Rockets Now Rest and Wait : Pro basketball: Houston controls game early and wraps up series with a 94-83 victory over Jazz. NBA finals next.

No, the local clock operator didn’t blow the final buzzer 10 seconds into the game with the Rockets up, 2-0.

He did something worse to get even for that frozen moment in Salt Lake City, he made the Utah Jazz players go all 48 minutes Tuesday night. In that time, the Rockets went up by 26 points, let the visitors make the usual late run and then broke their hearts for good, winning, 94-83, to take the Western Conference finals, 4-1.

The Rockets now will have seven days off while New York and Indiana, tied 2-2, decide the East.

“I don’t care who wins,” Rocket forward Robert Horry said. “I just want them to go seven games and beat each other up.”

Everything else has worked out for the Rockets. The Jazz was all but served up on a platter, arriving after a seven-game series with the Denver Nuggets in which it almost blew a 3-0 lead.

Counting this series, the Jazz completed a 2-7 finish.

From the opening game of this series, Jazz players and coaches hinted that they really thought they were in over their heads. Even their harder-than-hard-nosed coach, Jerry Sloan, said that if his players couldn’t step up in Game 5, “Maybe we weren’t the best team.”

Maybe they weren’t. Instead of stepping up, they were stepped on.

The Rockets hit them with a fearsome assault, making nine of their first 11 shots, including all four of the three-pointers they tried, three by the king of the streak shooters, Vernon Maxwell.

The Rockets led by 13 points after one quarter, 18 at the half, 26 late in the third.

“They just came out and took us away from everything we wanted to do,” Sloan said. “It looked like we just wanted to get the game over.

“I don’t know how you could be tired at this point. It’s beyond my imagination, to play this long and this hard. If you are, you’re not taking care of yourself.

“We just didn’t have any toughness. . . . Any time we tried to do something, they moved us out of the position we were in. I don’t think you have any chance to win if you don’t put up a better fight than that.”

Playing the Rockets, however, means always having a chance.

Houston blew an 18-point lead and Game 1 of the previous series to the Suns. The Rockets set a record in the next game by losing after blowing a 20-point lead in the fourth quarter.

Coach Rudy Tomjanovich insisted his players had learned their lesson. At halftime Tuesday, he promised NBC’s Hannah Storm they would be all right. . . . after which they did it again.

Leading by 79-53 late in the third quarter, the Rockets watched the Jazz go on a 22-4 run that cut their lead to eight points.

Then, as panic gripped the Summit, the Jazz faded away.

Karl Malone threw a hook pass to no one.

Rookie forward Bryon Russell, a No. 2 draft choice from Long Beach State, tried a running seven-footer and Horry blocked it.

The 6-10 Horry fell, landed on his hip and rolled over in pain but stayed in the game after a timeout. Moments later he took a pass from double-teamed Hakeem Olajuwon and threw down a two-handed dunk that almost took the Mailman’s head off.

The Jazz went down the stretch without its one hot shooter, Jeff Hornacek, injured in a collision with Olajuwon with 5:54 left.

“Either his nose is broken,” Sloan said, grinning, “or his ears got turned inside out.”

Tomjanovich said later he wanted to put the first quarter “in the vault.”

And the fourth?

“In the toilet,” he said laughing.

Call it another Rocket lesson for the Rocket scientists.