It's over — Jazz loss ends a stellar season

SAN ANTONIO — Once the griping about the officiating in Game 4 has died down, and all those powder-blue T-shirts have been stowed and Salt Lake City goes back to being plain old Salt Lake City — rather than Mad House Central — most Jazz fans will have to admit: It was quite a run.

All of it. The mood swings. The referee baiting (Steve Javie has become the new Dick Bavetta). The nights when it just doesn't get any better, with the crowd howling and the players diving around and the volume turned all the way up.

So the Jazz are gone for 2007.

Yet in another sense, they're back.

One thing the Spurs, Mavericks, Suns and everyone else in the talent-crowded Western Conference has to know deep down in their size 18 shoes: The Jazz are coming. They're young, confident and most important, now they've had a taste. Isn't that what Jerry Sloan feared all along? That his teams would forget — or never know — what it feels like when every single possession counts. When the Earth seems to tilt with each possession.

So now they know.

This postseason is the stuff they'll remember when they get old.

"Once you get a taste of how good it feels," said reserve guard Ronnie Brewer, "you just want to try to get back."

When the playoffs came to an end Wednesday with a humiliating 109-84 loss to the San Antonio Spurs, it was obvious the Jazz had been overmatched and psyched out. Not enough Andrei Kirilenko, not enough Mehmet Okur, not enough of a lot of things. The season ended with the scrubs getting experience and the stars taking a long-delayed rest.

It has nonetheless been a memorable playoff run. The improbable comeback from a 2-0 deficit to Houston. Kirilenko's tearful struggle to fit into his role. Derek Fisher's lesson on facing the greatest of all fears — a child's cancer — with dignity.

Williams' start against Golden State, when suddenly it became clear he is everything the Jazz hoped for and more. Rookie Paul Millsap's demonstration that it's not age that matters but maturity. Carlos Boozer's unpredictable, sometimes unstoppable, left hand.

And more: The fan outside EnergySolutions Arena, wearing a Jazz retro warm-up suit, a wig, a Jazz cape and holding up a sign asking for FREE lower-bowl tickets because he couldn't afford to buy his own. (Right, we'll get those right over to you.) An angry night in Salt Lake City when fans showered Javie and other officials with debris as they left the court.

Javie, who tossed Fisher and Sloan at the end of Game 4, has become the new object of Jazz fans' scorn, replacing Bavetta, the villain of the 1998 NBA Finals.

Only in the playoffs.