‘Beat L.A.’ Starts Early in Portland

PORTLAND, Ore. —  The Portland Trail Blazers have the Utah Jazz all figured out, as if Utah’s just one of those $100 questions on “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?”

The Trail Blazers broke loose from the Jazz in the fourth quarter of Game 1 and kept right on going in Game 2, running away for a 103-85 victory in the Rose Garden.

After the first two games of the series, the Trail Blazers are in such control that the Portland fans bypassed the chants of “Sweep” and went straight to “Beat L.A.” in the middle of the fourth quarter.

And if you mention the Lakers to Portland players in casual conversations, they won’t give you the standard stuff about how they need to focus on their current opponent. They’re happy to talk about them, and some aren’t quite ready to count out the Phoenix Suns.

“They know they’re better than we are,” Jazz Coach Jerry Sloan said on the off day between games. “You don’t hear them complaining about [the Jazz] flopping this year. They don’t have the same kind of respect as they did last year. And they shouldn’t.”

Portland has brought in Scottie Pippen, Steve Smith and Detlef Schrempf, while the only thing Utah added is another year.

Portland beat Utah in six games last year, but now the gap is so great, Portland is at such a higher level, Sloan said Tuesday’s game was: “The best I’ve seen a team play against us in 15 years.”

Coming from a guy whose team faced Michael Jordan’s Chicago Bulls in back-to-back NBA finals, that’s really saying something.

And no one has seen a Sloan-coached team so resigned to defeat. The attitude permeated the locker room before the game, and sank even lower afterward.

“I thought we had a few guys in our locker room that thought we had a chance,” Sloan said. “I’m not sure we have anybody now.”

Jeff Hornacek was in there wondering about the team’s confidence. When asked if his team’s frustration level had ever been so high, he said, “Not during the playoffs.”

Utah? It’s almost time to start talking about the Jazz in the past tense.

The Jazz will probably win a game back home, just because the sheer noise of the Delta Center should be enough to knock the Trail Blazers off kilter and lift Utah to victory. But there isn’t enough noise in the world to help Utah win four of the possible five remaining games in this series.

The Trail Blazers have taken away all of Utah’s options on offense, leaving John Stockton to search and search for an open man, making like a guy in a minivan trying to find a place to park at a crowded shopping mall.

Portland is jumping out on the screen-and-rolls, they’re cutting off the passing lanes. Utah’s effectiveness is based on precision, but the way the Trail Blazers are cutting them off it’s as if the Jazz is trying to play chess blindfolded.

On offense, the Trail Blazers are spreading the floor and creating spaces so wide that even big ol’ Arvydas Sabonis can cruise right down the middle for a finger roll. (That’s not an exaggeration; it actually happened in the second quarter.)

They did whatever they wanted. Go to Rasheed Wallace for a jumper on the blocks. Post up Jeff Hornacek, make the Jazz help out, then pass to whoever’s open for a three-pointer.

Portland shot 61% through the first three quarters, 56% overall.

The Trail Blazers are too tall and too deep.

Sloan sent out his second unit to go against Portland’s vaunted bench at the start of the second quarter. When his lineup of Howard Eisley, Jacque Vaughn Greg Ostertag, Armen Gilliam and starter Bryon Russell was outscored, 7-4, in the first four minutes, he called on Stockton, Karl Malone and Jeff Hornacek. The Trail Blazer backups proceeded to outscore them, 14-4.

Yeah, yeah, Malone suffered a sprained left knee in Game 1 and missed Monday’s practice and Tuesday’s morning shoot-around. The Jazz won’t use that as an excuse, and neither should anyone else.

The Utah way is if you can play, you play. And then you shut up.

Malone even removed the neoprene sleeve he was wearing on his knee before the game after Sloan teased him about it.

Malone scored seven points in the first quarter and had 15 for the game in only 30 minutes--the time limited by Sloan, not the knee.

It got so bad that even Jazz Man, Utah’s bald-headed superfan, could only sit quietly, glumly holding up signs reading “It Could Happen.”

Sure. His time would be better spent hoping for $1-a-gallon gasoline.

Sloan waived the white flag with 2:35 remaining in the third quarter, pulling his starters for good.

I was about to say that this was such an effortless affair for the Trail Blazers that Wallace didn’t even get a technical foul.

But somehow Wallace managed to get a technical foul while he was on the bench with his team ahead by 33 points.

Schrempf tried to throw a touchdown pass to Bonzi Wells. Wells was undercut by a Utah player, but official Steve Javie simply called him out of bounds.

That brought Wallace off the bench to complain, even after players went to the sidelines for a timeout.

Javie gave him a technical foul.

To be fair, the combination of the hot-tempered Wallace and Javie--who has the quickest trigger-finger of any NBA official--was almost guaranteed to result in a technical at some point, even if Javie had to walk in and do it during the postgame interviews.

That’s the way Portland has it right now, their greatest weakness, Wallace’s temper, only served to make the final victory margin 18 points instead of 19.

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J.A. Adande can be reached at his e-mail address: j.a.adande@latimes.com.