Not that Jerry Sloan would ever look this far ahead, but it doesn't take a math major to realize that the Jazz and Phoenix Suns are locked in a pennant race as the NBA season moves into its final month. Well, maybe not exactly a pennant race, but at least a race for a home floor advantage.
For the sake of assumption, assume that Seattle, Houston and San Antonio stay where they've stayed almost all season - comfortably ahead of the field with the best three records in the Western Conference. Also assume that Portland, Golden State and Denver stay where they've stayed almost all season - with the sixth, seventh and eighth best records in the West, qualifying for the conference's last three playoff spots.That leaves Utah and Phoenix fourth and fifth, or, as it stands right now, fifth and fourth - with a lot of room between third and sixth.
Since the fourth- and fifth-place teams open against each other in the first round of the playoffs, and since the fourth-place team gets the homecourt advantage in that best-of-five series, it adds up to a lot of standings checking between Utah and Phoenix until the season ends April 24.
Right now the Suns have a microscopic advantage with their 42-22, .656 record compared to the Jazz's 43-24, .642, but obviously nothing's settled yet. Making the race more interesting is the similarity of the team's remaining schedules. The Suns have 10 games left at home and eight on the road, with 11 against playoff-bound teams and 7 against teams with losing records. As for the Jazz, their 15 remaining games include nine at home and six on the road and nine against playoff teams and six against also-rans.
Whoever best survives the stretch gets to open at home.
Now all the Jazz and Suns have to decide is if they want to open at home.
History suggests it's not such a good idea.
The franchises have met three times in the postseason - in a second-round series in 1984 and first-round series in 1990 and 1991. On all three occasions, the team that did not have the homecourt advantage was the series winner.
COACHES CREED: Wisconsin-Green Bay basketball coach Dick Bennett, whose Fighting Phoenix turned a lot of heads by beating Cal and losing a close decision to Syracuse in last week's NCAA tournament games in Ogden, rather succinctly summed up his chosen profession after the Syracuse loss:
"Ask any of the coaches and they'll tell you the same thing," said Bennett. "The overwhelming condition (for a coach) is anxiety. But the thing is, all the while you know that at some point that anxiety is going to be replaced by either great joy or by great sadness. It's not life and death, but still, you know it's going to be great sadness if you lose and great joy if you win. That's just the way it is."
AIR JORDAN: Michael Jordan may be going to the minors, but, if he can help it, he won't be going in the traditional manner.
"I've always been a team guy," Jordan told Ben Walker of the Associated Press this week after the Chicago White Sox assigned him to their Minor League system. "But when it comes to 16- or 18-hour bus rides, I hope they can come with me - on a plane."
ATTACK II: Another Shaquille O'Neal biography is on the market, but unlike the first one, "Shaq Attack," which features, as the name implies, Shaq on the attack, the second one, "Shaq Impaq," features (at least it's supposed to) the attack of Shaq.
The authorized "Shaq Attack" was written by Shaq as told to Jack McCallum, while the unauthorized "Shaq Impaq" was written by Bruce Hunter, a Louisiana sports writer who has covered Shaq since he was a 16-year-old LSU recruit.
Hunter's plan to tell "untold stories" so enraged Shaq's father, Philip Harrison, that he physically attacked him during an interview last summer, an incident we know happened because Hunter describes it both on the cover flap of his new book and in his introduction.
But that's about as confrontational as the latest Shaq book gets as Hunter walks the border between hero worship and contrived controversy. Hunter is no Kitty Kelly, and unless maybe you're a close relative, like a parent, "Shaq Impaq" is nothing to get worked up about.
QUOTE OF THE WEEK: Relief pitcher Marvin Freeman of the Colorado Rockies, telling The Sporting News about his former job in a violin factory, where he performed the first seven of eight steps but the finishing touches were done by the master bowmaker:
"I was the middle reliever of bowmaking. He was the closer."