Pass Master

Just as Stockton , 35, wastes little motion on the court, he wastes few words away from it. He is polite but laconic, and he abhors self-analysis. Someone asked what he was feeling when he took the long three-pointer in the fourth quarter of Game 4, and his response was, "I don't know, I just shot it."

Though his passion for the game is obvious, his displays of emotion are usually limited to a short pump of the fist or a quick clap of the hands. Even when he throws the occasional stray elbow, which has caused some opponents to call him a dirty player, he does it with a stoic expression. Above all, Stockton tries to project an image of himself as being uncomplicated. "I'm not a cerebral player when I'm out on the floor," he says. "I just play." Nothing could be further from the truth, of course. Stockton is constantly thinking on the floor, and his grasp of the patterns and options of the Jazz offense is so complete that he sometimes throws passes to teammates before they are even open. Although he understands everything, he doesn't care to explain anything—at least not to outsiders.

One of Stockton 's off-the-court interests is flying, which he indulged in last summer when he briefly took the controls of an F-16 jet under the supervision of a pilot with the elite Air Force Thunderbirds. In his description of the pilots, he came close to describing himself. "They're normal guys outside the plane, but inside they're pretty special," he said. "When you watch them, you realize it takes only the slightest touch to do some amazing things. It's like everything else, I guess. When you get guys who are the best in the world at what they do, they make it look easy."

Stockton 's Game 4 performance made things much easier for Utah , although the Jazz still faced the fact that it would have to beat Chicago on the Bulls ' home floor, site of Friday's Game 6 and (if necessary) Sunday's Game 7, to win the NBA championship—a daunting task even though the United Center sounds like a librarians' convention compared with the Delta Center . In tying the series, Utah created the closest thing to a crisis the Bulls have faced in two years: Chicago had one more game remaining in Utah , where the Jazz had won 23 straight; power forward Dennis Rodman (no points and nine insignificant rebounds in Games 3 and 4 combined) was still missing in action; and the Bulls ' offense was becoming even more reliant on Jordan than usual.

In Game 4 Jordan scored 22 points, including 12 in the fourth quarter, on 11-of-27 shooting, while 10 of his teammates combined for just 51 points and missed seven of 12 free throws. "This doesn't feel like us," Chicago center Luc Longley said after the game. "It was very quiet in the locker room. We'll be fine, but this is not a position we expected to be in."

Hardly anyone else expected it either. There were those who didn't think the Jazz would reach the Finals, much less prove to be such a worthy challenger. A Marriott hotel in Houston was so confident that the Rockets would beat Utah in the Western Conference finals that T-shirts with the NBA Finals logo were ordered for the hotel staff. When the Jazz won the series in six games, the hotel sold the shirts to the Salt Lake City Marriott .

Chicagoans didn't seem to care which team the Bulls faced in the Finals. They were so certain of another championship that a public-service announcement urging Chicago fans to celebrate responsibly was being taped at the United Center the day after the Bulls ' 84-82 Game 1 win.

Those words of caution didn't seem terribly premature after the second game, in which the Bulls appeared to have taken control of the series with a convincing 97-85 victory. Chicago bottled up Utah 's famed screen-and-roll by forcing Stockton out of the middle, toward the sideline or baseline, thereby limiting his options as he came off the screen. That took the teeth out of the Jazz attack and raised the old criticisms about the Utah offense's being too predictable. "They definitely seemed to think they had us figured out," Hornacek said after Game 2. "We would run our patterns, and they would call out to each other where the pick was going to be or where the cutter was going. And they were right." When Jordan also spoke of having "figured out" the Jazz attack after Game 2, Utah seemed to be doomed.

But one thing that should be obvious about the Jazz—considering how resolutely it has come back from postseason heartbreak year after year—is that Utah 's belief in its philosophy is not easily shaken. "We are who we are, and we do what we do," Sloan said before the series began. "We don't make a lot of drastic changes, we don't try to be geniuses and outsmart anybody. If what we do isn't working, we don't usually look to do something different, we just try to do it better."

Steadfast as Sloan's belief is in the Utah system, he nonetheless made significant changes in Game 3. The Jazz ran the screen-and-roll far less often, picked up the tempo and went to its motion offense, predicated on quick passing and constant movement without the ball. The strategy was designed to give the Bulls something new to contend with and to get Utah 's offensive juices flowing—and the plan could not have worked better. By the time Chicago adjusted, the Jazz, helped mightily by an unforeseen contribution from reserve center Greg Foster (who would score a playoff-career-high 17 points), had a 24-point lead late in the third quarter and then withstood a late Bulls rally for a 104-93 win.