Resurgent Ostertag Helps Jazz Play On

Welcome home, Herman Munster.

Greg Ostertag, another tall, awkward celebrity, was taken back into his countrymen’s hearts Sunday after a season of semi-Ostracism, blocking seven shots as the Utah Jazz put the old Houston Rockets out to pasture, 84-70, in the decisive Game 5 and restored the pecking order in the Western Conference.

Well, he was taken back into the hearts of most of his countrymen, anyway.

“I think our young guys are a big part of what we’re trying to do,” said teammate Karl Malone. “I praise them for what they do but they’re gettin’ paid like everybody else.

“They got a job to do and we expect that. And that might seem harsh but like I said, it’s just one of those things. They’re supposed to do that. That’s their job.”

That’s your Western Conference defending champion Jazz for you. Think the Jazz isn’t tough on its young?

“Yup,” said Ostertag, advised of Malone’s comments. “But . . . oh well. No comment.”

This hasn’t been the season Ostertag envisioned, nor the postseason the Jazz envisioned, not after a 50-15 finish with only six losses after the All-Star break.

Houston put Utah on its heels in Game 1 and kept the Jazz there until Game 4 in Houston when Charles Barkley tore a muscle in his right arm, Hakeem Olajuwon ran out of gas and the Jazz came from 12 points behind to win by 22.

“Yeah, I liked our chances a lot” said Barkley, who sat out Sunday. “I think at the time we had a 12-point lead. I really liked our chances. But, you know, something happened. Nothing you can do about it.”

Before Sunday’s game, Barkley joked in typical Charles fashion that his arm was so swollen, it was now as big as his rear end. In typical playoff fashion, the Jazz refused to believe he wouldn’t play until he showed up in civilian clothes . . . and then didn’t tear them off to reveal a uniform by halftime.

So the 35-year-old Olajuwon went out to make a last stand, along with Clyde Drexler, 35, Mario Elie, 34, Kevin Willis, 35, Eddie Johnson, 39, Charles Jones, 41, and a few kids they picked up to in-bound the ball and take open jump shots.

Experience is great but too much of it is a bad thing too. Rocked by Utah’s 15-4 start, they clawed back within 53-52 late in the third quarter but they just didn’t have enough left.

Drexler, who has already announced his retirement, glided into the rest of his life with a one-for-13 shooting performance. The wondrous Olajuwon, who used to carry them by the scruffs of their necks, went seven for 19, after going 10 for 29 in Game 4.

“The way they play him [Olajuwon], they make him work so hard and they bring a lot of big bodies in,” said Barkley. “And we really didn’t get any effective scoring anywhere else. They wore him down in pretty much every game.”

The Jazz started the series trying to help on Olajuwon but Houston sank so many three-pointers on them, Coach Jerry Sloan went to Plan B, Ostertag vs. Hakeem, mano y mano. That didn’t work so well, either.

“We can’t handle both of the things that we had to deal with,” Sloan said. “First game we played ‘em, they came out and whacked three-pointers and got us into a scattered game. We didn’t know whether to double, we didn’t know whether to help, we didn’t know what to do. We were running all over the place.”

By Game 4, they had learned to help without leaving the three-point line wide open, which was when Olajuwon began feeling the weight, not only of Ostertag, but Malone, Greg Foster and his years.

Late in Sunday’s game, Ostertag started getting his hands on Olajuwon’s shots, making it a good day for someone who needed one. After signing a new contract that paid him $6.5 million a season last summer--more even than Malone--he was slapped by Shaquille O’Neal before the regular-season opener and, when he played badly, criticized pointedly and publicly by Malone all season.

Sloan fingered “our big men” after the Game 3 loss. A Salt Lake City Tribune columnist called Ostertag “a slug.” Capping it off, in a massive historical revision, or a delusion, TBS’s Dick Stockton, trying to highlight how far Ostertag had fallen, claimed he had out-played Shaq last spring.

“It’s been a cruddy year for me,” said Ostertag, “but like I said, this is a new season. It’s a chance to reestablish myself in a sense and help this team get where we want to go.”

For the moment, they’re only going into the second round against the Spurs but after where they were last week, it looks pretty good to them.