Jazz begin with a loss

If it weren't for the fact the house was hardly full, rookies were playing major minutes and would-be reserves were closing in the fourth quarter, one might have thought Thursday was simply another mid-February or so game for the Jazz.

The postgame reaction of coach Jerry Sloan to Utah's first preseason outing of 2007, after all, sounded oh-so-similar to what it would be during your run-of-the-mill regular-season defeat.

Sloan was simply disgusted by what he called the Jazz's "nonchalant" play in a 90-81 loss to the Milwaukee Bucks before an undersize (and officially uncounted) crowd at EnergySolutions Arena.

Asked, in fact, what positive can be taken away from the evening, the crusty ol' coach didn't miss a beat with his timing.

"Well," Sloan growled, "we can certainly improve a great deal."

It didn't seem to matter to Sloan that starting small forward Andrei Kirilenko was active and involved with 10 points, eight rebounds and four blocks in 24 minutes, or that Ronnie Brewer, who started at shooting guard, finished with a team-high 17 points on an efficient 6-of-8 shooting from the field, or even that first-round rookie Morris Almond looked quite comfy in making his NBA exhibition debut, producing 10 points in 27 minutes while making 4-of-7 from the off-guard spot.

Rather, the Jazz coach dwelled on all that irritated him.

"We walked the ball up the floor way too much," he said, "and didn't put any pressure on them.

"We couldn't make an entry pass into our offense. We came out there and stood," added Sloan, whose team leaves today for a three-game trip that includes stops Friday night at Detroit, Saturday night in Milwaukee and Monday night at Phoenix. "If they put pressure on us, we couldn't get the ball where we wanted it to go. So now we're down to 'the next guy gets it, he's gonna go 1-on-1.' I don't see us as a 1-on-1 team."

So much for looking anything like the club that managed to win the Northwest Division and advance to last season's Western Conference finals.

Instead, the Jazz appeared quite ordinary in yielding 17 points to Milwaukee star Michael Redd and getting outscored 18-9 during a final quarter in which Almond, veteran swingman Gordan Giricek (who finished 1-of-6 from the field, including 0-for-5 in the fourth), newly acquired reserve point guard Jason Hart and second-round rookie Kyrylo Fesenko (he had seven points and two blocks) logged the bulk of Utah's minutes.