? Karl Malone was ill, suffering from flu-like symptoms, and held to three points on 1-of-11 shooting in 25 draining minutes.
     What the Jazz did ? or, in this case, did not do ? while their star was ailing made coach Jerry Sloan sort of sick, too.
     Utah fell 100-82 Thursday night to the Charlotte Hornets, marking the 34-30 Jazz's fourth straight loss and their third on a five-game trip that continues tonight against the NBA Central Division-leading Detroit Pistons and ends Sunday at playoff-bound Minnesota.
     "They beat us all night long. We weren't even in the ball game with them," a disgusted Sloan said after a game his club really wasn't in, yielding a first-quarter 20-2 run, trailing by 18 at halftime and never coming any closer than 16 as Charlotte's second-half advantage soared as high as 26. "We just couldn't compete with them at all. They did anything they wanted to."
     The immediate damage done by 26-point scorer Jamal Mashburn and the 31-33 Hornets: Another chink in the Jazz's precarious lead over the 34-31 Los Angeles Clippers for the eighth and Western Conference final playoff position, with 18 regular-season games to go now for Utah.
     The bigger picture for the Jazz, though, is even uglier than that.
     Based on Sloan's postgame comments, his appears to be a team coming apart at the seams ? replete with some players who, according to the coach, act as if losing is of no real consequence.
     "It concerns me every time we play," Sloan said of the Jazz's postseason-positioning plummet. "But I'm not sure it concerns these guys. Those are the ones who have to be worried. I'm not worried. They're not going to run me off because of this.