With a bit of prodding, Jazz coach Jerry Sloan recalls John Stockton's first NBA playoff game.
Versus Houston. April 19, 1985. Jazz won 115-101.
Typical nervous rookie, that Stockton kid?
"No," said Sloan, an assistant to Frank Layden at the time. "John always played under control, and he looked like he never broke a sweat. And he was playing a lot."
Stockton remembers the game and the best-of-five series against the Rockets well.
"Won the series in Game 5," he said. "We won every other game — 1, 3 and 5."
Typical nervous rookie, was he?
No.
"I always felt that you just go play hard and kind of figure things out," Stockton, a vet of 159 playoff games who is now in his 16th consecutive NBA postseason, said on a reflective Easter Sunday morning. "You learn by watching how the other guys are acting."
Scott Padgett was in that very boat Saturday, pressed into service when Jazz reserve forward Adam Keefe strained his right hamstring during warmups for Game 1 of Utah's opening-round Western Conference playoff series against the Seattle Sonics.
Padgett played four unexpected minutes off the bench in the Jazz's 104-93 victory and could expect to get some of the same quality time again Monday night if Keefe, who is doubtful, is out for Game 2.
Padgett and fellow Jazz rookie Quincy Lewis were both playing in their first NBA playoff games Saturday, something for which they have been preparing all season.
With Sloan going 11 deep on his bench against the Sonics — using more players than the shortened bench he has had in the past — Padgett and Lewis had to be precisely what their coaching has been telling them they must be all season long: prepared.
This — especially for Padgett, who did not play nearly as much as Lewis late in the season — was just the scenario Sloan warned would come.
"Jerry (Sloan) does preach it, and obviously Scott (Padgett) heard it, as well as (Lewis, who scored four points in eight minutes)," Stockton said. "Those guys are ready to play when they get the opportunity, and 'opportunity' is the key word."
Though Padgett played only four minutes, dishing one assist and pulling down two rebounds that were very much lost in a night that Karl Malone scored a franchise playoff-record 50 points, his contributions all came while the out-
come was still very much in doubt.
It was the type of opportunity of which careers can made, something Sloan has tried to tell the University of Kentucky rookie: "You have to make yourself available all the time," he said, "and be ready to play."
You haven't played anything but garbage time in six weeks, but be ready, kid, because you never know when someone might get hurt, and we'll really need you.
It is advice that easily could go in one ear and out the other.
"I think there's a lot of times (it does)," Sloan said. "But you have to be a little bit selfish sitting there. You have to sit there and hope somebody gets hurt. That way it keeps you motivated to get ready to go if something happens. That way you know . . . 'I'm ready to go in, and I can play 40 minutes.' "
Easier said than done.
Those that do, though, sometimes never see garbage time again.
"You know," Sloan said, (current Jazz starting forward) "Bryon Russell got in that situation (in the 1996 playoffs) when we were playing Portland. He never got a chance to play, and all of a sudden we're in a bind, he got in, and he went on a roll, and he hasn't looked back.
In '96, Russell made a name for himself by averaging 9.6 points and 4.2 rebounds, and shooting .472 (25-for-53) from 3-point range, over 18 playoff games. What Padgett, and Lewis, too, did Saturday was nothing like that, but it's a start.
"I thought both of them played, probably, a little better than what they've been playing," Sloan said.
It is the kind of bench play the Jazz could use later this postseason, especially on nights Malone is not dropping in 50.
Padgett knows it, too.
That is why he was prepared to play at the shout of a name Saturday. Besides, he's been there before: Padgett broke into Kentucky's lineup as the result of an injury when he was a sophomore and later started in the Final Four for the Wildcats.
"I saw it when Adam (Keefe) pulled up," he said. "I didn't know what was wrong with him, but he wasn't on the bench, so I assumed he wasn't going to play, and I knew I needed to be ready, in case Bryon (Russell) got into foul trouble, or Coach (Sloan) decided to go with a bigger guy at (small forward).
"So I just tried to stay ready, tried to stay focused on different ways we were going to play Gary Payton, or play the post-up — things like that — so that when I did get in the game, I know what's going on. Like (Sloan) said, 'Always be ready; you never know what can happen.' "
Easier said than done.
"We went through a season without any injuries," Padgett said, "so it was like, 'Well, you know, it might actually be true, but we don't ever get injured, so . . . ' "
On Saturday, it was very true.
Padgett and Lewis both entered raring to go — the only way Sloan would have it.
"I told the guys they have to be ready," Sloan said. "I don't have eight or nine minutes to get them loose, let them come and out experiment a little bit and let them have a chance to run up and down the floor 15 or 20 times before they decide they're ready to go.
"We don't have a tomorrow. I mean, it's not like an 82-game schedule, where guys have an extra three or four minutes to get themselves going. You've got to know what we're doing. We've played 82 games. They have to know what on going (now), all the time. If not, I have to get somebody else in there who knows what we're doing, because three or four mistakes, and the game's turned around."
Stockton sensed the same thing in his first postseason game. No one had to prod him into figuring out how to play in it out, either.
"I don't know if it's a scenario where you talk and think about it a lot," he said. "You just kind of have to do it."
You can reach Tim Buckley by e-mail at tbuckley@desnews.com