Sonics-Jazz, A Connoisseur’s Playoff Series

Welcome to the undercard. Greetings from the other series.

Here, there is no Shaq or Penny, no M.J. or Rodman. No “Yesssss,” from Marv Albert.

The billing for the Sonics’ Western Conference Finals with the Utah Jazz makes it feel like the preliminary game.

Today’s Game 1 is the opening act for tomorrow’s Chicago-Orlando headliner. Today’s is the lounge act. Tomorrow is the big room.

The Sonics and the Jazz are the talk of two towns and only two towns. The Bulls and Magic are the global buzz. But the better series might be here. The better matchups might be in the West.

Karl Malone against Shawn Kemp. John Stockton against Gary Payton. Utah’s back-picking, cutting, perpetual-motion, half-court offense against Seattle’s swirling, switching, trapping defense.

“I think this series has a lot of interesting cliches,” Sonics coach George Karl said. “They’ve got a great home court. I think we’ve got a great home court. They’ve got two great players. I think we’ve got two great players.

“They rely a great deal on their offensive team structure, but still are a good defensive team. I think we’re a very good, maybe a great defensive team, with good offensive execution. What it comes to is you have two very good basketball teams going after each other.”

The East is the cover story. The West gets played inside. The East is the Fox Network. The West is PBS.

The East is Madison Avenue. The West is Main Street. The East is hype and hoopla. The West is Xs and Os.

“Your philosophies at this time, your fundamentals at this time are what are going to be tested,” Karl said. “There’s going to be a lot of maneuvering, but if you still don’t do the basics right, you’re not going to be in the basketball game. The foundations of these teams are fairly strong and they’re fairly predictable.

“At this level I think the intensity of the games is going to scare everybody. Any team Jerry Sloan coaches, you know is going to be physical, aggressive and smart.”

The West is a coach’s series. It is Karl and Utah’s Sloan dealing cards from complex decks. It’s a connoisseur’s series; all points and counterpoints.

Utah plays an old-fashioned offense, whose emphasis is on player, not ball, movement. It is harder to learn, harder to run, also harder to defend.

“This game is more of a feel game. A read game,” Karl said. “We’ve got to figure out how to be aggressive, rather than force the issue against a great passing team. We can’t come out like we did in the Houston series, doubling and trapping and pressuring everything.”

It’s Utah’s half-court complexities against Seattle’s full-court creativity. It is the Sonics’ fast break against the Jazz’s brakes.

“I’ve said for three years that I think Utah is the best executing half-court team in basketball,” Karl said. “They play true basketball. They play with cuts. They play with motion. They play with picks.

“A lot of NBA teams play a spacing game, where (on defense) you can zone up and stand around. Utah plays with a lot of movement, a lot of intelligent cutting, good spacing and great passing.”

Utah stretches the rules, uses hip checks and elbows and every advantage it can find. The Jazz is a veteran team that knows what it can and can’t hide from the referees.

“They do a lot of cute stuff that referees get tricked into calling the wrong way,” said Karl, throwing out the series’ traditional first lobbying effort. “I admire that. I think it’s a great art. It’s an art I think I practiced when I played.

“They flop and they slash and they take charges. They trick you into fouls. They lean in. They do all the little stuff that referees get tricked.”

Nobody will be wearing yellow hair in Seattle. There are more tattoos in Chicago; more courtside celebrities.

But this shouldn’t be the other series. This is the comain event. This has the names and the matchups and the drama a basketball fan waits all season to watch. There may be no Marv, but it should be marvelous.