kirilenko at shooting guard, Matt Harpring at small forward, Mehmet Okur at power forward and Carlos Boozer at center — since shortly after Boozer returned from injuries that caused him to miss last season's final 31 games and the first 49 of this season.

Though Harpring will be an unrestricted free agent in the offseason, the Jazz seem quite high on the notion of trying to keep that group together for the 2006-07 season.

In fact, it seems only the disintegration of that core — beyond the potential loss of Harpring — would prompt Sloan to even consider not returning for season No. 19 as head coach of the Jazz.

"You don't know who comes back, and who wants to be here," he said. "If players don't come back, and they want to be traded and you have all that mess to go through, that could change a lot of things.

"(But) I'm looking at these guys out there on the floor play," Sloan added, "and for the first time this year since we got Boozer back I can have a mismatch on the floor. I never had that since Karl Malone and John Stockton left."

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E-mail: tbuckley@desnews.com