After the blue lights during the pregame intros had been turned off, after the sweat had been mopped off the floor, after the emotions of the fans here in Sacramento's Arco Arena had been tossed into a blender for 48 minutes on Saturday, after the Kings and Jazz had sumo wrestled and belly-bronced and played Twister with each other through an entire playoff game, flopping and scrumming and colliding, after the Jazz failed to tie the score with two clear shot attempts in the closing seconds, including a three-pointer by John Stockton that dipped into the throat of the basket and then swirled around the rim like a Spalding on a string, after the Jazz had lost 89-86 when another Stockton three barely missed the bottom of the net as time finally huffed and puffed and sputtered out, something was restored to the losers.
Breath. (Whew, take a few.)
And renewal.
And confidence.
And hope.
Take anything within grasp.
Most of the Jazz players contradicted themselves after Game 1 of their first-round playoff series with the Kings. They said they could find little promise in a loss, that moral victories are for chumps and losers, not them. But then they acknowledged, in some cases unwittingly, that, as Karl Malone put it, "We know we can play with these guys."
That, indeed, was a revelation.
Malone, who had 25 points and nine rebounds, said a few paragraphs in front of that statement, though, in the postgame locker room that "there's no consolation in being close. You still have to go out and win. What do we learn from a game like this? Nothing."
Stockton (10 points, 12 assists) echoed those sentiments, only more succinctly, saying: "You can't find a lot of satisfaction when you lose . . . it's contagious."
The stone-faced veteran paused to consider the depth of disdain he had for the miserable thought.
And then he added, sneering with even more contempt: "We just have to go back to work tomorrow."
Stockton wasn't giving an inch.
But his team grubbed what it could by way of respectability, stopping just short of a win, in Game 1.
And, truth be told, there were things other than victory to take from the experience.
Coming in, the Jazz were dead meat, and everybody knew it.
The Kings had beaten them in all four meetings -- by an embarrassing 23-point average -- during the regular season. Nobody was picking them in this series, and many NBA observers figured it to be a sweep. How else could they figure it?

The Jazz had stunk against Sacramento, too frequently cowering in those huge beatings. They barely rated as speed bumps to the Kings' high-powered roadster in this matchup, even in the minds of their own fans.
And that's exactly the way it went for the first 11 minutes on Saturday. Sacramento jumped to a 10-point lead midway through the first quarter, laughing as they ran the break.
But then something strange happened.
The Jazz fought back.
They rebounded.
Figuratively, and literally.
They scrapped and they hustled.
They scored 19 second-chance points to Sacramento's one.
And the bench elevated its lowly self, ultimately outboarding and outscoring the Kings' reserves, 25 rebounds to two and 41 points to 11.
Buoyed by a lineup including Rusty LaRue, Greg Ostertag, Scott Padgett, Quincy Lewis and Donyell Marshall, the Jazz clawed their way back, fighting crowd noise that sounded like a fleet of 747s taking off, and working harder than the Kings in the early going. They took the lead with just over seven minutes left in the second period, and went toe-to-toe and cheek-to-cheek with the Kings the rest of the way.
It looked like one part war and one part prom.
Bodies were repeatedly clumped together, sometimes in earnest combat and sometimes in faux battle. One encounter featured Chris Webber and Jarron Collins waltzing and bear-hugging at the Jazz's end, conjuring, maybe for the first time in an NBA playoff game, lyrics from the otherwise forgettable Captain and Tenille song, "Muskrat Love."
They whirled and they twirled and they tangled.
Ugh.
The score stayed close, too.
A handful of points separated the teams right down to the last sequence, when the Jazz had three good looks at three-pointers that would have either given them the lead or tied the game in the final moments.
None of them went in.
None of them won the game.
But the Jazz showed desire and pluck in falling, a first against the Kings this season. And then pretended not to be satisfied with mustering a good fight on a floor where the favorite had nearly been unbeatable, by any team.
"We're professionals," said Marshall, who had 11 points and 10 rebounds. "There's no such thing as a moral victory in the playoffs. But we did find some confidence."
A valuable discovery.
"We gave it our best shot," Ostertag said. "That's what we have to do every game. We know we got blown out by them in the games before. Now, after this, we know we can beat them."
At least, they think they know.
"This franchise has won too many games in the past, has gone too far in the playoffs before, to start talking about moral victories now," said Padgett, who made four of five shots. "That moral-victory thing is B.S."
Perhaps.
Still, the only things that can be said of the Jazz in these playoffs are:
They showed some mettle.
They did not embarrass themselves.
They caught their breath with honor.
It may not be much, it may be -- as Malone said, "nothing" -- but, after Game 1, it's all the Jazz are left with.