Just when the Utah Jazz were about to put a stranglehold on the Seattle SuperSonics in their best-of-seven playoff series that will send one of them into the Western Conference finals, along came Benoit Benjamin, all 7 feet, 265 pounds of him, to throw a stranglehold of his own.
Actually, it wasn't a stranglehold as much as it was a double-leg takedown.It was rush-hour in Sunday's Game 3 when the Jazz, already up two games to none in the series, got the ball down low to Karl Malone.
The Jazz trailed by four points, 91-87, and needed a basket. Since Malone had already scored 30 points, he was the most likely to again succeed. But just as he began wheeling and dealing toward the basket, along came Benjamin, who was guarding him, so to speak. He lunged for the ball. He got Malone's legs instead. In no time, the two were crashing to the floor.
A foul was called, but since Benjamin had gotten to Malone before he could set up to shoot, no free throws were taken. On the ensuing in-bounds play, Benjamin leaped high to tip away a John Stockton pass - a tip that led to a Sonics fastbreak that led to a Ricky Pierce basket. Just like that, the Sonics had their biggest lead of the game, 93-87, and were on their way to their first win of the series.
Crime paid.
That sequence typified a change in Seattle strategy that will no doubt be displayed to an even greater extent when Game 4 tips up Tuesday in the Coliseum. Basically what the Sonics said Sunday in the second half - with Benjamin as their principle spokesman - was this: Forget the footrace.
Or, as Seattle coach George Karl put it, "We stopped trapping and got back to playing old conservative basketball."
For 21/2 games, the Sonics had stuck steadfastlywith an uptempo, swarm-the-man-with-the-ball, trapping game plan that was supposed to rattle the Jazz, create turnovers for fastbreaks and keep the ball out of Stockton's hands as much as possible. It was a strategy that had served Seattle well in its 3-1 first-round series win over Golden State.
But for 21/2 games against the Jazz, all this strategy got the Sonics was trouble. In five halves of play, Stockton had 37 assists - for a playoff-best 15-per-game pace - and the Jazz had committed a mere 25 turnovers, for an average of just 10 per half. Worse yet for the Sonics, they lost Game 1 by eight points and Game 2 by six points, and at the intermission of Game 3 they trailed by seven points.
So Karl put away his starter's pistol and went with a bigger, slower approach.
"It became obvious we weren't going to get the fast game we wanted," said Karl, who added that he shouldn't have been too surprised. "The history of the NBA playoffs is it slows down and gets physical," he said. "That's been going on for 40 years."
Benjamin, a player never confused for a thoroughbred, hadn't been used a great deal in the first two games of the series. His averages were 15.5 minutes, 4.5 rebounds, four points, one foul and, as he said, "a lot of time twiddling my thumbs." He was as invisible as a 265-pound seven-footer sitting on the end of the bench can be.
But when the tempo changed to slow-dancing, he became the hit man in Seattle's new, immobile defense.
"We went bigger," he said, "and we really clamped down. It's what we've got to do from now on. If we have to get dirty then we have to get dirty. We have to match their intensity, or even be more intense."
"I didn't really see myself tackling Karl," Benjamin said of his fourth-quarter foul on Malone. "What I saw was he slung me, and I slung him back."
As for Malone, he said, "Now I know what the bulls feel like in the rodeo."
But Malone said he didn't want to make a big deal of the foul, or of Seattle's physical style of play in the second half of Sunday's game.
"We didn't see anything today we haven't seen before," he said. "It's just one of those things. I'm not going to take it personal. It's something we can correct."
That much remains to be seen as the series moves to a fourth game on Tuesday - a game projected to feature considerably more standing around, more pushing, more shoving, more leaning - and, of course, the occasional tackle. Playoff basketball, in other words. Who are the Sonics to buck 40 years of tradition?