Length of season is the classic measurement of NBA performance, and the Jazz are about six weeks and counting behind the Lakers and the Orlando Magic. Amid all the variables in play for the Jazz , the overriding questions of this offseason are how far the franchise is from the NBA's elite teams, and whether catching up to them anytime soon is reasonable to expect.

Short answers: A long way, and no way.

The best illustration of where the Jazz rank in the Lakers' consciousness came Friday afternoon, when former Jazz guard Derek Fisher offered some thoughts about what his team has gone through to reach this point of the postseason.

Houston "pushed us to the brink," Fisher said.

Denver "was really physical," Fisher said.

Utah? Uh, anything?

Just a faded memory from April's first round, apparently.

Analyzing where the Jazz were a year or two ago, where they are now and where they're headed is tricky. Everything's skewed by their misleading run to the Western Conference finals in 2007 as a result of No. 1 seed Dallas being upset by Golden State, the injuries to Carlos Boozer and others this past season, and the questions about how their roster will look in 2009-10, a subject that intrigues Deron Williams as much as everybody else.

So many issues hover over this franchise: Boozer's future, Paul Millsap's value, Mehmet Okur's unusual center's skill set, Andrei Kirilenko's mind-set, Williams' belief in the organization ... and that's not even the complete list.

Maybe the Jazz were not truly the eighth-best team in the Western Conference, as Kobe Bryant said during that April series. But they're sure not in the top four, which turns their pursuit of the Lakers into a golf example: The number of strokes they're behind the Lakers is one problem, and the number of other teams they have to leapfrog is another.

This will not be easy. Regardless of how everything shakes out for them this summer, nothing suggests they will have anything resembling the personnel breakthroughs that lifted the Lakers and Magic to this level.

The best thing that happened to the Jazz in this decade was becoming bad enough for one season to give them access to Williams in the draft. Yet the same summer, only a year removed from the NBA Finals, the Lakers had slipped sufficiently to give them Andrew Bynum at No. 10. The previous year, Orlando won the lottery and landed Dwight Howard.

The Magic subsequently took some big swings and signed Hedo Turkoglu and Rashard Lewis, who's now living up to his controversial $118 million contract.

The Lakers' growth was accelerated by three acquisitions for practically nothing: Pau Gasol via trade from Memphis, Fisher as a free agent after the Jazz released him from his contract for family reasons, and Trevor Ariza from oblivion. "That kind of changed the essence of what the team was, between two and three years ago," said coach Phil Jackson.

That's how the Lakers have separated themselves from the Jazz , and the gap has widened since May 2008 when the Jazz came within two missed three-pointers in the last five seconds of forcing overtime in the close-out Game 6 of a second-round series. The Lakers are a year more cohesive and confident and the Jazz are not as good.

They need more talent and more time. Remember, it took the Stockton/Malone Jazz exactly 12 years to reach the NBA Finals. The organization is only four years into the Williams/Boozer era, and that collaboration somehow needs to continue.

If the Jazz were consoled by Orlando's lousy effort in Thursday's Game 1 -- thinking, "Hey, we never lost to the Lakers by 25" -- they should be humbled by the way Houston and Denver challenged the Lakers in two series that went the distance or close to it. Around here, that five-game warm-up is considered only a minor annoyance, providing a commentary on where the Jazz stand. Making themselves relevant right away is asking a lot.

kkragthorpe@sltrib.com Alt Heads:

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