Music stops for Jazz duo _ Stockton and Malone.(Chicago Tribune)

Byline: Sam Smith

CHICAGO _ Shaq and Kobe. There they go again, making it look so easy with that 30-point romp Tuesday over the once highly regarded Minnesota Timberwolves. That being early Sunday when the Timberwolves were highly regarded.

What a duo. Perhaps becoming immortal, like Anthony and Cleopatra, Spade and Archer, Koufax and Drysdale, Tracy and Hepburn, Simon and Garfunkel, West and Baylor, Kramden and Norton, Spahn and Sain, Magic and Kareem, Martin and Lewis, Lucy and Ricky and Stockton and Malone.

Ah, yes, Stockton and Malone. What a duo, as they, too, pass into history. Their remarkable run together ended late Wednesday night in Sacramento with the playoff elimination of their Utah Jazz, the last pick-and-roll for the greatest practitioners of the simple art in the history of pro basketball.

John Stockton and Karl Malone didn't invent the simple basketball ballet of men and ball moving as one. But none did it better and for longer, two men over 18 years as familiar with each other's moves as Fred and Ginger, as deft in their timing as Abbott and Costello, as efficient as Unitas and Berry, as tragic as Romeo and Juliet. Though only to some. Karl Malone and John Stockton never will win an NBA championship together. But they were winners.

Their pick-and-roll will be recalled in NBA history like a Michael Jordan dunk, or a Magic Johnson pass or a Bill Russell block. Nobody will quite do it like they did. They were unique and special, glorious and gracious, masterful and mesmerizing.

It's the end of an era, really.