FROM THE SALT MINES

What papers in the Salt Lake City area are saying about the series:

DOUG ROBINSON, DESERET NEWS

Well, it’s time to climb off the Laker Bandwagon. Thanks for riding with them. Watch your step getting off. Please exit in an orderly fashion, and make sure you check around your seat for loose items you might have left behind. Don’t forget to take all that emotional baggage you brought with you.

Next stop: The off-season.

It was a short, bumpy ride. Sorry about that. Think of it this way: The Lakers can get a head start on a summer of making movies, studying the pick and roll and practicing for next year’s All-Star Game.

It was fun while it lasted, wasn’t it? Everyone thought it would last longer, of course, but this is as far as it goes. Hope everyone learned his lesson.

The trouble with the Lakers is that everybody was so dazzled by their leaps, speed, youth, dunks and athleticism that they overlooked the benefit of experience, intelligence, heart and persistence.

“The Lakers are very pretty to watch,” said Karl Malone. “They are flamboyant. But. . . .”

But this isn’t ice skating; there are no points for style. There are no bonuses for dunks. The Jazz got game; they got scoreboard. The Lakers got. . . . The Lake Show.

Everyone was so anxious to crown the Lakers as The Next Dynasty only a week ago that they forgot about the Jazz, and maybe that’s easy to do. The Lakers are young, showy and fun. They are hip-hop and Madison Avenue.

They are Big Names. They are Shaq and Kobe and Nick and Eddie. They are Hollywood. Jack’s Team. Then there is the Jazz, the workman-like, middle-aged, half-court plodders from Salt Lake City. This says it all: The Lakers had four players in the All-Star Game; the Jazz had one.