Jazz lay a giant-sized egg News Minnesota Timberwolves

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." That next time won't happen, however, until after the Jazz travel to play three teams in the thick of things in the West playoff race ? New Orleans, Dallas and San Antonio. "It doesn't look good right now," Korver added. "We've got to pull this together. We can we definitely can. We just have to do it." Korver led a strong effort from the Jazz bench with 19 points on 6-of-11 shooting. Andrei Kirilenko bounced back from his 1-for-10 outing in Denver to score 13 points, going 6-for-7 from the field with three blocked shots. And Paul Millsap added a dozen points and six rebounds for Utah. But the Jazz got little help from their starters other than a big-time game from Williams, who scored 34 points and dished out 11 assists. Jazz starting center Mehmet Okur made 5-of-9 shots for 11 points in a limited 26-minute role, but he was the only other starter to hit double digits. Power forward Carlos Boozer continued his recent funk, only scoring six points on 1-for-9 shooting, and Ronnie Brewer added just five points. C.J. Miles had an offensive goose egg, and didn't play the second half after dislocating his left index finger near the end of the first half. Miles could be out for a week depending on how his hand heals. "It's just a bad loss, man," Williams said. "Regardless of what time we got in (after the late Denver game) and how many games it was in five nights, it's just a bad loss." His coach for the night didn't disagree. "Needless to say, it was a real tough loss," Johnson said. "It's been a tough week for us. I knew this would be a tough game. I told our people ? our coaches and our team ? as a matter of fact, that these are tough games. You're playing people that really don't have much pressure on them. You're playing against a team that's free and easy, and we've got pressure on us." Western Conference playoff race Record GB 1. Lakers 60 16 ? 2. Nuggets 50 26 10 3. Spurs 49 26 101/2 4. Trail Blazers 48 27 111/2 5. Rockets 48 28 12 6. Hornets 47 28 121/2 7. Jazz46 30 14 8. Mavericks 45 31 15 9. Suns 42 34 18 E-mail: jody@desnews.com