For all the talk about using this four-game homestand to start a winning streak, to climb back into playoff position, to turn around their season after a disappointing start, Paul Millsap put the importance of Monday's game in the plainest of terms.

Not even halfway through the season, Millsap declared the Jazz's game against the Golden State Warriors a "must-win." Never mind that it came in the first week of January against a 10-25 team that had lost five straight on the road.

What followed was far from easy, but it might have been the start of something. The Jazz finally put away the Warriors in the fourth quarter to take a 119-114 victory before a snow-thinned crowd at EnergySolutions Arena.

"I think we have no choice but to build off of it," said Millsap, who finished with 19 points and 14 rebounds for his 18th consecutive double-double. "We dug ourself a hole already. As many games as we can wrap up, it'd be good for us."

"We definitely needed this one," Deron Williams added. "It'll build our confidence hopefully at home. We've got some tough games ahead of us, but this is the time we need to go on a streak. We had a successful January last year [11-2], why not do it again?"

It was a bizarre game all around, starting with the confusion that followed a whistle in the crowd late in the second quarter. Jazz coach Jerry Sloan also stopped a fast break in the fourth quarter with a timeout to get an injured Andrei Kirilenko out of the game.

The Jazz (20-15) made their final push behind Millsap in the last four minutes. Clinging to a 108-105 lead, the Jazz watched Ronnie Brewer and Kyle Korver miss three jumpers before Millsap pounded in a rebound with 3:38 left.

At the other end, Millsap blocked C.J. Watson on a drive, leading to a dunk for Brewer on the break. As the Warriors called timeout, trailing 112-105, Millsap was greeted by a body check from Brevin Knight on his way to the bench.

"That's just being there in the right place at the right time," said Millsap, who had five offensive rebounds in the fourth quarter. "That's my job, coming in and doing things like that."

Even after losing Stephen Jackson to a strained right hamstring on the final play of the first half, the Warriors refused to go away. Watson and Anthony Morrow hit back-to-back three-pointers in the fourth after the Jazz had taken a nine-point lead.

Williams, meanwhile, had a dazzling game for the Jazz, finishing with 25 points and 15 assists, though he did go 0-for-3 in the fourth quarter.

He drilled two three-pointers in the first quarter, improvised a jumper with the shot clock running out in the second, cut for an alley-oop layup and sent the Jazz into halftime with a 65-59 lead by racing end-to-end to hit a runner with 0.3 seconds left.

In the third quarter, Williams split two defenders on a drive and later scored in the post against Jamal Crawford (28 points). But Williams took a spill when he was raked across the face by Corey Maggette on the break with 1:48 left in the quarter.

Williams dished to Kirilenko for a dunk and crumpled to the court as Maggette caught him. "I saw black after that," joked Williams, who stayed in the game to hit a free throw and convert a most unconventional three-point play.

Once again, the Jazz stumbled at the start, falling behind 13-4 in the game's opening 2:42. Marco Belinelli hit two three-pointers -- one of which turned into a four-point play -- but Sloan was most upset with two blown pick-and-roll coverages.

Having gone over such things in the locker room only minutes earlier, Sloan came to one conclusion after watching the Warriors breeze to two layups: "Our concentration's more on ourselves rather than on the team."

With the victory, the Jazz now are only a half-game out of playoff position. Millsap, for one, already was looking ahead to Wednesday's showdown with New Orleans, which will carry the same stakes as Monday's game for the Jazz.

"The next game's a must-win, too," Millsap said. "So we've got to continue to win games, try to get a streak going right now."

rsiler@sltrib.com