SALT LAKE CITY -- Lately, it seems Deron Williams has seen more ice than the Titanic.
Already bothered by injuries to his wrist and shoulder, the Utah Jazz point guard now has added a sprained ankle to his list of maladies.
Williams suffered the injury in the first half of Wednesday night's blowout victory over the Minnesota Timberwolves. Although he went to the locker room to get re-taped, he returned to the court and finished the game with nine points and 11 assists.
Afterward, he hobbled out of the Jazz training room with red splotches all over his body, each one the remnant of a post-game ice bag.
"I just need a whole new left side," he joked.
The Jazz have listed Williams as a gametime decision for tonight's contest at Phoenix. According to the team's official injury report, he has a sprained left ankle and a left shoulder contusion.
He underwent an MRI on his left shoulder Thursday morning before flying to Phoenix.
Williams wasn't the only injured Jazzman after Wednesday's game.
Forward Andrei Kirilenko had missed two previous games with a strained calf muscle. However, he was able to loosen up beforehand and started against the T-Wolves.
He aggravated the injury early in the third quarter and did not return.
Also in the third quarter, starting two guard Wesley Matthews suffered a mildly sprained MC ligament in his left knee. He remained in the game and played just over five minutes during the fourth quarter.
Both Kirilenko and Matthews will be gametime decisions tonight.
"I'll be alright," Matthews said. "I don't even like talking about it. I'll be good, don't worry about me."
Kirilenko had a similar reaction.
"I don't even want to talk about it," he said.
Clearly the Jazz are not only tired of talking about their injuries, they'd just as soon not deal with them at all.
But a buildup of bumps and bruises is commonplace over the course of an 82-game regular season.
"Every time you look around, somebody's hurt," coach Jerry Sloan said. "You take what you get and go on down the road.
"This is the NBA. It's not a pickup game," he later added. "That's just part of this game. You can't do anything about it. If (a player) gets banged-up, he gets banged-up. That's the nature of this business."
When the Jazz face the Suns tonight, they'll be playing game No. 69.
Going into Thursday night's limited NBA schedule, the Jazz trailed both Dallas and Denver by two games in the Western Conference standings.
"We're going to let (the media) keep talking about (the playoff race)," power forward Carlos Boozer said. "We're going to just take it one game at a time. All we can do is take care of ourselves each game at a time."
Without looking beyond tonight's game, Boozer said the key to the rest of the regular season, as well as the postseason, is good health.
"Everybody cross their fingers (that we) get through the rest of the regular season healthy," he said. "We have a good chance in the playoffs if everybody's healthy."
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