It’s All in the Delivery

Karl Malone’s right palm still hasn’t healed, the result of a deep floor burn in Game 1, and his feelings were hurt by a critical column in a local paper. But there’s no doubt where the hurt was felt most Tuesday night.

He was a pain in the next.

Two days after making only 10 of 28 shots in a loss, many within about arm’s length, Malone responded by going 11 for 22, scoring 29 points and grabbing 14 rebounds to lead the Utah Jazz to a 96-91 victory over the Houston Rockets at the Delta Center and a 3-2 lead in the Western Conference finals.

Malone, the first to criticize his poor showing Sunday at the Summit, called this one “so-so.”

So, the Rockets face elimination Thursday in Game 6 at Houston and the Jazz is on the brink of its first-ever trip to the finals.

So, that it wasn’t a bad recovery, was it?

Said Rocket Coach Rudy Tomjanovich, impressed enough: “He made some all-pro shots.”

All the more noteworthy because the absentee ballot sent to Malone in Houston had followed him home. At the start of Game 5, he missed his first three tries, two from the perimeter and one at close range. He insisted he wasn’t worried.

When he got the next three shots to drop, any doubters probably fell back in line, too. When he missed four of five in the second quarter, it probably wouldn’t have been hard to find at least a few among the 19,911 painfully loyal fans who might have considered watching with hands over eyes.

From that point, Malone--the league’s most valuable player--turned great again, going seven for 11 in the second half. When he couldn’t get into the flow of the offense in the decisive fourth quarter, Malone compensated for taking only four shots by grabbing six rebounds. The Rockets had only seven as a team in the same stretch.

“I just tried to stay focused,” he said, “and not worry whether I missed the first two or three.”

He didn’t rush the shots nearly as much as on Sunday. That made a big difference. He insisted that adjustment did not, however, make this a breakthrough game.

“No,” Malone quickly answered, shooting down that theory. “Not at all. But I’m looking forward to one.”

If 29 points and 14 rebounds aren’t one, the Jazz is looking forward to one, too. But a so-so effort was acceptable largely because of a critical contribution from reserve point guard Howard Eisley.

In the previous two games, Utah didn’t have an answer for Houston reserve Eddie Johnson, the hero of the Rocket victories that turned an 0-2 deficit into a series tie, first with a game-high 31 points on Friday and then a game-winning three-point basket at the buzzer on Sunday.

But Eisley was the solution Tuesday for what could have been a very bad Jazz predicament.

Eisley, waived by the Minnesota and San Antonio during his rookie season in 1994, usually replaces John Stockton on schedule, not circumstances. With five minutes left in the first and third quarters, Eisley goes in. Like clockwork.

Except that in the third quarter of Game 5, he was forced to punch in early. Stockton got his fourth personal with 8:50 remaining, an offensive foul on one of the cross screens that have drawn so much attention this series, and came out.

“Well,” Jazz Coach Jerry Sloan later lamented, “we couldn’t stop the game.”

So in went Eisley. Utah was up by three at the time.

When the quarter had ended, and Stockton took over at the wheel again, Utah was up by seven.

“I tried to come in and give the team a boost off the bench,” said Eisley, who did not produce any numbers of significance but did an admirable job in a difficult situation. “I think for the most part, I did that.”

For the entire part, pretty much. Stockton took it from there, scoring eight of his 17 points in the fourth quarter--making both his shots and all four free throws. That helped the Jazz lead the entire quarter, have what turned out to be an insurmountable cushion at 94-87 with 2:10 remaining, and blunt the impact of 33 points and 10 rebounds from Hakeem Olajuwon.

More than that, actually. It allowed the Jazz to get within one victory of the NBA finals. Figure the chances of making it there at a little better than so-so.