Jazz embark on long road to, uh, remodeling

Rebuilding? In transition?

Kevin O'Connor prefers the catch-phrase "remodeling."

Whatever the Jazz are now that John Stockton and Karl Malone are but a memory, one thing seems certain as two-a-day training camp for the 2003-04 NBA season begins this morning:

Victories for a franchise accustomed to them will no longer come as easily, or as frequently, as they once did.

At least not in the foreseeable future.

"It's going to be even harder to win now," point guard Carlos Arroyo said Tuesday. "Because, you know, everything was around them two."

You know them two:

Stockton, the NBA's all-time assists and steals leader, now retired; Malone, the league's No. 2 all-time scorer, now with the Los Angeles Lakers.

"We're gonna miss John and Karl," small forward Matt Harpring said. "There's no question. They're two great players."

Left in the rubble of their landscape-changing moves from Utah is a collection of mostly twentysomethings hoping to make their own mark in the NBA.

They are rookies, and free agents, and journeymen, and even a few returnees, 19 in all on hand for a pre-camp media day session Tuesday, a dozen of them owning guaranteed contracts, the rest hopeful, none even close to approaching the heights reached not long ago by Stockton and Malone.

No wonder O'Connor, the Jazz's senior vice president of basketball operations, sounds brutally candid when he assesses the reconstruction that is under way.

"You know, it's gonna be a little painful - the remodeling process," O'Connor said Tuesday. "But I'd like to think that's once it's finished, you look at it and say, 'Glad we did it.' "

It's a process Jazz head coach Jerry Sloan, back for a 16th season, seems to welcome with open arms.

"My expectations," Sloan said with regard to his new crew, "are for them to play hard.

"Hopefully," he added, "they'll play together. Hopefully they'll have fun."

And, Sloan hopes as well, perhaps they'll win some games along the way.

He would have it no other way.