SALT LAKE CITY. The Utah Jazz are halfway to a place they’ve never been — the NBA Finals. The Jazz are operating so efficiently and so precisely that they've turned the Houston Rockets into a creaky, cranky, complaining shell of a team whose play has deteriorated into thuggery.

In another display of nearly flawless team basketball, the Jazz pick-and-rolled, outrebounded and frustrated Houston in a 104-92 victory Wednesday night for a 2-0 lead in the best-of-7 series.

Utah broke the game open with a surge at the end of the third quarter, and things deteriorated so much for Houston in the fourth quarter that Charles Barkley flattened John Stockton on a flagrant foul on which Barkley said he "was trying to separate his shoulder or break his rib."

Utah had such a well-rounded attack that the fans, for the first time in at least a month, didn't even chant "M-V-P" at Karl Malone. Instead, they were on their feet cheering the entire team--and with good reason.

Stockton had 26 points, 12 assists and eight rebounds, Malone had 24 points and 15 rebounds, Jeff Hornacek scored 17 points and Bryon Russell added 12.

Utah's bench pitched in, too, just as it did in the Jazz's 101-86 victory in Game 1. Led by reserve center Greg Foster and backup point guard Howard Eisley, Utah's bench outscored Houston's 23-11. The Jazz also outrebounded Houston 56-37.

The series moves to Houston for Game 3 Friday night and Game 4 on Sunday, and the series might not make it back to the Delta Center if the Rockets can't find a way to stop Utah's multi-faceted attack.

"We've got to win Friday, we've got to win Friday,' Barkley repeated afterward. "You can come back from 3-1, but not from 3-0."

Hakeem Olajuwon led the Rockets with 30 points, but almost half of them came in the fourth quarter when Houston was already out of it. Barkley, who fouled out, added 16 points and Clyde Drexler had 15.

The Jazz took control by ending the third quarter with a 15-2 run, getting strong contributions from their lesser-known players while Houston's attack deteriorated into a series of isolation plays, most of them unsuccessful, for its three superstars.

Hornacek hit a corner jumper, Eisley made a 3-pointer and Foster made a corner jumper while the Rockets were clearing out four players and giving the ball to Barkley or Drexler. Problem was, the one-on-one stuff wasn't working and Olajuwon was resting on the bench.

On one isolation, Russell stole the ball from Drexler and went in for a fastbreak dunk. On the next, Drexler dribbled away the shot clock before missing a 3-pointer.

The strategy worked no better when the Rockets went to Barkley, who was rejected once by Malone and once by Foster and missed his other two attempts. Eisley made another jumper, Foster scored on a drive and Eisley closed the period with two free throws to complete the 15-2 run and send Utah into the fourth quarter with an 83-68 lead.

"It's amazing how long we hung around," Rockets coach Rudy Tomjanovich said. "They made a run, we missed five layups in three minutes and we could never make a game out of it after that."

Houston was unable to cut its deficit below nine points in the fourth quarter, and tempers started to flare as Barkley flattened Stockton under the Utah basket and was called for a flagrant foul.

"Next time I'll break him in half," Barkley said to referee Jack Nies.

"They're going to keep setting their moving picks, and obviously the refs aren't going to do their jobs," Barkley said in the interview room before mentioning that he was deliberately trying to hurt Stockton.

When a roomful of reporters chuckled at Barkley's comment, thinking it was another of his overstatements, he scolded them.

"I was serious," he said.

"Whatever," Stockton replied. "That's my comment on what he did and what he said -- whatever."

Tomjanovich also complained that Utah was guilty of setting illegal moving picks, and he even sent his team captains to talk to the referees about it before the game.

"We addressed it in a professional manner, but it was like talking to a wall," he said. "I'm not trying to be a whiner, but it's a factor in the game."

A final period also featured an extended episode of trash-talking between former Olympic teammates Malone and Olajuwon.

Olajuwon had complained after Game 1 that the Jazz were "cheap and dirty," a "bunch of pretenders" and "bad guys, very bad guys."

Malone took umbrage, and he got a measure of revenge on his final basket when he soared high above Olajuwon and dunked in his face.

"Even tough it's dirty for some people, we've still got to go out and continue to play hard. We can't get caught up in all the sideshows," Malone said.

After a first quarter which ended with Utah ahead 25-23 despite a 20-4 edge in rebounding, the Jazz started to put some distance between themselves and the Rockets over the first six minutes of the second period.

Antoine Carr, Chris Morris and Foster had 10 of Utah's first 16 points of the period, and the Jazz used an 8-0 run to open their first 10-point lead, 39-29.

Two foul shots by Hornacek made it 47-36 with 1:28 left in the half before a late run by Houston left the Rockets trailing 48-42 at the break.

The teams traded baskets through the first eight minutes of the third quarter, and a three-point play by Barkley with 3:44 left pulled the Rockets to 68-66 before Utah broke it open.

Notes: Fifteen teams have come back from 0-2 deficits. The last two times were in 1994 and 1995 when the Rockets came back to beat Phoenix. ----- Hornacek, a 90 percent free throw shooter, missed a technical free throw to make him 1-for-4 on technicals in the series. ----- The second half was played with only one shot clock, and the public address announcer called out when 10 seconds and five seconds remained to shoot. The Jazz were shooting at the basket that had the broken clock above it.

Back to "Drive for the Title"