ATLANTA -- Let's get right to the three key numbers from Wednesday: 1, 9 and 12.

Twelve is the big number you'll hear about, because Utah's 12-game winning streak ended in a 100-93 loss to the Hawks thanks to 31 points from Joe Johnson, Josh Smith's best game in several weeks and a lengthy, productive first-half cameo from Mario West.

But going forward, it's the 1 and the 9 that are of much greater concern.

The number 1, because after Wednesday that's still the number of times the Jazz have beaten a winning team on the road this year. Yes, just once: a 120-114 overtime win at Detroit on Dec. 19. They lost their other 10 tries -- make that 11 after Wednesday -- and most of them weren't even close: Only two were decided by six points or less.

And the number 9? That's how many road games the Jazz have left against winning teams, starting Saturday in Miami in the always-dangerous scenario of having two days off in South Beach preceding a 1 p.m. start.

So while the story of the moment is how Atlanta ended Utah's string, the big question going forward is whether the Jazz can pull out a couple of tough road games and hang on to a top-four seed in the West. And the implications for the postseason are just as large -- everyone thinks of this as the West's second-most talented team, but how much of a threat can these guys be in the playoffs if they can't beat a good team on the road?

"It's just our mentality," said Deron Williams, who led Utah with 20 points and nine assists. "We don't come out with the same mentality on the road as we do at home, because of not being in the comfort of your home and having the crowd to motivate you. But it's something you have to have night in and night out. We started out the road trip with that in Toronto and Indianapolis but we didn't come out with the same energy in the first quarter of this game."

"We were shorthanded early [in the season] and we didn't have our whole team back," said Jazz coach Jerry Sloan of his team's struggles away from home, and he has a point -- Utah is 6-5 on the road when Carlos Boozer plays but 7-13 when he doesn't.

"This was a good team we played and we had a chance to win the ballgame -- some of the games we played when we were short-handed I don't think we had enough to get it done. [Wednesday] we had enough but we didn't come with enough to start with."

You'll notice both Sloan and Williams cited the team's poor start, and there's a reason for that. Utah fell behind 14-4 before breaking a sweat and trailed by as many as 16 in the first half. As bad as the score was, Utah looked even worse -- including two separate turnovers where the Jazz lost the ball out of bounds without any Hawks nearby.

"We didn't run out of gas," said Sloan. "We didn't come with gas early. Nobody cares what you did last night, you have to come out and play hard. We didn't play hard in the first half -- we gave up 55 points. We played much harder in the second half, but you dig a hole like that for yourself to try to fight out of, it's huge."

If one thought it was an aberration, it would be easy to grant the Jazz some slack for this one -- they were on the tail end of a back-to-back and looked tired late, failing to score a field goal in the final five minutes and allowing numerous transition baskets to the speedier Hawks.

But it's worrisome because it's part of the larger trend. And while there was something to appreciate in the Utah locker room for the 12-game winning streak that moved them from the playoff fringes into the top four in the West, there's also a larger reality looming: The Jazz have yet to demonstrate they can beat a good team on the road, and most of the remaining games on their schedule are against good teams on the road.

Thus, don't pay much attention to the 12 that every story about this game focused on. It's the 1 and the 9 that matter much more going forward, because how much that "1" changes the course of the "9" will tell us everything we need to know about Utah's status as a contender.

John Hollinger writes for ESPN Insider. To e-mail him, click here.

Dimes past: Feb. 28-March 1 | March 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7-8 | 9 | 10 | 11