Utah Jazz lay a giant-sized egg

The suddenly plunging Utah Jazz added a new twist to their recent double-digit-lead-blowing trend at home.

Don't look for them to join the Mayan diving team any time too soon, though.

The new twist included losing their big lead and the game.

In other words, it ended up being a flop — a 103-102 loss to the Minnesota Timberwolves (22-54) on Friday night at EnergySolutions Arena.

"It's a bad loss. It's a bad loss," Jazz guard Deron Williams said, using a phrase he repeated several times during his postgame interview. "There's no other way to sugarcoat it."

The painful and shocking fall left a nasty-looking mark on the Jazz's record and playoff positioning aspirations. Only a Dallas loss to Memphis on Friday kept Utah, which dropped to 46-30, from nose-diving into the bottom of the Western Conference playoff standings.

For reasons they're still trying to figure out, the Jazz have opted to perform with a high degree of difficulty in recent home games. They let 20-plus-point leads slip away from them before rallying to beat both Phoenix and New York in their last two contests at the ESA.

And they repeated that trend against the T-Wolves.

Problem is, following a pair of rough road losses at Northwest Division rivals Portland and Denver this week, the Jazz couldn't catch their balance in time Friday after the pesky Minnesota players battled back from a 15-point Utah lead in the first half.

The Jazz had a chance to win the game at the buzzer, but Williams bounced off a couple of Minnesota players like a pinball and missed an 18-foot desperation shot.

"This came back and bit us," said Jazz assistant coach Phil Johnson, who filled in for a funeral-attending Jerry Sloan.

"We've had three games almost exactly like this," he added. "We had Phoenix. We had New York and now this one. You can't keep playing that way and letting teams come back in the game and not have it come up and bite ya sooner or later."

Rodney Carney and Ryan Gomes each scored 25 points to help the Timberwolves accomplish a feat the Lakers, Celtics and 13 other teams have not been able to do in more than two months. While pushing Utah's losing streak to three, Minnesota snapped the Jazz's 15-game home-winning streak. "We definitely expected to win," said Jazz guard Kyle Korver. "But now we know it's not just a gimme because we're at home, so hopefully next time we'll play a little bit better."