Co-Workers Spark West in Overtime : All-Star game: Jazz teammates Malone, Stockton share MVP award after 135-132 victory over the East.

Having proved their character by lining up in a blizzard for weekend events, the local citizens reaped all the blessings they could imagine plus one: overtime, a West victory, and the twin cherries atop the whipped cream, hometown heroes John Stockton and Karl Malone as co-MVPs.

Malone had been an All-Star MVP before, edging out second-place Stockton at the 1989 game in Houston. This time, they finished in a dead heat, each with four of the 11 votes cast.

“I’m sort of from the country,” Malone said after Sunday’s 135-132 West victory, “so I’ll throw out some country slang you city-slickers might not understand.

“Can’t have chickens without eggs.”

No one in the interview room laughed.

“Must’ve gone over your head,” Malone said.

Some of these games, like last year’s, will live forever. Sunday’s will live for a day.

It was nice, it was actually close at the finish, but outside Utah, it wasn’t memorable.

The player everyone wanted to see in elite company, Shaquille O’Neal, played well, but not awesomely. Michael Jordan, beating the blizzard into town Saturday in his chartered jet, looked for most of the day as if he had left his legs on the golf course in Las Vegas.

Defense was standard for such affairs, although West Coach Paul Westphal didn’t want to hear about it.

“I heard at halftime (NBC’s) Bill Walton was saying nobody wanted to take the ball out, nobody was getting back on defense,” the usually mild-mannered Westphal said.

“I don’t know what game he was watching. I thought both teams went at it.”

Westphal’s resident star, Charles Barkley, knew what game Walton was watching, because Barkley was playing in it.

“No. 1, I never play defense in these games,” Barkley said. “I wasn’t involved in all the defense all these guys say they were playing.

“Two thousand dollars ain’t going to make or break me. I’m here to enjoy myself. I never take this game seriously unless it’s close in the final minutes. I’m on spring break this week.”

Jordan went into the final minutes of regulation with 11 misses in 17 shots but pulled it together and, with Cleveland’s Mark Price, led a rally that wiped out a 117-112 deficit in the last :32.

Patrick Ewing made a 15-footer off a pass from Jordan with eight seconds remaining to tie the score at 119. At the other end, Tim Hardaway missed a duck-under 16-footer and the game went into overtime.

So the West won it all over, going ahead to stay early in the period on Dan Majerle’s three-pointer, staying ahead on Stockton’s four points and two assists.

The real winner was the host city, keen to show it deserves its place in basketball’s big-time. Things fell into place nicely. The surrounding mountains were loaded with snow. So was the city itself Saturday when a surprise blizzard dropped an inch of snow in 10 minutes. Undeterred, hardy local fans stayed in line on the street outside the Salt Palace, waiting to get into the Jam Session, a merchandise fair and three-on-three basketball tournament.

So gracious were the fans, they didn’t even boo Jordan, who had said that what he liked best was the fact their home was “a skip and hop from Vegas” and then proceeded to prove it.

“Even before I was drafted by Utah, people said, ‘You won’t like that place,’ ” Malone said.

“You have a negative attitude even before you step off the plane. I think that by having the All-Star game here, that’s wiped out. Just like a lot of people don’t like Utah, I don’t like a lot of cities, either.”

NBA Notes

Danny Manning, the first Clipper representative since Marques Johnson in 1986, made all five of his shots and scored 10 points to go with four rebounds and an assist in 18 minutes. Manning was also waved at by Charles Barkley, after Barkley anticipated a move Manning didn’t make and threw the ball away. “I’m not going to the hole,” Manning said, smiling. “I’m spotting up for three.”

* TALKING TRADE

The Lakers are discussing a deal that would send Sam Perkins to Seattle for Benoit Benjamin and Doug Christie. C9