Blast off: Jazz open season with balanced effort to top Rockets

So far, so good.

That's what coach Jerry Sloan's lunchbucket crew had to be thinking after beating All-Stars Tracy McGrady, Yao Ming and the rest of the Houston Rockets 107-97 in its 2006-07 NBA regular-season opener on Wednesday night at the Delta Center.

It was the fourth straight season-opening win for the Jazz, who got it behind a 24-point, 19-rebound double-double by Carlos Boozer and contributions from young (most notably Deron Williams, C.J. Miles and first-round rookie Ronnie Brewer) and old (okay, Derek Fisher's only 32) alike.

Before it was all done, the Jazz even offered a bit in the way of dessert — like Brewer's one-handed slam of an alley-oop pass from Williams, and Brewer's steal of a pass to McGrady that he converted into a dunk on the other end.

Mostly, though, it was just good old-fashioned hard work that allowed the Jazz to go up by as many as 20 points in the second quarter — then hold on after the Rockets got to within five with less than three minutes remaining.

"I thought everybody was alive," Sloan said. "Everybody was playing really hard to try to do the right thing."

Perhaps most encouraging for Sloan about his Jazz getting it done was that they even seemed to enjoy doing it.

"It's fun," said Fisher, who dished six assists and scored 13 points on 5-of-7 shooting off the bench in his Jazz debut — including two long jumpers in the late going. "It's really fun. The guys were out there working together, and talking to each other."

Even those who might have been talking to themselves a bit seemed pleased with the start for the Jazz, whose road opener comes Friday night at Phoenix.

Like starting center Mehmet Okur, last season's scoring leader, who scored 17 but hit just 4-of-15 shots.

And like starting small forward Andrei Kirilenko, whose very modest stat line — five points, four rebounds, one block, no steals and no assists — was quite un-Kirilenko like.

"I hope we're going to keep winning games," Kirilenko said. "If we're going to keep winning games, I don't care how I play. I can sit on the bench."

Kirilenko and Okur started along with 18-point scorer Williams at the point, surprise selection Miles at shooting guard and Boozer in the power-forward position.