It's game night at the Delta Center, and a group of highly trained professionals is hard at work. They each have their assigned tasks, but what makes them so special is their ability to meld their talents into a winning combination.

These folks do not, however, play basketball - they broadcast basketball. They're the team that puts the games on KJZZ-Ch. 14 for all the fans at home.And, while it may be just another day at work for these professionals, what they do is no less amazing than what the Jazz players are doing out on the court. The truly astounding thing is how easy they make it look.

"It's like a horse race every night," says director Brian Douglas. "It can be like riding a thoroughbred or riding a mule and whip-ping it all the way. When we're here at home with all of our people, it's like riding a thor-ough-bred."

The broadcast team is sort of like that big chunk of ice that sank the Titanic - what you see at home is only the tip of the iceberg. Viewers are connected through the faces and voices of play-by-play man Hot Rod Hundley, color analyst Ron Boone, pregame, halftime and postgame host Steve Brown, and analyst Frank Layden.

But there are five times that many people working behind the scenes on site. And another five back at the KJZZ studios taking care of still more of the technical aspects.

There are camera operators and grips (who pull the cords connected to the hand-held cameras) and audio technicians and tape operators and assistant directors and engineers.

Deep inside the Delta Center are the trucks - portable television production units used at virtually all sporting events. On this night, there are two - one for KJZZ and one for the Seattle television station that is broadcasting the game back to Washington.

In the corridor next to the truck is Corey Hasegawa, who's working at a portable editing bay to create features for the halftime and post-game shows - while the game is in progress - as well as for later broadcasts.

And some of this stuff is little short of "Star Trek" - remarkable technology that, say, allows the staff to pull the game stats straight from the floor, quickly feed them into the computer and - voila! - there's a shot-chart graphic ready to show the folks at home.

Step inside the KJZZ truck and you're immediately struck by the controlled mayhem taking place. There are no fewer than 33 active monitors in front of the director and his assistant - monitors carrying what each of the six camera operators is shooting, the various graphics, the game and shot clocks, what the station is broadcasting (including commercials) and so on and so on.

Theirs is only one part of the truck. Behind them is a compartment with the audio technicians. Behind them is a compartment that houses a team running the tape machines without which there'd be no instant replays.

As to those various camera feeds, they include an "up" camera shooting from the mezzanine level, a pair of hand-held cameras (one behind each basket), "slash" cameras from the corners and a camera from the on-site "studio" where Brown and Layden are perched in another corner.

If that's not enough, when you slip on the headphones there are a multitude of voices in your ears - including the director, the camera operators, statisticians, floor people as well as the on-air talent.

And the director is not unlike the conductor of a symphony - if that conductor happened to actually compose the music in the midst of the performance. Douglas picks soloists as he goes along, tells his vocalists what to say (at times) and decides what the viewers are see-ing when.

There are directions flying - directions that aren't all that hard to pick up on but are somewhat dizzying nonetheless.

"Ready four and four! Ready five and five! Ready two and two! Ready font/clock and font/clock! Lose it at :21. Lose it!"

All of which is, on the surface, fairly simple. The numbers one through six refer to cameras one through six, with directions to be ready to switch and then to actually switch to those pictures. Font/clock is the game-time clock surrounded by the advertising logo. (And, yes, at times they do put up the clock without the font.)

Then there are directions like, "Roll B, effect B," or "Wipe 1" that Douglas uses to order various fades and effects when going to replays or commercials.

There must be a certain intoxication to being the director - he says "Freeze!" and the picture freezes. He says "Ready five and five!" and the shot from camera five instantly appears on the screen.

How many of us ever have the occasion in our lives to have our orders followed at all - let alone so swiftly?

There's a certain chemistry to all of this, not unlike the chemistry between John Stockton and Karl Malone. The camera operators an-tic-i-pate what Douglas is going to want - a shot of a coach or a player or the crowd.

