SALT LAKE CITY — Deron Williams had hoped to quiet his former fans with a win Saturday night.
Instead, it was the Jazz, and the hometown fans, who had the last laugh.
Thanks to road-weary legs, a 3-point shooting barrage from Jazz guard Randy Foye and sloppy ball-handling, the Nets found themselves on the short end of a 116-107 loss in front of 18,008 at Energy Solutions Arena.
"They play really well in this building," Williams said after finishing with 21 points and 11 assists in 35:30. "That's the main thing, and Foye went nuts in that third quarter, and we never really recovered.
AP
NOT TODAY: Deron Williams' shot is rejected with authority by the Jazz's Gordon Hayward during the Nets' 116-107 loss last night in Salt Lake City.
"If you get down to a Jazz team by 20 in this building, it's very hard to come back. I've been on the other side of it, so I know."
After the Nets (42-31) took a 54-52 lead at the half, Foye went off, going 7-for-8 from behind the 3-point arc and finishing the game with 26 points on 8-for-9 shooting from long range to pace the Jazz (38-36), who shot 55 percent from the field as a team.
The Nets fell behind by as many as 16 points in the fourth quarter, and while they tried to make a run late, cutting the deficit to as few as seven, they dug themselves too big of a hole to climb out of.
"Our defense wasn't good enough," Nets interim coach P.J. Carlesimo said. "I think their offense had a lot to do with it. Fatigue has a little bit to do with it. Joe [Johnson] not [playing] has a little bit to do with it.
"But the bottom line is we allowed them too many points inside, and Randy and Mo [Williams] made threes."
The loss dropped the Nets — without Johnson for the fourth straight game as he nurses a right quadriceps contusion and a sore left heel — to 4-3 on the West Coast portion of their eight-game, 17-day road trip, and sending them back East on a sour note.
In addition, it also put a severe dent in their chances of catching either the Knicks or Pacers for the second and third seeds, respectively, in the Eastern Conference. The Nets are five games back in the loss column behind the Atlantic Division-leading Knicks and four behind the Pacers with just nine games remaining.
But the story of the night was Deron Williams returning to face his former team for the second time in Utah. He acquitted himself well, but it wasn't enough to keep him from dropping to 0-4 against the Jazz since the blockbuster trade that sent him to the Nets in 2011.
In an ironic twist, former Jazz coach Jerry Sloan, who regularly attends home games, was in the building to watch his former team go up against his former point guard. Williams said after the game he hadn't even known Sloan was in the building.
Williams received a mixture of cheers and boos when he was introduced —a far cry from the thunderous round of boos he received a year ago. Before the tip, he exchanged handshakes with several of his former Jazz teammates, including Utah's starting big men Al Jefferson and Paul Millsap.
Once the game began, Williams was hit with a chorus of boos whenever he touched the ball, though the fans seemed to forget about doing so as the game went on, to the point where it barely was audible in the second half.
"It wasn't as bad as last year," Williams said. "Maybe next year I'll get some boos and a couple cheers.
"There's no animosity," Williams said. "I had a great time in Utah. I don't have anything bad to say about the fans. They're going to react the way they want to react and think what they want to think, and I can't really change that. I've just got a lot of love for them."
But one thing Williams doesn't have, still, is a victory over his former team.
"I haven't won against the Jazz yet," he said. "I want to get a win. Maybe next year is the year."
tbontemps@nypost.com
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