Utah Jazz: Down but upbeat about effort

Whether it haunts them down the road remains to be seen.

The funny thing, though, is that the Jazz seemed more flustered Tuesday night by their seemingly devastating loss at Dallas than they did spooked.

One night after Jerry Sloan ranted about what he deemed to be one of the worst defensive efforts he's seen in his many years during an embarrassing home loss to the Houston Rockets, in fact, the longtime Jazz coach was more upbeat than melancholy.

"I told them, 'We had the loss (Monday night), but the effort was so much better (Tuesday)," Sloan said after the Jazz blew a 16-point fourth-quarter lead in the 96-85 loss to the Mavericks.

"I thought we competed," added Sloan, whose Jazz return home tonight to face San Antonio in a late-starting, TNT-televised game.

"Yeah, we made some mistakes. But if you don't compete, then you don't have much of a chance to have anything good happen for you."

Having his players believe all that, however, may be as tough as getting them to buy into the need to run a structured offense and actually play defense.

"We fought. No question about that. We definitely fought," power forward Carlos Boozer said. "But it's tough when you still come up short and you don't win. It's hard to take a lot of good things out of the game when you lose, you know what I mean?"

Point guard Deron Williams does.

"You know, we thought we were headed in the right direction, if you watched the first three quarters," Williams added. "We didn't shoot the ball well (34.1 percent in the first half), we didn't score well (37 points through two quarters).

"But the thing is, we were getting stops. Defensively, we were getting stops. We were helping each other out. We were able to force turnovers and get out and run a little bit. All until that fourth quarter."

That, of course, is when Mavs star Dirk Nowitzki took over, scoring 29 of his game-high 40 points in the fourth as the Mavs overcame a 16-point deficit with just more than eight minutes to go and eventually swung the game by 27 points.

Dallas trailed 67-52 after three quarters, marking the first time this season that the Jazz have led heading into the fourth.

But the Mavs outscored Utah 44-18 in that final period, leaving the Jazz with a fourth-quarter collapse that ties for third-worst in franchise history — just five points off a blown 20-point advantage vs. Seattle (now Oklahoma City) in 2007.

"We have to do a better job of protecting our lead," Boozer said.

"We've got to figure out how to play 48 minutes of basketball," Williams added. "Not 42, not 43. Forty-eight."