Utah Jazz: Lose, will play Nuggets as the No. 5 seed

SALT LAKE CITY — No high postseason seed. No homecourt advantage for the first round of the playoffs. No third Northwest Division championship in four seasons.

Certainly not for the Jazz after what happened Wednesday, when everything that could have gone wrong for Utah did on its final night of the 2009-10 NBA regular season.

With starting power forward Carlos Boozer (strained oblique muscle) and starting small forward Andrei Kirilenko (calf strain) both watching, the Jazz fell 100-86 to Phoenix in an ESPN-televised loss at EnergySolutions Arena.

That sent Utah plummeting from the No. 3 seed to the No. 5 seed in the Western Conference and — back to where the season began, more than five-and-a-half months ago — a first-round series with the fourth-seeded and Northwest-champion Denver Nuggets.

"Yeah, it's a disappointment," said coach Jerry Sloan, who called the Jazz "franticky all night long."

"But what are we gonna do? You take 20 and 10 off of our starting (lineup). That makes us a little more competitive," he added with reference to Boozer's roughly team-high scoring (actually 19.5 points and 11.2 rebounds averages). "But that's part of life. You live with it."

And perhaps die sooner in the postseason because of it.

The best-of-seven Nuggets-Jazz series — on the same side of the playoff bracket that leads to a second-round meeting with the winner of a 1-8 series between Oklahoma City and the Los Angeles Lakers, who've eliminated Utah each of the past two postseasons — opens Saturday night in Denver.

The Nuggets, like the Jazz, finished 53-29 — but Denver gets the division title and a higher seed because it won the season series between the two teams.

Wednesday's blowout loss ended a 10-game win streak at home for the Jazz, who did finish with a winning record for the 23rd time in 24 seasons.

Things started going anything but the Jazz's way even before they began play in Wednesday's late-starting game, one in which late franchise owner Larry H. Miller was honored at halftime and the court at EnergySolutions was named in his memory.

Dallas beat San Antonio at home earlier in the evening, denying Utah a shot at the No. 2 seed in the West behind the defending NBA-champion Lakers — which the Jazz had going into the night.

A Utah win against Phoenix would have kept the Jazz in the No. 3 seed spot and into a 3-6 series, with homecourt advantage, against Portland.