| Monday, April 24
By Frank Hughes
Special to ESPN.com |
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"It's the end of the world as we know it...."
-- R.E.M.
SALT LAKE CITY -- This is it. What do we have, two more months, max? And then, the NBA as we
have known it for the past decade is kaput, finished, au revoir, sayonara.
Yeah, yeah, the new breed is coming in, Vince and Tracy and Tim and Kobe
and even this little-known dude out in the Pacific Northwest named Rashard.
|  | | Without Jeff Hornacek raining threes from the sky, is this it for the Jazz? |
But the old guard, well, they will be in nursing homes soon.
They've never won a championship between them, and some would describe
them as boring and steadfast, but it will be something of a sad passing when
this NBA postseason is over and the Utah Jazz and the Indiana Pacers no
longer will exist, at least no longer will they exist as we have come to know
and love/hate them.
With Jeff Hornacek retiring in the Mormon capital, and with Rik Smits
retiring on creaky feet and Reggie Miller headed who knows where for God
knows what reason and Mark Jackson likely taking his lead-weighted feet
someplace else, two of the most reliable basketball teams of the '90s no
longer will be.
Yes, Stockton and Malone still will be around. And they are the essence of
the Utah Jazz. But guess what? They didn't do a whole lot until Hornacek,
whom I like to call The Accountant, got there and started busting threes from
the outside with regularity in the middle of the 1994 season. When it was the
pick-and-roll, it was fine. When it was the pick-and-roll-and-kick-and-pow is
when it took the Jazz to the next level.
Who's going to do that for Utah now? Quincy Lewis? Nyet. Howard Eisley?
Nada. Jacque Vaughn? Please.
Let's face it, the Jazz should receive mounds of credit for even winning
the Midwest Division this season, and doing it at a time when many people
already had them written off, and doing it at a time when Hornacek's knee is
about as strong as a house of cards.
But their moment is over. MJ stole that moment with the glorious shot over
Bryon Russell, as MJ has done to so many other teams.
Utah's window was open, and they nearly slipped in and got their title.
But that window is closed. It was changed into plexiglass. It had bars thrown
around it. And it has security sensors on it.
The decline of the Utah Jazz that everybody spoke of this season? We were
a year early. It's going to happen next season, when Horny is at his kids'
school, tutoring second graders on the lost art of free throw shooting.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that the Jazz will not win their fair
share of games. As long as Malone is around, they will do that. They won't
have a problem pounding on the Clippers and Grizzlies of the world.
But Hornacek gives them a dimension that makes them dangerous enough to be
a serious playoff threat. Without him, they go from the pick-and-roll to the
pick-and-roll-and-kick-and-clang.
Indiana never made it quite as far as the Jazz, but almost.
Their trips to the Eastern Conference Finals and never getting farther are
legendary stories of frustration. Perhaps the only organization able to
one-up the Pacers is the Buffalo Bills.
They got there last season, and got jobbed on Larry Johnson's mystery
four-point play. They got there the year before that, and lost to Chicago in
seven. In '94-95 they got there, and were ousted by an Orlando team that went
on to get swept in The Finals. And the year before that they lost to New York.
Four trips to the Eastern Conference Finals in six years, and never once
taking the next step. There hasn't been this little consummation since before
Viagra was invented.
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That's not to say they have not been entertaining. Those memories of
Reggie in the Garden, barking at Spike Lee, hitting, what, like 13 treys in
about seven seconds.
Earlier this season, I recalled that one of the best games I ever had seen
was that Pacers conference finals game with Orlando, where Brian Shaw, Reggie
and Penny Hardaway all hit successive 3-pointers to change the lead back and
forth, and the game was culminated by Smits draining a 16-footer at the
buzzer to give Indiana the win.
And this is not to say that the Pacers cannot make it to the Finals this
season. They certainly have a better chance than the Jazz, although their
chance of winning a title is about as good as Houston's.
But the essence of sport is change. In real life, you can have the same
company rule the marketplace for decades, probably even centuries, if you
look at something like Ford.
But in athletic competition, part of the excitement is that no player, and
therefore no team, can last forever. Turnover is inevitable. Evolution is
natural.
It doesn't make it less sad, but it makes it bearable, understandable, and
it leaves room for hope that two more stalwart teams like those disappearing
after this season will come along in the future to replace them.
"It's the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine."
Frank Hughes covers the NBA for the Tacoma (Wash.) News-Tribune. He is a regular contributor to ESPN.com.
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