A 14-2 run just before halftime Sunday allowed the Jazz to eliminate a 12-point deficit and head to the locker room tied. Or so it seemed.

But in the final half-minute, a bad pass and two Stephon Marbury charges to the basket - one for a three-point play - changed the whole atmosphere by re-establishing a 41-36 Knicks lead.

"We had the game tied up and we gave away five points because we weren't quite ready to finish," grumbled Jazz coach Jerry Sloan.

It's hardly the first time, though. In fact, Sunday's mistake was the third straight last-second giveaway by the Jazz.

Steve Nash stepped in front of a Carlos Boozer inbounds pass in the final four seconds of the first half Wednesday night in Phoenix, turning it into a quick, and unnecessary, layup.

And on Friday, when Celtics guard Jiri Welsch launched a 22-footer that had little chance at the buzzer, Kirk Snyder fouled him on the wrist, handing Boston two free points with three-tenths of a second left.

"No question about it," Sloan said when asked if those last-second points were putting a damper on halftimes lately. "You make mistakes like that - guys have to learn, some of those things break your back."

First time for everything

Aleksandar Radojevic had never started an NBA game before, so being introduced to the Madison Square Garden crowd - in Spanish, oddly enough, because of the Knicks' Hispanic Day promotion - was "a thrill for me. It's a nice surprise."

But Radojevic wasn't so much a starter, Sloan said, as an early - very early - substitution. The idea is to keep Boozer and especially Mehmet Okur more fresh for the late stages of the game.

"It's been tough for us to get a replacement for them out on the floor," the coach said. "Alek gives us an opportunity to get some minutes out of him early in the game, and maybe Okur and Boozer can be stronger at the end."

Besides, Sloan said, Radojevic deserved a shot after a reasonably effective 17-minute audition in Boston two nights earlier. "He's long and he gives us a little bit of presence in there," Sloan said. "I thought he played pretty well."

Radojevic, who scored five points, all at the free-throw line, and collected four rebounds in 26 minutes, said he was encouraged but not satisfied by his performance. "I can do better," he said. "It's nice to play, but I'm not going to be happy with this."

pmiller@sltrib.com

Briefly

Raul Lopez started for the third straight game, and while he made only one of his six shots from the field, the Jazz outscored New York 32-25 during the 19 minutes he was in the game. Carlos Arroyo played the game's final 19 minutes, scoring nine points on 3-for-10 shooting. Howard Eisley did not play. . . . Kris Humphries opened the second quarter in the Jazz's lineup, but when he tried a 20-foot jumper on the second possession, Sloan called a 20-second timeout and yelled at him. Humphries played only four more minutes and sat out the rest of the game. . . . Boozer liked the Jazz's passing, saying, "I don't know how many assists we had, but it was a lot of them." Actually, though, Utah's 16 assists were their fewest this month, and second-lowest total of the year. Nobody had more than Lopez's four, which is also a season-low for the team's leader.

pmiller@sltrib.com