Utah Jazz: Banged-up Jazz can't slow streaking Thunder

OKLAHOMA CITY — They spent the previous night in a supposedly haunted hotel. Among the game's three referees was one many with the Jazz felt cost them a game last time they were here.

And, piling on, they were missing three injured rotation regulars, including two starters.

Utah seemed doomed, even before play got underway.

More than medical matters or officiating or even ghosts, though, it was lights-out shooting by Oklahoma City that did in the Jazz during a 119-111 loss Sunday night at the Ford Center.

The Thunder — who got 35 points from All-Star Kevin Durant, 30 from point guard Russell Westbrook and double-digit scoring from its other three starters — shot 60.3 percent from the field, a Jazz opponent high this season.

"We shot (50.6) percent. I don't have trouble with shooting 50 percent," said Jazz coach Jerry Sloan, whose club — which plays host to Washington tonight — finished a four-game trip 2-2. "But I have a problem when the other team shoots 60 and you don't have any stops in there.

"We couldn't keep people in front of us, keep them off the top of the basket. They set a little screen, we didn't get enough help to try to stop the penetration."

So it wasn't the health situation, even with starting center Mehmet Okur (back), starting small forward Andrei Kirilenko (calf) and backup point guard Ronnie Price (wrist) all out.

It wasn't the referees, even though one was rookie Kane Fitzgerald — who ticked off the Jazz tremendously with a controversial late-game phantom foul call on Paul Millsap when they lost here on New Year's Eve — and one, veteran Joe DeRosa, tagged Sloan with his third technical foul this season.

And it certainly wasn't the lodging, even though the Jazz stayed at the recently renovated 100-year-old Skirvin Hotel where — as legend has it — the ghosts of a suicidal maid nicknamed "Effie" and her baby purportedly haunt the place.

Effie and the child, fathered by oilman and hotel builder W.B. Skirvin according to local lore and the Web site legendsofamerica.com, plunged to their deaths in the Prohibition era because the maid was driven crazy by being locked in a top-floor room before the birth and after.

Their voices supposedly can still be heard in the hotel, where one Jazz player turned up his TV full-blast and opened his bible by his bed just to ward off any unwelcome sounds.

Not everyone was so concerned, as backup center Kyrylo Fesenko cracked, "For me, I cannot be afraid of ghosts because I was abducted by aliens."

What the 41-24 Thunder did to the Jazz on Sunday, though, wasn't the thing of mere mortals.