Or so goes the danger-around-every-corner thinking of Jazz coach Jerry Sloan, who looks at a patsy-on-paper expansion team like the Bobcats and sees nothing but land mines and barbed wire.

"It's one of the toughest games you play all year long," sounded Sloan's warning. "You start fooling around and not doing your job, not getting after them and doing the things to give yourself a chance to win. If you play that way, you're going to get yourself in trouble. Now you panic a little bit, and that's what I always get concerned about."

First instinct: Roll your eyes at the Chicken-Little coach. OK, that's the second instinct too. The Bobcats are so anonymous, Jazz forward Matt Harpring couldn't name a single Charlotte player other than first-round pick Emeka Okafor - and Harpring was once a teammate of a Bobcat, guard Brevin Knight, in Cleveland.

But Sloan's fretting makes a little more sense when Charlotte's no-name collection of Brezecs, Kaponos and Slays is compared to another recent worst-team-ever candidate:

Um . . . last year's Jazz.

"I'm sure teams got concerned about us a little bit that way last year," Sloan said. "There's not a great deal of expectations, and then once you get momentum going, guys start to believe they can win."

And then they do. So far, Charlotte has beaten only Orlando, but the Bobcats came close in Milwaukee last week. Like last season's Jazz, they have more talent than they get credit for, the Jazz believe. "They have some big-time scorers - Primoz Brezec is very good," said Jazz assistant coach Gordon Chiesa of the Bobcats' leading scorer, an ex-Pacer center who averages 15.0 points per game. Ex-Spurs guard "Jason Hart does a nice job, and when you've got a big guy and a point guard like that, you can play with a lot of people."

Those two, along with Okafor and wing players Gerald Wallace (a former King) and Eddie House (acquired from the Clippers) give Charlotte a young and energetic nucleus. "They play fast defensively, always trying to trap the ball and double-team the post," said Chiesa. "They have a hard time scoring sometimes, so they try to score with defense."

That was a trip

The Jazz play four road games in the next five nights, an unusually tough schedule in today's NBA. But it's nothing compared to a trip Sloan endured in 1965, during his rookie season with the Baltimore Bullets.

The Bullets played on five consecutive nights, flying commercially between cities, in a trip that went: Los Angeles-San Francisco-Los Angeles-San Francisco - and New York. Making matters worse, on the red-eye flight to New York, one of the plane's engines failed, forcing an emergency landing in Denver.

"They had all the firetrucks sitting on the side," Sloan recalled. "My legs got shaking so bad, I couldn't hold them."

The Bullets arrived in New York at 11 a.m., and Sloan was ready to play that night. "I got to play more in those games than any of them. We didn't win them, but I got to play, that was so exciting for me," Sloan said. "I was a rookie hoping someone got hurt, or they cancelled the game and I got to play by myself. I was just interested in playing, that's all I can recall. It was a fun time."

He hopes his players have fun on the court, too. "I hope it's not a shopping spree. Sometimes these guys get out on the road, then it's time to get a bunch of shopping done and they don't play basketball," Sloan said. "Take care of yourself, that's the huge thing. Stay off your feet."

Briefly

The Jazz plan to decide this morning which player will replace point guard Carlos Arroyo on the injured list. With all 12 current players healthy, one of the rookies, Kris Humphries or Kirk Snyder, seems destined to be stashed for awhile. . . . Signing 10-year veteran Howard Eisley last week prevented the Jazz from being the NBA's least-experienced team, according to the league's calculations. The Jazz average just over three years of experience, ranking them 28th overall, ahead of Chicago and Phoenix. . . . Those three teams are also the league's youngest.

pmiller@sltrib.com