Utah Jazz: Hurt Harpring sits out against Timberwolves

MINNEAPOLIS — After hitting his head, he first felt for blood. There was none. Then the bruised lower back started hurting, and the bruised right elbow too.

By the time he awoke Tuesday morning, Matt Harpring's neck was so stiff he felt like he had whiplash from a car accident.

Yet the Jazz's veteran reserve forward still felt he could play Wednesday night at Minnesota.

And he was wrong.

"I got a little bit more banged up than I thought I did," Harpring said after Utah's victory over the Timberwolves.

"In the morning (Wednesday) I was struggling, but I was like, 'I'll give it 10 more hours and see if it loosens up,'" he added.

"Then as soon as I started running I could feel the cramping right in the back. ... Just running and lifting up my legs — it wasn't ready yet."

Harpring was hurt when he was fouled by Atlanta's Josh Smith in Monday's victory over the Hawks.

Monday also marked the first time this season that all 15 Jazz players were healthy and available. But after that streak ended Wednesday at one, even Jazz coach Jerry Sloan had to laugh.

"No need to put him out there right now," joked Sloan, whose injury-plagued club just had starting power forward Carlos Boozer return from arthroscopic knee surgery on Monday. "We just everybody back. We have to have somebody out."

Smith was tagged with a flagrant-2 foul after he knocked Harpring to the floor on a fastbreak layup attempt, prompting his automatic ejection.

He wasn't suspended, though.

Sloan didn't say, when asked, if he thought Smith should have been suspended because of the play. Neither did Harpring. But it wasn't tough to decipher how either felt.

"It's very vulnerable when you're up in the air like that," Harpring said, "so I'm just glad that I got what I got, really, and not anything more major.

"It's hard for me to say, because I really hate to see those things happen. On both sides," Sloan said. "You know, the play shouldn't have happened in the first place, really, the way I saw it. The first part of it."

Harpring said he thought he'll be ready to play Saturday, when the Jazz face Sacramento.