THE ONLY consolation for the Utah Jazz as their season ended abruptly last night just one game short of making it to the NBA Finals was this: The Portland Trail Blazers beat a hasty exit home.
They couldn't get back to the Pacific Time Zone fast enough, back to the land of unconditional Blazermania love, where Buck Williams is wildly supported every time he screws up his face and whines about a call, which, as far as anyone can remember, is every time there is a call.Williams and the rest of the Blazers weren't the least bit sad about crossing Salt Lake City off their list after their 105-97 win closed out their best-of-seven Western Conference final series in the Delta Center, four games to two. The next time they visit they'd prefer to float in the lake or hear a pin drop in the Tabernacle. They had their first-ever victory in the Delta Center Thursday night and that was plenty. They can wait till next year.
They had a plane waiting at the airport after the game. As soon as they could stuff their uniforms in a bag they were gone. There are better places to savor winning the conference championship and qualifying for the NBA Finals than in a building that came close to giving you a permanent nervous twitch.
See BENSON on D2
Until the third and fourth quarters last night, when the Jazz inexplicably decided they didn't own the baskets in a building they were 45-4 in coming into the game, the Blazers had come to regard the Delta Center as one of the seven horrors of the earth. On their most recent visit the Sunday previous they had let the arena, and the Jazz, turn them into raving basket cases as a national television audience looked on bemusedly. There hadn't been such a public demonstration of composure loss since the Hill-Thomas hearings.
Then, suddenly, opportunity was theirs and they took it. The Jazz - up by four at intermission - took 40 shots in the final half last night and made nine of them. They went 19-of-21 from the free throw line but it wasn't enough to offset the most ill-timed cold spell in franchise history.
The Blazers kept plugging away, making at least half of their baskets, and before they knew it they had exactly what they wanted: They were going home and the Jazz weren't coming with them.
The Portland players took long enough in their Delta Center locker room to open a box of baseball caps with "1992 NBA Finals" on them, and to talk about how happy they were to not have to wake up any more nights wondering if Karl Malone was human or not.
"Malone demands so much attention," said Portland guard Danny Ainge, in admiration now and not desperation. "He had us in so much foul trouble during this series. It makes it hard. And then when you add (John) Stockton and Jeff Malone and guys like Tyrone Corbin and Blue Edwards, they make it harder."
Ainge and other Blazers, including head coach Rick Adelman, freely divulged that the Blazers' strategy against the Jazz all series long was to try to stop Karl Malone first and the rest of the Jazz offense second. They also divulged that the strategy finally worked like it was supposed to Thursday night.
"We were more active helping out tonight," said Adelman, who admitted that he had watched in pain as Malone scored 39, 33 and 38 points in the three previous games of the series, two of them Utah wins. "We'd looked at the films and decided we could do a better job of covering than we had, and we did," he said. "The reason Karl Malone got two (points) in the fourth quarter was because we were throwing four guys at him."
"We just wanted somebody else to beat us," said Adelman. "We'd decided that going into this series."
Ainge said the stop-Karl strategy was severely tested by the Jazz before it came through for Portland in the end.
"Basically what we'd do was double up Karl with Jerome (Kersey)," he explained. "That meant that either Tyrone Corbin or Blue Edwards was the guy we'd leave. Tyrone, especially, made us pay."
"The best thing we did was we didn't give Karl a lot of easy baskets tonight," said Kersey, wearing a towel and his "1992 NBA Finals" hat with the tag still on the side. "But that team has a large number of offensive weapons so it still wasn't easy."
For his part, Blazers point guard Terry Porter said he won't miss his nightly waltzes with Stockton. They spent the better part of two weeks not making life easy for each other. Anticipating a matchup with Chicago in the NBA Finals, Porter looked ahead to his next counterpart, the Bulls' John Paxson.
"He doesn't dribble or handle the ball that much," said Porter. "I'm definitely looking forward to that."
Pausing in the hall for one more series of interviews before climbing onto the bus that would leave the Wasatch Mountains in the dust, Adelman said he was most thankful there wouldn't be a game seven, even though it would have been played in Portland. "The Jazz could have won at our place," he said. "We did not want to risk it. The last thing we wanted was a seventh game.
"If they'd beaten us it would have had to go seven," added Adelman. "And if it had happened we would have been beaten by a darned good basketball team.
"I'll tell you what," he said, "you get to this level, there's a very small margin between winning and losing. I don't know what's ahead for us but I know this series was tough enough for me. I don't want them any tougher than this one was."