Can Donyell Marshall give the Jazz the next lift they need?
     
After a 6-0 Eastern road trip, the Jazz got clobbered in Sacramento Tuesday, then returned home ? for the first time in 26 days ? to face the Grizzlies, who inexplicably had already beaten Utah twice this season.
     
With Marshall seeing his first extended minutes in more than a month and leading the team in scoring, the Jazz walked all over the shorthanded Grizz Thursday night.
     
But that was Memphis. Today's foe at the Delta Center is Minnesota, another team that has thumped the Jazz twice, and that was when they had Marshall. In fact, the Timberwolves' last victory over Utah came in the middle of a stretch of seven Jazz wins in eight games.
     
If the Jazz are ever to convince their fans they've improved of late, they need to start beating teams like the Timberwolves.
     
And Marshall will have to be a key to that. One of the impressive things about the Jazz's recent success is that it came with their second-leading scorer, and the No. 3 field-goal shooter in the league, out with first a bruised hip, then a strained groin.
     
Marshall returned to action with a cameo appearance against the Kings, then had a field day against the undermanned Grizzlies, scoring a team-high 20 in 22 minutes, including a couple of alley-oop dunks, with six rebounds.
     
But he didn't come out of the blocks like this would be a big night. In the first half Marshall made just two of eight shots, missed a couple easy attempts and got stuffed a couple times. Even when he was clearly struggling, his teammates kept encouraging him to stay with it.
     
"They just kept going to me," he said. "Karl (Malone) was trying to help me get in a rhythm."