LAKERS VS. JAZZ : You Guys Sure Got the Lakers All Jazzed Up

Farewell, hale Jazz, well met and finally sent packing. Vaya con Dios, thanks for the memories, keep the faith, let’s do lunch.

For starters, the Lakers owe you Jazzes a sincere thank-you for stretching them to seven games, jarring their egos and scaring the complacency out of them.

“If I were in Pat’s shoes, I’d be very happy I had a tough series,” said your coach, Frank Layden, after Saturday’s 109-98 Laker win. “We might’ve been a very good preparation for the Lakers.”

Exactly: Preparation J. Use as directed for seven games, you’ll feel like a new team. Guaranteed to reduce swelling of the head.

By the way, Frank, if you were in Pat Riley’s shoes, you’d be in much nicer shoes.

But seriously, Jazz. For all Layden’s innuendos that the NBA office and CBS-TV were rooting hard against the Jazz and for the Lakers, it seems to me that in some ways, those folks might’ve been happy to see you stay alive.

Look what we’ll all be missing out on now that you’re gone.

--Karl (Mailman) Malone. Does Malone play hard? Well, among Karl’s many pets is a dog, and the dog put up a sign on the front lawn--”Beware of Mailman.”

Rise to the occasion? Mailman was Mr. Helium. Check his scoring totals for this series--29, 29, 29, 29, 27, 27, 31. Try to achieve some consistency, Mailman.

“I’m dropping the ‘Mail,’ ” Layden said. “From now on, I’m just going to call him The Man.”

Fine with me, Frank, but you’d better clear it with Stan Musial’s attorneys first.

After the game, Mailman was actually crying. His eyes were red, his nose sniffly. He played hard, lost hard.

“They (the Lakers) definitely deserved to win,” Mailman said. “That’s what champions are made of. When the game is on the line, all great players sort of turn it up a notch. Instead of taking jump shots, they started taking it to the hoop. I think they came out and asserted themselves more.”

Of course, after the previous game, if the Lakers had asserted themselves less, owner Jerry Buss would have let the expansion team Miami Mice cart off his entire roster.

--John Stockton, who has neater hair than Steve Garvey and faster hands than Cher’s wardrobe changers.

Saturday, Stockton had 29 points and 20 assists, even though he’d had a tough Friday night, suffering from something he ate at the team hotel. Stockton probably got Frank Layden’s room-service order by mistake. The hot-fudge onion rings should have been a tipoff.

Magic Johnson, modestly excluding himself, said of Stockton, “If he’s not the best point guard in the league, he’s tied for the best (with Isiah Thomas). He has the heart of a champion, that’s where he’s different (from other point guards). He’s the difference between Utah past and Utah now.”

That and the abolition of polygamy. But hoop-wise, certainly, Stockton is the key ingredient in the new Utah.

In fact, Malone and Stockton are the best complementary one-two punch in the league. Mailman and Robbin’.

--Mark Eaton. The Lakers would have laughed had they cracked open a fortune cookie a month ago and read: “Your dynasty will nearly be destroyed by a former auto mechanic who couldn’t make the traveling squad at UCLA and who was even booed this season in Utah.”

The only reason the Lakers won this thing was that they finally decided to ignore Eaton and go to the hoop. That’s like going for a swim at Newport Beach and ignoring the sharks.

“They went right at us, right at us, right at us,” Eaton said. “We weren’t able to squelch them. We felt good being six points down at halftime. We said if we come back strong in the second half, we’d be OK. Unfortunately, the Lakers had the same idea.”

--Layden. Henny Youngman with a clipboard.

After the Lakers blew you guys out in Game 1, Layden did 20 minutes of stand-up comedy on your behalf. Very funny stuff. Some Utah fans thought it was inappropriate.

“When I do things,” Layden said Saturday, “there’s usually a motive behind it. I knew the team was embarrassed, so I put up a smokescreen.”

OK, what was the motive behind your locking the press out of your locker room after losing Game 4, Frank?

“We played tough, and if you accept congratulations for being a loser, as we would have that night, you become a loser. We locked the door, turned up the heat and had a mad, ugly team.”

Ah, Frank the funnyman. But he didn’t fool anyone. Didn’t try.

“Behind this fat, funny face,” Layden said Saturday, “is a competitor.”

A fat, funny competitor.

That’s what I mean, Jazz. CBS and the NBA would have grown to love you guys. Who could resist a team featuring an amateur zookeeper (Mailman), an ex-Mr. Goodwrench (Eaton), the Gonzaga Pickpocket (Stockton) and a coach who once won a bottle of champagne for his comedy routine on amateur night in a Catskills resort?

Hey, Layden is already a sensation in Los Angeles. He went to a Dodger game Friday night, and when the fans discovered him and mobbed him for autographs, some fans--tourists, surely--got ugly. Dodger Stadium security cops hustled Layden and his party into a taxi.

“It was getting scary,” Layden said. “They had to stop the game. I said, ‘Holy cow!’ ”

But let’s not talk religion now. I just wanted to tell you guys what a fun time you provided.

You didn’t even fall back on the NBA tradition of crying about the officiating, especially after Saturday’s game. Eaton and Stockton even praised the officials, I swear. You’re young, fellows; you’ll learn.

Eaton--get this--even thanked a local reporter the other day for the nice newspaper coverage he has been getting during the series. The reporter was treated for shock. Is it too late to change my league MVP vote?

Look, Jazz, the Lakers deserved to win (never mind who put me in charge of deciding such things), but you fellows, as a baseball player once said, can hang your heads high.

And listen: Have your agent call my agent. I see a sitcom here. The Cosby kids will never know what hit ‘em.

In the meantime--and have former Brooklyn Dodger fan Layden explain this one to you--wait till next year.