The veteran guard took stock of the Jazz's head-turning 12-1 start, the return to the playoffs after four seasons in the wilderness, the new Fishers and Okurs and Kirilenkos born into the world and acknowledged it could all come to an end in a little more than 24 hours.

"We've put together a really fine season,'' Fisher said. "A lot of hours, a lot of sweat. A lot's gone into this year for us. We've had a lot of guys that have had babies, and lives have changed in the last year. We've come together as a team and grown up a lot . . .

"There is something to lose for us because we'd be disappointed if we don't get this game. But at the same time, there's so much to gain, and that's what we really have to focus on is the opportunity we have to really kind of grow up before our own eyes and even step into a bigger stage of being in the playoffs."

Simply put, it will be the Jazz's biggest game since John Stockton retired and Karl Malone left town, played out against a backdrop of red shirts at the Toyota Center in Houston, where the Jazz are 0-3 in this series but by a combined margin of just 21 points.

It is a game that can be distilled to the simplest elements of belief, doubt and confidence against the rawest emotions of anxiety and excitement. The winning team will turn around, to host Golden State in Game 1 of the second round Monday night.

There is the chance to make history of the sort Stockton and Malone never did, as the first Jazz team ever to overcome a 2-0 series deficit to advance as well as the first Jazz team to win a Game 7 on the road.

Fifteen days after they opened this series with a textbook case of playoff jitters, giving up the first eight points of Game 1 to the Rockets, the Jazz will reach the end having fulfilled the simplest of coach Jerry Sloan's goals to get better with every game.

"We're playing better basketball than we have all year long,'' Sloan said.

Whether that will be enough for the Jazz to break through with a monumental victory remains to be seen. The Rockets are playing to end a legacy of playoff failure, with star guard Tracy McGrady carrying the weight of going 0-for-5 in first-round series in his career.

There also is the collective memory for McGrady, Yao Ming and Houston coach Jeff Van Gundy of being part of a Rockets team that suffered the worst Game 7 loss in NBA history. They were obliterated 116-76 at Dallas in the first round of the 2005 playoffs.

For the Jazz, it is another landmark in the franchise's return to prominence after so many years of Stockton-to-Malone. From the bottoming out with a 26-56 record in 2004-05, the Jazz could be in select company, one of eight teams still alive after tonight's game.

They have gained experience just stepping on the court in the playoffs, then coming home down 2-0, then facing elimination in Game 6 and clinging to a one-point lead in the fourth quarter. At every crossroads, the Jazz have responded.

"I don't feel it's a culmination, I feel like it's a step in a direction that we want to be in,'' said Kevin O'Connor, the team's senior vice president of basketball operations.

"We talked about trying to build a team that would be competitive and try to then build a team to continue on to be an elite team, and those are the steps that we're trying to get to. I think we're somewhere in between those."

The Jazz have watched Carlos Boozer (41 points in Game 2) and Deron Williams (25 points in Game 4) raise their play in this series, with Mehmet Okur playing the role of a 6-foot-11 David to Yao Ming's Goliath in the paint. Something is building, for sure.

"For us to be where we want to be in the future, whether that's the immediate future or the future in a couple years, we're going to have to win a game on the road and play in a couple Game 7s,'' Boozer said. "Why not do it the first time we make it to the playoffs?"

History has not been kind to road teams playing in Game 7, with a combined record of 18-78. But the Jazz can find confidence in the way they played all three games in Houston, especially in wasting the chance to win with a fourth-quarter lead in Game 5.

"I think we've had opportunities to win games and we just haven't done it,'' Fisher said. "Now we don't have a choice, and hopefully we can really focus that energy and be able to come up with the win so we can advance."

Fisher, Okur and Gordan Giricek are the Jazz's only three players with Game 7 experience. In Fisher's case, he played on the 2002 Los Angeles Lakers team that triumphed against Sacramento in an epic Western Conference Finals series.

Even that Lakers team, though, which went on to win its third consecutive championship, needed overtime to win Game 7 on the road. Fisher's game plan for the Jazz was simple -execute offensively, play smart defensively and make Houston work for every darn point.

The Jazz opened the regular season with a victory over Houston on Nov. 1 and finished the regular season April 18 the same way. After pushing this playoff series to the limit, all Boozer could say was, "I want to see them one more time, and then we can move on."

rsiler@sltrib.com