Certainly Sloan noticed. Always displeased when a fellow NBA coach is fired, the Jazz's coach was particularly disturbed that Portland would dismiss Cheeks so soon after a shouting match with forward Darius Miles, a conflict that earned the player a two-game suspension.

"You watch some of the things that happen, and you wonder how they expect a coach to keep players from doing whatever they want," Sloan said Friday. "If the coach has no control, how do they expect to overcome that? Unless you just have so much talent [on your roster], you can't. That doesn't happen very often."

Sloan's clash with guard Carlos Arroyo earlier this season was far less serious, but a month later, Arroyo was gone, not the coach. While the team insists that the trade had nothing to do with his face-off with Sloan, even the coach admits that such incidents send a message about who is in charge.

"Maybe the players think it does. We try to keep things halfway sane in this organization," Sloan said. The Trail Blazers, on the other hand, "kind of set a precedent about who's running their program."

Collins hurt

It wouldn't be a Jazz game this season without a new injury, and Friday's victim was Jarron Collins.

The Jazz's center collided shoulder-to-shoulder with a Hornet big man while trying to fight through a screen under the basket in the second quarter, and immediately left the game for good.

X-rays on his right shoulder showed no break to the collarbone, but Collins wore his right arm in a sling after the game. According to trainer Gary Briggs, Collins sprained the ligaments over the AC joint in his shoulder, "a common injury for a football player."

"Basically, it was like running into a wall with [my] shoulder," Collins said. He will take inflammatory medication, and is not likely to be out long. Briggs said Collins will not practice this afternoon in San Antonio, however, and is doubtful for Sunday's game with the Spurs.

Already contributing

One practice and one shootaround into his Utah career, Randy Livingston had already made a positive impression on Sloan.

That's what playing for eight different NBA coaches in eight years will do.

"He's picked this up really fast," Sloan said. "He's an intelligent player. He's been around, seen a lot of different things on the court, worked with a lot of coaches, picked up a lot of ideas. Those things stick with you, so you know what you're doing right away. It's called experience."

That experience convinced Sloan to get Livingston some playing time in his first game. Livingston entered the game with a minute and a half remaining in the first half, and directed a crisp entry pass to Matt Harpring under that basket on his first possession.