So Far in NBA, Cheaters Prosper

Antoine Carr of the Utah Jazz said Thursday that the upcoming NBA Western Conference finals will be like an episode of “The Jerry Springer Show.”

If that were true, the title would be, “Help! Some Mountain Men in Ugly Shorts Can’t Keep Their Hands Off Me!”

While the Lakers were telling their story, the Jazz would sprint out from backstage and sucker-punch them.

With John Stockton using a chair.

Seriously.

This series is not about who can stop Shaquille O’Neal, or who can match up with Karl Malone.

It is about something for which there are no statistics, only scrapes and welts and wills.

It is about how a team with better athletes handles a team with better cheaters.

Anybody who has watched Stockton shove somebody down the lane, or Malone tackle somebody under the basket, understands which team is which.

The Lakers know it. The entire NBA knows it.

Nobody will exactly say it, everyone is always so polite, deferring to the Jazz’s two future Hall of Famers, their gritty coach, their wonderful city.

But a tackle is a tackle. A kick is a kick. A piledriver is a piledriver.

Do the Lakers also cheat? Of course they do.

O’Neal is no saint in the paint. The Lakers’ flow offense also includes flowing elbows and shoulders.

The Lakers cheat and whine like any 61-win team must do.

But they haven’t mastered it the way the Jazz has. Nobody has. Nobody is this experienced, this smart, this good.

This is not to say Jazz players are dirty. To call them dirty would be to imply that their object is injury.

For the most part, they are not bad guys. They don’t push their opponents 20 feet on screen plays because they want to injure them. They don’t kick them in the lane because they want to see blood.

They do all this, and much more that only the players see, because they will do anything to win.

“They are not malicious, as far as flying elbows and kicking and scratching is concerned,” the Lakers’ Derek Fisher said. “They are selective. They know when to kick, when to scratch.”

And when is that?

“When the ref is not watching,” he said with a smile.

Like all of the Lakers, Fisher refused to exactly accuse the Jazz of cheating.

But part of the Laker strategy will be to make sure the referees know that they know.

Del Harris already began working that angle earlier this week when he talked about Malone’s recently patented layup kicks.

Eddie Jones chimed in Thursday with, “I’m going to tell the referee what size shoe Malone wears, because you’re going to see the footprint on my chest.”

Of course, realizing what the Jazz players are doing is one thing. But making a big deal about it in a loud and hostile neighborhood is quite another.

It is not entirely folly to ask: Has anyone ever made a big call against the Jazz in Salt Lake City?

Like the team, the town is composed of nice, polite people who, when a basketball game is occurring, suddenly regress. Their weeping and whining turn the Delta Center into a day-care center.

So desperate were they for villains last spring while disposing of the Clippers, they even booed me. No doubt, this is something many of our dear readers wish they had thought of first.

After practice there Thursday, Malone said the Lakers were simply engaging in typical prefight talk.

“It’s like WCW wrestling,” he said.

But for him, in more ways than one.

The Lakers’ other strategy was outlined Thursday by Rick Fox.

“We have to beat them to the punch,” he said.

Literally.

“We have to come out and be more aggressive than they are, then leave it to the refs to sort it out,” Fox said. “If we don’t meet their aggressiveness, then they will set the trend and we’ll be in trouble.”

To that end, they have already been working on ways to move around the often illegal picks that have become so vital to the Jazz’s successful pick and rolls.

“They have moving screens, holding screens, they ride the picks all the way out,” Corie Blount said. “We are working on techniques on how to get around them.”

This is easier preached than practiced.

“They ride picks so far out, it almost forces you to run them over,” Blount said.

In many ways, this is simply good basketball.

“When you have two good, experienced people running a pick and roll, they have a counter for anything you do defensively,” Laker assistant Kurt Rambis said. “It becomes a real cat-and-mouse game.”

But does the mouse need to be carrying a lead pipe? Or wearing eight-ounce gloves?

The thing about the Jazz is, the players don’t need to cheat. They are good enough without the late hits and cheap shots.

This mouse doesn’t need help to roar.

But they do it anyway and will be doing it all the way to the NBA championship if their opponent will let them.

Less than a week after flying through one of the most spectacular series victories in franchise history, the Lakers are going to have to win this next round on their bellies.

“We can do this two ways--the corporate way, or the street way,” O’Neal said.

His harsh tone left no doubt that he and his guys have already made up their minds.

You know the Mountain Men in Ugly Shorts have already made up theirs.