And they're all anticipating what's going to happen next in the game - like during an early Jazz run they're preparing for Sonics coach George Karl to call a time out. When it doesn't come quite as quickly as they expected, there's muttering back and forth. "Time out, George, are you kidding?" Douglas exclaims.

And when the Jazz cut a big lead down to only a few points, Douglas exclaims to one of his cameramen, "Gimme crowd, John! These guys'll go crazy and you'll be part of it!"

It's not only a one-way street, however. During breaks Douglas asks various cameramen what they see or what they think would work for the broadcast.

There's also a certain friendly camaraderie with the on-air talent. During a commercial break, Lay-den practices what he'll do with the telestrator during the halftime show - what plays he'll mark out on the screen. Looking at the replay, Brown exclaims, "Nice shot!"

"They should pay extra for that," Layden adds. "Or at least send up a couple of pizzas."

Moments later, Layden is fussing a bit about his on-camera appearance and Douglas is assuring him he looks fine.

And, while Douglas is being fed stats and such through his headset, he's relaying them to Hundley. The director reminds the announcer that George Karl will be coaching the Western Conference all-stars, moments later Hundley reminds the viewers of that. Or, when coming back from a commercial, one of the cameras focuses on a fan reading about the White House scandals in the Deseret News (of all places), Douglas says, "Not everyone's paying attention to the game" and Hundley parrots, "Not everyone's paying attention to the game."

When Stockton misses a free throw, Douglas exclaims, "He's human." Hundley immediately tells viewers, "So, John Stockton is human like the rest of us."

(Which is not to say that Hundley doesn't come up with most of his stuff on his own. And he's depended on to vamp a bit in spots, as when the director asks him to "just tap-dance me a tease" for the halftime show.)

Of course, not everything goes perfectly. Ron Boone has a bit of trouble with his microphone early in the game. There's a stray sound at halftime from someone's mike that appears to be stuck open. The graphic card promoting the next TV game comes up with the wrong day on it (and, thus, is held off the broadcast until it can be fixed), the game stats computer doesn't work right for a while.

And everyone can make mistakes. Even Douglas can hardly believe it when, counting down toward a commercial, he says, "nine, 10, 11" before he realizes his mistake and switches to "five, four, three, two . . . "

There are times when things don't work out exactly as everyone hopes. Fans at home have, no doubt, noted times when an instant replay ends up being a shot that explains nothing. And when that happens on a replay of a foul, the earpieces are filled with groans.

"That couldn't have been any worse, really," Douglas says.

At other times, however, it's as if fate is smiling on the TV team. Like when they're looking for something specific for a built-in feature of the broadcast.

"We've got to find a play of the game, Jazz-wise, coming out of the next break," Douglas says. "Who knows what it could be."

Then, almost immediately after action resumes, Shandon Anderson takes the ball to the hoop, scores and is fouled. He makes the free-throw and pulls the Jazz within four at 97-93. And there are sighs of relief in the truck.

And then there are the extraneous things that the viewers at home don't really think about but the broadcasters must - they've got to get those promos for "Star Trek: Voyager" and other programming on the air; they've got to make sure that the cameras capture the sponsor's logo during the "studio" parts of the broadcast.

While these are all professionals doing a top-rate job, they're also - somewhat surprisingly - vocal fans of the Jazz. Well, that may not be so surprising, considering that's who's paying them.

When Stockton releases a 3-point attempt, you can hear "Get in, Johnny!" over the headset.

When the Sonics go up by 18 points late in the game, the mood in the truck - and over the headsets - is decidedly subdued. Nobody cuts back on their efforts, but the enthusiasm wanes dramatically.

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But when the home team mounts a furious comeback, what you can hear is, "Can it happen?" and "C'mon, Jazz, let's go!"

When it becomes clear the Jazz aren't going to win, the attitude turns businesslike through the very end. During a commercial break after the final buzzer, Hundley looks tired, rubbing his eyes and sighing. But when the camera goes back on he pulls out the enthusiasm for which he's so well known.

"Just another day at the office," says someone in the booth.

Another day on a job where excitement is just routine.

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