Utah Jazz: Team's blue-collar effort pays off

If there's one thing Utah Jazz coach Jerry Sloan doesn't like — besides perhaps missing out on good offseason John Deere tractor deals — it's watching his team get outworked.

He had to suffer through that Thursday night when the Houston Rockets cut into the Jazz's first-round series lead by winning at EnergySolutions Arena.

But Sloan had a good reason to smile after Saturday's game — and it had nothing to do with picking up a bargain on rusty farm machinery.

The Jazz sweated, toiled, labored and busted their tails — you name it — to muscle out a workmanlike 86-82 victory and grab a 3-1 lead against the Rockets.

As was the case in Utah's first two wins in Houston, the Jazz hustled and flustered the Rockets into shooting poorly from the field in this important victory. Houston missed 50 shots and ended up shooting only 36.7 percent against the intensity-improved Jazz.

That, incidentally, was the same shooting percentage the Rockets struggled to in their Game 1 home loss. Houston wasn't much better in Utah's second win, hitting just 41.6 percent of its field goals in the Jazz's Game 2 victory.

The Jazz also blocked eight shots — seven different players, in fact, were credited with blocks — and had seven steals. The Jazz outrebounded Houston 48-41 and were vastly improved in the paint, outscoring the Rockets 36-32 after getting outscored 40-26 in the Game 3 defeat.

After a shaky third period in which a 16-point lead quickly evaporated into a four-point edge, the Jazz picked up the defensive intensity in the fourth quarter.

Well, at least they did in between giving up a 6-0 spurt at the beginning of the period and a scary 7-0 last-minute blitz by the Rockets.

In that pivotal fourth quarter, several Jazz players threw some wrenches at the Rockets that helped Utah build a nine-point lead that it ended up needing.

Shortly after Houston pulled within one at 68-67, Paul Millsap, who played 18 bruising minutes, blocked a shot that led to a Deron Williams drive. Matt Harpring then paved the way for a Carlos Boozer jumper and a seven-point lead with a steal on the next play.

Though the Rockets had a late scoring flurry that put them within a bucket a couple of times in the final 15 seconds, the Jazz's defense held its ground enough to secure the victory.