Utah Jazz: Win wasn't pretty, but team will take it

By Deron Williams' description, Saturday's 97-76 victory over the Philadelphia 76ers didn't quite make it to the ugly win category.

But it certainly could be filed somewhere between "sweet spirit" and "unsightly."

"It wasn't," Williams admitted, "a pretty game for us."

And that less-than-glowing endorsement came from a guy whose team actually scored in the first seven minutes and 55 seconds of the fourth quarter.

Imagine what Williams — or a brutal say-it-like-you-see-it critic like Simon Cowell — might've said had he been talking about Philadelphia.

The 76ers, after all, bricked and blundered their way through an 8:47 scoreless stretch from the tail end of the third quarter until 4:04 remained in the not-very-pretty game.

Thanks to some gritty defense by the Jazz and some woeful shooting by the Sixers, Utah turned an unsightly yet competitive contest into a blowout that even a mother might not have loved looking at.

During that decisive stretch, Philly missed 16 straight shots while the Jazz went on an 11-0 run to build an 83-64 lead.

Mercifully, Thaddeus Young finally scored for the visitors after they'd been shut out for nearly eight minutes of the fourth quarter.

Williams and Kyle Korver, however, iced the frigid Sixers with 3-pointers after that to send Philly to a third-straight loss.

The Jazz limited the Sixers to 13 percent shooting (3-for-23) and 12 points in that clinching quarter.

"It is satisfying," said Jazz forward Andrei Kirilenko, who was one of the Jazz's key defensive cogs.

Especially because the defensive gem helped Utah snap out of a two-game funk and improve to 17-13.

They'll take that even if it means being Miss Congeniality and not the pageant winner.

"We couldn't pull away till the end, but the most important thing is we did," said Williams, who led all scorers with 27 points to go with eight assists and five rebounds.

"I thought down the stretch our defense was a lot better, our intensity was a lot better."

Jerry Sloan wasn't exactly fired up about the way his team played against a team with only seven wins, saying his players "have to learn how to play harder and tougher."