Utah Jazz: Bland finale

SAN ANTONIO — After falling here for the 21st consecutive time, and enduring their most-lopsided loss of the season, the good news for the Jazz is that they won't have to face the San Antonio Spurs again this season unless both advance to the NBA Western Conference finals.

The bad is that after closing the 2007-08 regular season with a 109-80 defeat to the Spurs at AT&T Center, Utah — which conveniently avoided a first-round series with the defending NBA champs, but may have to play Kobe Bryant and the Los Angeles Lakers should it advance — yielded homecourt advantage for the first round of postseason play.

The Northwest Division-champion Jazz will instead open the playoffs on Saturday at Houston, where they won an opening-round Game 7 just last year.

"We're gonna have to go through the Spurs at some point, regardless probably," said point guard Deron Williams, who sat out the second half due to a previously sustained injury.

"We definitely wanted to win the game, you know," Williams added. "We wanted to win the game. We didn't want to dodge 'em. But that's just how it goes sometimes."

Utah again is seeded No. 4, but because the No. 5-seed Rockets finished with one more victory than the 54-27 Jazz, Houston will open — and close, should the series go a full seven games — at home.

"So we're gonna have to win on the road," Williams said. "We really haven't proven that we can do that all season, but we have to \now."

That the Jazz stumbled on the road in San Antonio is nothing new, as Utah hasn't won here since February of 1999 — a streak of futility that includes 18 regular-season games and three in last year's Western Conference finals.

This, though, was a complete reversal of what happened when the Jazz and Spurs last met, and Utah won 90-64 on April 4 in Salt Lake City.

"We played terrible," power forward Carlos Boozer said. "They played great."

This time, San Antonio scored 65 — in the opening half.

The super-physical Spurs shot 72.2 percent from the field before the break to go into the third quarter up by 26.

They led by 20 or more throughout the third, and never by fewer than 25 in the fourth.

San Antonio got a 14-point, 11-rebound double-double from big man Tim Duncan, and a game-high 24 points and season-high 12 assists from point guard Tony Parker.