Jazz wonder when things turned bad

Where, oh where, did it all go wrong?

And when, precisely?

With just two games to go in their 2006-07 regular season, and homecourt advantage in their first-round NBA playoff series in peril, the Jazz wonder.

Coach Jerry Sloan firmly believes it goes back to mid-March, when his then 43-19 club went 0-for-4 on a four-games-in-five-nights Eastern road trip that included a big blown lead in Miami, a failed comeback bid at Orlando, a late-game loss in Philadelphia and a disheartening defeat at Cleveland.

Veteran guard Derek Fisher skips ahead to later in the same month, when in the same end-of-March week the Jazz both clinched their first playoff berth since 2003 and — three nights later — the Northwest Division championship.

That's when the focus may have shifted to securing homecourt advantage in their opening-round postseason series — and yet the now 49-31 Jazz have gone a humbling 2-7 since then.

"I honestly think that's where the problem started," said Fisher, who earlier in his career made three successful NBA title runs with the Los Angeles Lakers. "I mean, I think we got into this mindset of trying to protect something as opposed to just continuing to go and play the way we'd been playing for quite some time.

"We started breaking down the math of how we can have homecourt advantage and this and that — and I think we forgot that it's really one game at a time in this league.

"We started playing not to lose, as opposed to continuing to play to win," he added. "We weren't as aggressive offensively, not as aggressive defensively, allowing teams to bring the game to us."

As a result, the Jazz head into tonight's home game against Portland — their second-to-last outing of the regular season — knowing that Houston controls homecourt-edge fate in the upcoming 4-5 seed series between the two.

Unless the Jazz beat the Trail Blazers tonight, Phoenix beats the Rockets tonight and — if those two things happen — Utah beats Houston in the regular-season finale for both on Wednesday night, the Rockets will have homecourt advantage in a series that will start either Saturday or Sunday in Houston.

But if the Jazz can win out and Houston loses its last two, the series will open this coming weekend at EnergySolutions Arena.

Do you care about so many particulars?

Fisher, for one, does not.