Jazz 104, Sonics 93
Offensive rebounds were squandered. Defensive assignments were blown, even by Karl Malone. Bryon Russell was burned by the pick-and-roll, and Jeff Hornacek's shooting touch abandoned him.
From the sounds of the Jazz following Game 1 of their opening-round Western Conference playoff series with the Seattle, how could they possibly have hoped to beat the Sonics?
But beat them, they did — and in no small part because of Karl Malone.
Utah beat the Sonics 104-93 on Saturday afternoon at the Delta Center, a resounding victory punctuated by a 50-point, franchise-best playoff scoring performance from the Mailman.
Nevertheless, all the cautious, self-deprecating perfectionists from Utah wanted to do afterward was whine about all that went wrong.
"This team just killed us on the offensive boards," Jazz coach
Jerry Sloan said. "I didn't know if we'd ever shut them down. They were all over the top of the boards with us. We turned the ball over. The offensive rebounds, I thought, were going to have to be the thing we die by."
"I missed three defensive assignments tonight that they scored on," Malone complained.
"The pick-and-rolls is what hurt me," said Russell, who spent much of the game trying to defend Sonics All-Star point guard Gary Payton. "That's where I foul (Payton) so much. It's just that I've got to keep my head up and play him a little harder than what I've been playing him and not worry about the calls."
"I played OK," said Jazz center Greg Ostertag, who was credited by Sonics coach Paul Westphal with being the difference in the game, so much so that Westphal actually said Ostertag played "like Chamberlain."
Wilt, not Richard.
It was a compliment.
"I played terrible," said Hornacek, who, contrary to his self-analysis, scored 13 points and dished 11 assists — one more double-double than he had all season, and five more assists than he had in any single game this past season. "So I'm glad Karl had a good game."
At least Hornacek thought Malone did.
The coach had another take.
"You know he scored well today," Sloan said of Malone, "but he didn't have any assists."
No, he did not.
Sloan was kidding.
Or was he?
Regardless, the showing by Malone stands as the one of the all-time greats in franchise history.
Jazz guard John Stockton said it was hard to put in perspective, but the facts seem to make it simple: Malone surpassed his own previous playoff high (44, set May 3, 1992, against the Los Angeles Clippers) by six points and Adrian Dantley's Jazz playoff record (46, vs. Phoenix on May 8, 1984) by four.
He darn-near accounted for half of the Jazz's scoring. He put up more points in a postseason game than anyone except Michael Jordan since Charles Barkley scored 56 in 1994. And he had a game-high 12 rebounds to boot.
Eleven of Malone's 50 points (tied for 17th-most in NBA playoff history) came in the third quarter, when the Jazz broke open a tight game with an 18-2 run.
The Sonics stuck with Utah despite starting with three fresh faces who have absolutely no NBA playoff experience whatsoever: Rashard Lewis, a 20-year-old big man who jumped straight to the NBA from Alief Elsik High School in Texas in 1998; guard Shammond Williams, a second-year pro out of the University of North Carolina; and Lazaro Borrell, a forward who prior to this past season was playing for the Cuban National Team.
Seattle hung in, and even led briefly, by utilizing an offense that played almost exclusively on the perimeter. Early on, in fact, the Sonics were up on the Jazz 15-0 in backcourt scoring.
Malone, meanwhile, was shouldering the Jazz's early scoring burden, scoring 12 of their first 14 points. Ostertag kept busy by blocking five shots in a two-minute, 47-second span of the opening quarter and pulling down seven of his 10 rebounds in the second quarter.
The Sonics were up 25-22 after one quarter and down 52-49 after two. Following the half, though, it was almost all Utah.
With turnovers plaguing the Sonics — six of their 14 came in the third — the Jazz were able to go from four up to 17 up (74-57) when Malone hit a 19-foot jumper just before the third quarter was eight minutes old.
It was not the only big long-distance shot Malone would make.
After the Sonics, led by Payton with 24, whittled Utah's lead back down to seven, Malone nailed a 3-pointer from 24-feet out to give the Jazz a double-digit lead (90-80) that they maintained until the final two minutes. Seattle got it back down to nine a couple of times in that last 1:38, but that was as close as the Sonics would come.
Even that, though, was not good enough for these finicky Jazz.
"I don't think this was a blowout win," Malone said when it was suggested that it was. "I think they came back to within seven."
True.
But the Jazz did not let them make it any closer than that, which one would assume has to be commendable. Praiseworthy, too, it seems, are the numbers Malone put up.
The assumption, naturally, just doesn't fly with these Jazz.
"I think you can always look at what you did right in a game," Malone said, "but I think we want to focus on what we did wrong."
Job well done.
You can reach Tim Buckley by e-mail at tbuckley@desnews.com