Clippers Smooth, but Jazz Is Just Too Hot : Pro basketball: Rivers avoids turnovers and Smith scores season-high 34, but Malone and Stockton do their usual stuff for Utah, 116-102.

The Clippers made a deal for a guard and then broke the 100-point mark for only the fourth time in nine games. But that’s where their success ended Thursday night.

The Utah Jazz saw to that, John Stockton and Karl Malone in particular.

Stockton had 24 points and 20 assists and Malone countered inside with 35 points and 11 rebounds in a 116-102 victory before 12,136 at the Sports Arena.

The Clippers (21-31) lost their fifth in a row, although this one was a bit different.

This time, the Clippers looked good in losing.

Having decided before the game to push toward a fast-break offense, the Clippers committed only 11 turnovers, a commendable number under any circumstances.

More notable than his career-high 15 points, David Rivers had eight assists and no turnovers.

“But they made it fairly difficult because we were taking the ball out of the net,” Rivers said.

The Jazz, who improved to 38-16 and opened a 2 1/2-game lead in the Midwest Division over idle San Antonio, made 56.1% of their shots.

The Clippers’ sometimes upbeat style of play apparently worked well for Charles Smith, except that he was coming off games of 31 and 30 when things didn’t run nearly this smoothly.

Thursday, with center Benoit Benjamin still out with flu, Smith guarded Mark Eaton and Malone, tough assignments alone, and scored a career-high 34 points.

“We lost,” said Smith, who connected on 14 of 21 shots. “Thirty-four points doesn’t count in a losing situation.”

Losers of four in a row at home, the Clippers trailed only 43-39 with 4:35 to play in the second quarter. From there, however, the Jazz went on a 14-5 run to finish the first half with a 57-44 lead.

Malone had eight points in that stretch, en route to 18 by halftime.

But even Smith made that look average. He went nine of 12 for 20 points in the first half, scoring almost half the Clipper total. No teammate had more than six.

The Utah advantage got as big as 18, at 67-49, in the third quarter, but the Clippers managed to reduce that to seven, 82-75, on a free throw by Danny Manning with 16.3 seconds to play in the quarter.

The Clippers came back to make it respectable in the fourth quarter, pulling within 104-97 on a basket by Rivers with 2:04 to play. But they never got closer than seven.

Clipper Notes

The Clippers reached the league limit of three players on the injured list when Jay Edwards was added to it Thursday, but there are ways to maneuver around the restriction in the future if necessary. The team could, for example, technically suspend Edwards, Gary Grant or Ron Harper with pay, a move that would have no effect on any of the three players.

Thursday’s honorary ballboy was Adam Brock, a 10-year-old from Woodland Hills who has leukemia. Brock and his family are searching for bone marrow donors, and a donor-testing drive consisting of blood tests is scheduled for Monday. For more information, call (818) 881-6339.