Utah Jazz down Clips, now 3-0

LOS ANGELES — Ronnie Brewer played soothsayer after the Jazz's victory over the Los Angeles Clippers last Saturday, and he hit the mark when it came to guessing what might happen in Monday night's rematch.

"We're gonna have, probably, a different team than what you saw out there tonight — a rested Clippers team, probably with (Marcus) Camby back, probably with Baron Davis back," the Jazz shooting guard predicted at the time.

What Brewer might not have seen coming, however, was the impact backup power forward Paul Millsap would have — even with those two on the floor.

Because new Clippers point guard Davis did return from a sore hip, and new Clippers big man Camby was back from a sore heel, but the Jazz — behind a 24-point effort from Millsap — wore still-winless L.A. down anyway, winning 89-73 at Staples Center to improve to 3-0.

Millsap scored 15 of his 24 with 5-of-6 field shooting in the fourth quarter, and stretched a five-point Jazz lead going into the period to 17 after a Kyle Korver-fed slam with about four-and-a-half minutes remaining.

"Fortunately for us Paul Millsap had a terrific game," Jazz coach Jerry Sloan said. "He (wore them down). I don't feel like the rest of us did, but I thought Paul Millsap did.

"He appreciated the fact of getting to play more minutes," Sloan added after Millsap logged 32, well up from the 20.8 he averaged last season. "He took advantage of it, and made some things happen for us. That's what you like to see. I mean, those sort of things makes him better and should make our team better."

Millsap was a virtual one-man show in the fourth, pulling down five of nine rebounds during the quarter and scoring one basket after another.

During one stretch in the period that lasted barely more than three minutes, he merely hit two free throws, made a layup, hit two more free throws, make a steal, scored on another layup and hit the freebie that followed, pulled down a defensive rebound, and then an offensive rebound, and another, hit a turnaround, then finally dunked with the pass from Korver.

"I just started feeling it," Millsap said. "Teammates started looking for me, and I just hit shots.

"Especially once you knock down your free throws," he added, "it seems like things just start going your way. Balls started falling in my hands, I got offensive rebounds and just hit shots."

All that was chiefly responsible for negating the fears of Sloan, whose pre-game worries over playing a second straight game against the same opponent proved not nearly as prophetic as Brewer.

"You have a tendency to get complacent, and think you don't have to come and play very hard," Sloan said of such situations. "But that's when you get smacked upside the head."

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