Fantastic 4th: Andrei's effort punctuates Jazz victory

It wasn't his five blocks, or his first three steals. It wasn't his six boards. It wasn't even his 24 points on 8-of-12 field shooting.

Instead, it was one play — and it happened while most of the 18,667 who had filed into the Delta Center a couple hours earlier were on their way out.

With the Jazz up by 11 points in the final 15 seconds of their 102-91 win over Denver on Monday night, a victory that has Utah off to a 4-0 start early in the 2004-05 NBA season, it was one play in particular by Jazz All-Star forward Andrei Kirilenko that actually pleased a particularly hard-to-impress head coach more than any statistic or record ever could.

Denver's Carmelo Anthony — snubbed, at least in his mind, for last season's All-Star Game, but the runner-up nonetheless to LeBron James for NBA Rookie of the Year honors — had the ball at the top of the key.

Anthony tried to drive on Kirilenko, who flustered him not only much of Monday, but also during an eight-block night when the Jazz beat the Nuggets by 24 just last Saturday.

He made, however, no progress.

Anthony instead dribbled off his product-shooed foot, and the ball squirted toward the half-court line. And just what did Kirilenko do? With the game's outcome long-ago decided, and the need to add yet another strawberry onto to one of his fields-forever knees, he sprawled onto the floor and forced a jump ball.

The Jazz won the tap, ran down the clock and improved to 4-0 for the first time since their 5-0 start back in the 2000-01 season — all four victories, by the way, coming with Utah scoring in excess of 100 points and shooting each time in excess of 50 percent from the field.

"Andrei was terrific," Jazz coach Jerry Sloan said. "To see a guy of his size (6-foot-9) dive on the floor for a loose ball at the end of the game is something you don't see in this league.

"That," Sloan added, "is why he's a special player."

And, perhaps, it personifies precisely why Sloan's club — despite the presence of two key still-learning-the-way-things-work-around-here newcomers in Carlos Boozer and Mehmet Okur, and despite the absence of two certain someones named John Stockton and Karl Malone — has the NBA on notice.

"That one play," Jazz guard Raja Bell said, "is what we try to do, in a nutshell."

On the stat sheet, it's Boozer pulling down seven rebounds on a night he scored just four points — his first single-digit game since joining the Jazz from Cleveland.

It's Okur enjoying a breakout game of sorts with not just 12 points, but also nine boards.

It's Bell hitting 3-of-5 from 3-point range en route to scoring 17 points off the bench.

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