SEATTLE — Horace Grant couldn't help but marvel at how well the Seattle SuperSonics played in Game 4.
"It was more or less the things we worked on in practice," Grant said, explaining the secret to Seattle's 104-93 Wednesday night victory over the Jazz. "We're playing more together now. If we'd played this well all season, we probably would have been second in the West."
What the Sonics appear to have discovered, after training camp, preseason games, 82 regular-season games and two playoff losses in Salt Lake City, is that they can succeed if they use such too-often ignored principles as teamwork and adherence to a game plan.
They're the kind of principles Utah has ridden to great success the past decade or so but which the Jazz found turned against them Wednesday.
"Things really fell into place like a puzzle tonight," said Sonics forward Vin Baker, who played in puzzling fashion in Salt Lake but seems to be putting his game together now, too.
All this Sonic success came despite a Jazz game-opening burst that saw them jump out to a 20-12 lead. Utah's first two shots of the game were an open 14-foot jumper by Karl Malone and an even-more-open 20-foot jumper by Jeff Hornacek. The Sonics, meanwhile were missing five of their first six field-goal attempts, and they were missing them by a bunch.
But Malone got his second foul and had to sit down with 4:37 left in the first quarter — the second game in a row in which he had to come out earlier than usual because of foul trouble. By the time Malone returned, nearly three minutes into the second period, the Jazz were down by three. They trailed the rest of the game, though they did keep threatening.
"We know Utah is going to make runs," Sonics coach Paul Westphal said. "It never surprised us. We just wanted to keep executing our offense."
One key to the Sonics' defensive effort was Grant's work against Malone. Unlike most defenders, who sag off on Malone's jumper for fear of his drive, Grant got in Malone's face on the jumper and dared him to put the ball on the floor.
"He's been killing me all series with that jumper," Grant said. "I wanted to make him put it down a little bit and rely on help from my teammates."
Malone played into Grant's plan for the first half, making just three of nine shots as he attempted jumper after jumper over the Sonic center. Malone finally figured out what was going on and tried to get inside in the second half, though he didn't get to the free-throw line until well into the third quarter.
Another important facet of Seattle's game plan was to force John Stockton to give up the ball. And if he gave it up to center Greg Ostertag, which he did several times in the fourth quarter, all the better.
"We try to get the ball out of John's hands and into the hands of guys like Ostertag," Baker explained.
That worked. On three trips downcourt during one fourth-quarter stretch, Stockton tried to give it to Ostertag, who either fumbled the ball away or did nothing with it when he caught it.
The most crucial stretch of the game was the second quarter, in which the Jazz scored a pitiful seven points, five from seldom-used forward Scott Padgett.
"It's pretty hard to hold somebody to seven points, and Scott Padgett had five of them, didn't he?" said Westphal. "So it's a combination of our good defense and them missing some shots. But it was certainly the key part of the game, no doubt about it."
As it became evident it wasn't going to be Utah's night, the Jazz surprised just about everyone in the arena by coming apart at the seams. They were slapped with six technicals — two each on Malone and coach Jerry Sloan, who thus were ejected, and one each for Hornacek and Ostertag.
"To see them lose their cool like that was a little surprising 'cause they have such a veteran ballclub," Grant observed.
Sonic backup center Greg Foster said the Jazz appeared frustrated. "I don't know if they expected to just come in here and walk all over us or what," he said.
You can reach Rich Evans by e-mail at rich@desnews.com