Tracy McGrady cuts left at the top of the lane to shake off Matt Harpring, looking momentarily as though he'll have an open path to the rim, and suddenly Harpring's forearm extends like an unfolding ladder, cracking McGrady's midsection and stopping his forward progress.

Luis Scola gets beaten by Deron Williams advancing the ball near the sideline, so Scola shoves him out of bounds into the front row.

Williams drives hard to the basket straight into the teeth of the Rockets' defense, and while in the air, he is grabbed, slapped, kidney punched, and left clutching assorted body parts while still sprawled on the floor.

Welcome to the NBA postseason, where basketball is transformed into meatball. Exhibit A: the Jazz and Rockets.

Watching this playoff series is a little like watching one of those old cartoons where the good guy gets in a fight with the bad guy, a huge cloud of dust stirs up around them, and, then, at the end, one of the two reappears out of the dirty ball of dust, limping away.

That's the hallmark - and, for some, the bane - of the NBA playoffs.

As the stakes are raised, so is the violence.

The higher the care factor, the more body blows are administered and absorbed.

The bigger the game, the uglier the game.

It's a fact, everyone knows it, and accepts it.

"Guys are battling out there," says Jerry Sloan. "Everybody's knocking and banging around. It's fun. If you don't like it . . ."

Sloan pauses for a moment.

". . . go home."

Yeah, it's all good fun until somebody gets hurt.

And, even then, there's no changing it.

"It's the playoffs," says Williams, who's been continually nursing, and aggravating, a bruised butt muscle in this series. "You suck it up."

The best way to measure the physicality factor in a playoff series is to count the number of times the kids with the mops run out on the court to sponge up the mess from the latest collision. In Game 1 of the Jazz-Rockets first-rounder, the count blew past 20 clean-up calls.

Impressive.

And the pileups have kept coming.

"This whole series has been physical," Williams says. "A lot of things are not being called. They just let us play. We've had hard-fought victories. It isn't pretty, but if we want to win, it's how it's going to be."

In four games, 177 fouls have been called, and another 177 could have been whistled up. There have been 206 free throws attempted, and 138 made.

Truth is, if every real foul were called the way Naismith may have envisioned, playoff games would grind to a painful halt. The counter argument to that reasoning is that if every real foul were called, players would stop committing them, and playoff basketball would revert back to the beautiful finesse game it was meant to be.

Instead, we get a kind of intense, brutish Clubber Lang ball.

Which has come to be expected and embraced by a lot of coaches, players, and fans.

"It's the playoffs," says Mehmet Okur. "We like it physical."

Most players refuse to speak out against that physicality because complaining would appear weak, less than manly.

McGrady, though, seemed to protest a bit after Game 4 when he said: "There was a lot more physical [play] in this game. They were bodying me up as soon as I crossed half-court."

He caught himself and said that such defensive methodology "wasn't effective."

McGrady made 9 of 25 shots on Saturday night, and scored just one basket in the fourth quarter.

"We're trying to wear [McGrady] out," says Williams.

Despite Rick Adelman's beefs after Game 4 regarding the Jazz's rough treatment of McGrady - "I really have a hard time understanding some of the things they can do to him out on the floor," he said, later threatening to send film to the NBA office - the Rockets are attempting to do the same exact thing to the Jazz.

Williams, in particular, has been repeatedly hammered.

And, so, the meatfest continues in Game 5 tonight. With the Rockets facing elimination, trailing the Jazz, 3-1, the slamming of bodies promises to get more forceful, not less.

Be that good or bad, it just is.

"You've got to be tough in the playoffs," says Sloan. "You've got to fight. If you don't like it . . ."

Go home.

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* GORDON MONSON hosts "The Big Show" weekdays from 3-7 p.m. on 1280 AM The Zone. He can be reached at gmonson@sltrib.com.

Foul play

Despite the physical play in the postseason, fouls and free throws in Jazz games are on pace with the regular season numbers:

Reg. season Playoffs

Jazz fouls/game 24 24

Opp fouls/game 23 23

Jazz FT/game 28 26

Opp FT/game 30 25

Three for the road?

With a win tonight, the Jazz would become the 16th team to win three road games in a playoff series. The most recent instances:

Year Team Opponent Round

2001 L.A. Lakers Philly NBA Finals

2003 San Antonio Dallas West Finals

2005 Indiana Boston First Round

2005 San Antonio Phoenix West Finals