SALT LAKE CITY, April 3 (Ticker) -- Karl Malone and the Utah Jazz simply own the Los Angeles Clippers.

Malone had 24 points, eight rebounds and seven assists as the Jazz easily defeated the Clippers, 99-87, to take a five-game lead in the race for the final Western Conference playoff berth.

With the win -- Utah's 26th in a row at home over Los Angeles since 1989 and 14th straight over the Clippers overall -- the Jazz (42-33) climbed within a half-game of Seattle (43-33) for seventh in the West. The SuperSonics lost to San Antonio earlier Wednesday.

Utah's veterans have beaten Los Angeles' inexperienced kids twice in four days to take control of the race. The Jazz are virtually assured of their 19th consecutive playoff berth.

NBA TV highlights from Clippers-Jazz: 56k | 300k Karl Malone delivered the knockout punch to the Clippers with an amazingly solid performance. Kent Horner NBAE/Getty Images

"It was an important win for us," Utah coach Jerry Sloan said. "Letting the game get away from us last night (in Denver) ... at least we came back and won the game. Try and put these guys a little further out of reach as far as the playoffs are concerned. That's what you got to do first before you do anything else."

"They're a team that we played twice in three or four games, and those are always the hardest teams to play, but the most important thing is that we were able to come out and get both victories," Malone said. "So now we can concentrate on what we need to concentrate on, let's continue to finish this thing out and play good, solid Jazz basketball. If we do that, we'll be just fine."

Malone scored eight points in the first quarter, which ended with the Jazz ahead, 22-9. Elton Brand scored all nine points for the Clippers, making 4-of-7 shots while his teammates were 0-of-11.

"Obviously if you score nine in the first quarter it's gonna be very difficult against this team to come back and win the game," Clippers coach Alvin Gentry said. "I was disappointed. I didn't think we played with any sense of urgency . I think at this stage we're so caught up in individual things that we've forgotten about the team. We're not good enough that if we don't play together and play extremely hard that we can beat any team. Not this team, any team."

Utah stretched its advantage to 41-30 at halftime and 67-39 on a layup by DeShawn Stevenson with 3:31 to go in the third quarter.

"We didn't play together," said Clippers center Michael Olowokandi, who shot 2-of-15 for seven points. "I've said this before and I'll go on the record and say it again: Whenever you have a group of guys that are very uncertain of their future on the team, that will always happen. Whenever you have that situation you will never, ever, ever have a basketball team.

Not this year, not next year, not 10 years from now. I don't care how many players you draft and lottery picks you get, you will never have a basketball team."

The Jazz, the NBA's oldest team, shot 56 percent (36-of-64) and stymied the league's youngest squad into 38 percent (31-of-82).

"I still think that we've got a lot of positive things that we can accomplish with our team this year," Gentry said. "Obviously we're not going to make the playoffs, but there's still a lot of positive things that can happen. I think that's what we've got to concentrate on, but we've got to do it as a collective group."

The Clippers, who never led, shot an abysmal 7 percent from the arc (1-of-14), while the Jazz made 4-of-6.

"Right now we're not giving up, we're not settling for the eight spot," said Utah's Donyell Marshall, who had seven points and six rebounds off the bench. "We're right there for the seven spot or maybe even the six spot, still got a lot of games left and we're trying to move up as far as we can."