7. SLOAN STILL GOING

Though denied NBA Coach of the Year honors yet again — he's never won the league's official award — Jazz coach Jerry Sloan used his 19th season in Utah to pad an already impressive resume.

With a Dec. 11 win over Dallas, the coach tenured with the same team longer than any other coach or manager in America's four major professional sports leagues had his 1,000th career NBA coaching victory.

Just more than a month later, on Jan. 20, the Jazz won at Chicago — and the ex-Bulls coach and player moved past Larry Brown for sole possession of fourth place on the league's all-time coaching wins list with 1,011.

Now 1,035-689 all-time in the regular season, Sloan also moved briefly past K.C. Jones and Lenny Wilkens and into fifth place on the NBA's all-time playoff coaching victories list — before getting passed himself by the coach of the team that ended Utah's postseason run, San Antonio's Gregg Popovich.

Sloan has indicated he plans to return for a 20th season in the fall.

8. LATE-SEASON SLUMP

The Jazz finished with the best home record in the league at 31-10, the sixth-best record overall at 51-31 and the No. 4 Western Conference playoff seed.

They also had little trouble winning the Northwest Division championship — their seventh division overall, but first since 2000 — and notching their first playoff berth since Stockton and Malone exited in 2003.

They even won their last two regular-season games, including a mostly meaningless finale over Houston — not only their opening-night opponent, but also, as it happened, their first-round playoff opponent.

The downer to it all, however, was a nasty late-season slump.

The Jazz dropped six of their last nine games and 12 of their last 20, yielding homecourt advantage in the postseason to Houston even though the Rockets — by virtue of their better regular-season record — were seeded No. 5.

Included among those final 20 games were one four-game losing streak and one five-game losing skid — Utah's two longest ineptitude stretches of the season.

9. ROCKETS RED GLARE

Houston had the homecourt edge, but it was the Rockets who were red with embarrassment after an opening-round playoff series that went a full seven games.

The Jazz quickly fell behind 0-2, and so much seemed to be going so wrong so early. Kirilenko shed tears. Okur struggled. So did Boozer, who shot just 4-for-17 in Game 1 before rebounding to score 41 in the Game 2 loss.