EIGHT-MAN ROTATION
Pos	Player	Key Stat	Skinny
PG	John Stockton	7.5 APG	Still gets the ball wherever he wants to
SG	Jeff Hornacek	.893 FT %	Farewell tour is underway for him
SF	Bryon Russell	12.4 PPG	Afterthought to second on team in points
PF	Karl Malone	23.8 PPG	No MVP season for Mailman this year
C	Olden Polynice	8.9 RPG	Better scorer, rebounder than O-Tag
PG	Howard Eisley	7.4 PPG	Is Jacque Vaughn Stockton's successor?
PF	Adam Keefe	.452 FG %	Being pushed by rookie Scott Padgett
C	Greg Ostertag	2.73 BPG	A stiff since signing long-term contract

		The age of John Stockton, Karl Malone and Jeff Hornacek is the biggest concern for Utah. Can they make another run at a title? Hornacek has already said this is his last year. The Jazz are put it together with glue and tape, but they are good. Olden Polynice will help them, giving the Jazz a more consistently active player at both ends of the floor at center. Bryon Russell continues to get better. They will miss Shandon Anderson, but I still think they will lull teams to sleep and get layups. They play basic basketball, but you can't dismiss them. Time has to take its toll at some time on Stockton and Malone. They are still great players, but I'm not sure if they are in the same class as San Antono and Portland. They might also have trouble with the Lakers and the Suns. They will have trouble with quick teams. The Jazz will have to play their best basketball.

None of them is age.

Yet that is the explanation offered by everybody else, who saw the Sacramento Kings and Portland Trail Blazers make the Jazz look as hopeless in the playoffs as Andy Griffith in a nightclub. For as many times as it had been counted out of championship contention simply because of the dates on its players' driver's licenses, the Jazz had never looked so bad.

"It seemed to me we had guys start going in separate directions when things got tough, and I hadn't seen that before," says coach Jerry Sloan. "Everybody was worried about themselves. Nobody was worried about the team. I guess you could say we had an 'I' problem."

It should come as no surprise, however, that the Jazz has not abandoned its title aspirations, futile as they might appear to anybody else. Even though the team's stars -- John Stockton, Jeff Hornacek and Karl Malone --are all closing fast on 40, Utah believes that a little more togetherness, a little less hectic of a schedule and a new (if not exactly top-of-the-line) center will help it turn skeptics into astounded believers yet again.

"This is a new year and a new time," says Malone, "and we'll go from here."

	Player to watch
	Hornacek Jeff Hornacek has announced that this is his last season, and the Jazz are going to need every minute out of him this season if a trip to the Finals is in order. Shandon Anderson, now a Rocket, filled a key role on this team, especially when it came to converting easy baskets. Hornacek's game hasn't slipped noticeably, but he'll need his farewell tour to a little better than last season.

Point guard
Theoretically, the Jazz has one of the best sets of point guards in the league, with Stockton, Howard Eisley and Jacque Vaughn. Thing is, Stockton is 37 years old and coming off elbow surgery following a season in which he averaged his fewest minutes in 12 years as a starter.

Certainly the heart is willing-Stockton signed a deal in the offseason to play two more seasons for $22 million-but is the flesh?

"Hopefully, they only want to say those things at the start of the season," says Stockton, "and at the end of the season, they say, 'Ah, I've been fooled again.' That's kind of the goal."

Entering the final year of his contract, Eisley remains one of the most valuable backups in the league, especially because the Jazz needs him to not only spell Stockton at the point but play shooting guard alongside him in its small lineup. The team remains high on Vaughn, too; he enters the final year of his contract after having averaged nearly 20 points a game in the Rocky Mountain Revue summer league.

Shooting guard
Here is where the problems start.

The Jazz had hoped to re-sign Shandon Anderson and use him as a starter so it could bring the 36-year-old Hornacek and his surgically repaired knee off the bench to keep the wear-and-tear to a minimum.

But Anderson signed with the Houston Rockets, leaving the Jazz with Hornacek and rookie Quincy Lewis at this position, and perhaps Bryon Russell and Eisley offering periodic help away from their natural spots. That does not appear to be a terribly promising way to make a run at the championship, yet the Jazz seems to be crossing its fingers and praying for the best.

"This is who we are," says Sloan. "Hopefully, somebody will buckle down and play harder."

Somebody had better. Hornacek is coming off his worst year as a pro -- his shooting percentage and scoring average were his lowest in years -- and rookies picked in the middle of the first round generally are not impact players on championship contenders.

Small forward
The Jazz has to feel fabulous about the way Russell has developed. A second-round draft pick six years ago, Russell has blossomed into one of the team's best players coming off his finest season as a pro.

The 6-7 Russell averaged 12.4 points and 5.3 rebounds a game while shooting nearly 80 percent from the free throw line-all career highs -- and making 35 percent of his 3-pointers. He is the team's best perimeter defender and is versatile enough to play at shooting guard. At 28 years old, he also is young enough that his legs can handle nearly 40 minutes a game.

Veteran Adam Keefe is the backup, but he is often plagued by nagging injuries and has limited quickness and shooting range that gives him trouble playing away from the basket. At 6-9, he can play inside, though, which allows the Jazz to use him at power forward in its small lineup.

Power forward
Even at 36, Malone shows no signs of slowing down after winning his second NBA Most Valuable Player award last year. Better still, he signed a four-year contract worth $66 million over the summer that should make him just about the happiest guy on the roster.

The difficulties might come with depth, although with Malone playing 40 minutes every night, that probably isnt the team's biggest concern.

The Jazz signed 6-10 Pete Chilcutt to give it a little versatility -- Chilcutt shoots nearly 40 percent from 3-point range -- and has 6-8 rookie Torraye Braggs back from a season in Europe hoping to fashion himself into the second coming of Malone. But nothing aside from a devastating injury to Malone would require the Jazz to use either of them more than cursorily at this position, and that by itself assures the Jazz of remaining a contender in the Midwest Division.

Center
Having grown tired of relying on the unreliable (and overpaid) Greg Ostertag, the Jazz went out and recruited 7-0 free agent Olden Polynice to take some of the burden off Malone in the frontcourt.

Will it work?

If not, the season at least will be entertaining. Polynice has done and said all the right things since arriving from Seattle, but he carries with him a reputation for disagreeable behavior that generally doesn't play well in Utah. His ability to rebound and occasionally score certainly will be a welcome addition on the floor, but nobody knows what might happen in the locker room if things start to go bad.

As for Ostertag, he arrived at camp reportedly in better shape than ever -- insert fat joke here -- and with a new number, 39 (he allowed Polynice to have No. 0.). None of that, however, should lead fans to expect Ostertag to be much better.

Coaching
What can you say about Sloan and his staff?

Nobody else has been a head coach with his current team longer than Sloan, who enters his 12th season in Utah with three of his four assistants (Phil Johnson, Gordon Chiesa and Dave Fredman) having been with him for at least a decade. And while the Jazz's old-school approach might be a problem for a team loaded with uppity rookies, Sloan has Stockton, Malone and Hornacek to help enforce his ideas about how to play the game.