For Jerry Sloan, the All-Star break was anything but restful.

Why? Because the Jazz coach's team closed out the pre-break portion of its schedule with back-to-back road losses, including one in Memphis in which they barely played, and because that last defeat included an unpleasant incident with center Greg Ostertag.
     
That meant five days of stewing, of wondering what he has to do to get these guys to take their situation seriously. They knew this nine-game, accommodate-the-Olympics road trip could make or break their season, and still they went out and flopped bigtime.
     
"You don't get away from it," Sloan said after practice Monday evening. "If I didn't care, I probably could . . . I'm still pretty competitive. Things stay inside of you. There was no break there, mentally."
     
Ostertag got off light ? a one-game suspension, with pay, which people in most jobs would consider a holiday. On Monday he sounded like he recognized the error of his ways, though he fell short of total contrition.
     
"Maybe I overreacted a little bit," he said. "Given the circumstances, maybe everybody was a little overheated. I'm going to sit out my suspension, try to be ready to play in Philly."