Faint Beat

By J.A. ADANDE

May 14, 2000 12 AM PT

SALT LAKE CITY —

All that’s left for the Utah Jazz is to view the autopsy report.

Soon enough we’ll know the final details, whether the end comes in

Game 4 today at the Delta Center or the inevitable occurs in Portland for Game 5.

Utah’s season is about to conclude, and so is the Jazz’s run as a viable contender for an NBA championship.

Trailing, 3-0, to the Trail Blazers in the Western Conference semifinals, the Jazz players appear to have reconciled themselves to the fact that no team in NBA history has overcome a 3-0 deficit to win a best-of-seven series--and that things won’t be the same around the Wasatch Front.

While this isn’t quite the end of an era (after all, John Stockton and Karl Malone are under contract for next season) this is the closing of this group’s window of opportunity to win an NBA championship.

They have been written off before. Last year’s second-round loss to the Trail Blazers was the most recent example, and all they did was return to win 55 games and win the Midwest Division ahead of the defending NBA champion San Antonio Spurs and the up-and-coming Minnesota Timberwolves.

It’s different this time. Stockton is 38, Malone will be 37 in July. The younger, deeper teams assembled in Los Angeles and Portland are blocking the path to the NBA finals.

Shooting guard Jeff Hornacek is retiring after the season. Backup point guard Howard Eisley will be a free agent.

The prospects for the future don’t look good because Malone’s contract (an average of $15 million a year for the next three seasons) will take up almost half of the salary cap. Utah was $15 million over the salary cap of $34 million this year. And the Jazz traditionally has had trouble attracting young, talented free agents because they don’t want to play in this small-market, one-team town.

So it looks as though those losses to the Chicago Bulls in the 1997 and 1998 NBA finals will have to stand as the crowning achievement of this group.

The team has reached the playoffs for 17 consecutive years and has won 50 games or more nine times in Jerry Sloan’s 12 years as coach.

But they appear to be destined to be remembered--or perhaps forgotten--the same way as the Spurs and Milwaukee Bucks teams of the 1980s that couldn’t push through to a championship level.

Is this the beginning of the end?

“Well, Horny’s retiring this year and Stockton’s retiring supposedly next year, then I’m after that,” Malone said. “So, oh yeah. Hopefully people enjoyed it. Because everything has to come to an end. It’s just a start with Horny, and it’s just going to be a chain reaction after that.”

There’s already a different look and sound to these Jazz.

The quotes from the locker don’t give off the same aura of toughness. Players have openly wondered whether they could regain confidence. An assistant coach talked about the team’s need to rid itself of its “anxiety.”

Then there’s the Delta Center, normally a caldron of noise, which has been zapped by a giant mute button. The Jazz sold out only 15 home games and was in jeopardy of having empty seats for Game 4 today.

The fans were trickling out with three minutes left in Game 3, and by the time it ended the only sound came from the Trail Blazers, who gathered at halfcourt and shouted “Whazzzzzaaaap!”

Which brings up a good question: What’s up with the Jazz?

Instead of efficiently running their offense, they’ve become completely dismantled by Portland’s long arms and athletic bodies.

They have completely cut off the pick-and-roll, and have the Jazz doing such uncharacteristic sights as Stockton getting caught in the air or throwing alley-oop passes to no one, and Malone resorting to a jump-hook.

“They’re a team, defensively, when we run our plays, they know how to get us out of them,” Hornacek said.

On offense, the Trail Blazers are exploiting the height advantage 6-foot-8 Scottie Pippen and Steve Smith have over 6-4 Hornacek and 6-2 Eisley.

Portland’s depth advantage was never more evident than in Game 3, when the Trail Blazer reserves outscored their Utah counterparts, 35-2.

Coaches around the NBA have always spoken about the Jazz in glowing terms. They love the way Utah responds to Sloan’s coaching, showing such discipline on offense. They are envious of Sloan’s 12 years on the sidelines, the longest current tenure in the league.

You get the sense Portland Coach Mike Dunleavy doesn’t want to be the one to put an end to it.

“They’ve been a terrific team,” Dunleavy said. “They’ve been a great team. We hope that we can beat them.

“When we play them, I respect them a great deal. I’ve watched them a lot, I’ve learned from them a lot.”

Sloan, being Sloan, wants no sympathy.

“People want to talk about feeling sorry and all these things,” he said. “This is basketball. This is not any death wish or anything, it’s just basketball. It has nothing to do with everyday life, with people that have to go to work every day.

“It’s like anything that happens in this business: It’s all temporary. All of us. Players, coaches, general managers, what have you. Some of us have just been in one place a little bit longer than maybe others.”

J.A. Adande can be reached at his e-mail address: j.a.adande@latimes.com.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Top Playoff Scorers

NBA playoff scoring leaders, with championships won (through Thursday; x-active):

1. Michael Jordan 5,987 (6)

2. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar 5,762 (6)

3. Jerry West 4,457 (1)

4. x-Karl Malone 4,149 (0)

5. Larry Bird 3,897 (3)

6. John Havlicek 3,776 (8)

7. x-Hakeem Olajuwon 3,727 (2)

8. Magic Johnson 3,701 (5)