Jazz let loose in big win

They've won four straight games now, and 12 out of their last 14. They had little trouble winning in the back half of a back-to-back set, even so shortly after having returned from a three-game road trip. And the team typically as loosy goosy as a convention of tax accountants actually enjoyed a gaggle of giggles afterward.

Ah, life is good for the Jazz lately, especially so after they opened a three-game homestand by beating Charlotte 120-95 on Monday night at sold-out EnergySolutions Arena — an early March victory that pushed their record to 41-19, matching their entire win total from a season ago.

It was so good, in fact, it didn't seem to matter — to anyone, that is, except coach Jerry Sloan — that Bobcat Gerald Wallace's 33 points, not Mehmet Okur's 32, were a game-high.

So good they could chuckle about C.J. Miles spending $1,000 on an alley-oop dunk.

So good the fun bunch's biggest controversy of the evening seemed to be whether or not Rafael Araujo called bank on his late-game 20-footer — a debate, by the way, the ex-BYU center stood no chance whatsoever of winning.

"C'mon dude — you heard me," Araujo told point guard Deron Williams.

"No," Williams barked back, "you ain't called nothin'."

Suffice it say Araujo was vastly outnumbered.

"Two points is two points," Miles said. "He (Araujo) didn't call it, though. It was a little long — he's been pumping weights too much."

Araujo's largely inconsequential jumper came with 18 seconds remaining in a game the Jazz comfortably controlled for the final three quarters, so much so Utah led Charlotte — which was missing star Emeka Okafor because of a strained calf — by 14 or more throughout the entire fourth period.

Miles' alley-oop dunk, delivered by No. 3 point Dee Brown, came in the final minute as well.

The sporadically used sophomore, just two years removed from his Texas high school, said he got bumped in the air, and that's why he finished with a rim swing — which resulted in a technical foul, and an automatic $1,000 fine.

"I saw Dee look at me," Miles said. "He couldn't stare, because then everybody else was going to know it was coming too. So I just kept running, and I saw him throw it up there, and I just went and got it — and I got $1,000 for going to get it."

Even he, though, appeared to have trouble making a convincing case that the call was not justified.