On Monday night, the San Antonio Spurs defeated the Utah Jazz 126-122 in a game the Jazz trailed for almost the entire 48 minutes.
As a result, Utah begins a three-game road trip with a disappointing defeat. This was a game many thought the Jazz would find a way to win, and they didn’t. And in this loss, the old demons of defense in the half court and transition defense once again reared their ugly heads.
What are the prevailing thoughts about Monday night? What went wrong for the Jazz? An explanation is below.
Another one dropped
The Jazz aren’t good enough to just show up and beat teams that, on paper, are inferior to them. And that’s why the Jazz have lost a surprising number of games this season to teams that fit the description. They’ve dropped one to the Houston Rockets. They’ve dropped one to the Detroit Pistons. They’ve dropped one to the Washington Wizards, who were playing without Bradley Beal. They’ve dropped one to the Chicago Bulls. And now they’ve dropped one to the San Antonio Spurs.
All of those teams are currently out of the NBA’s playoff picture. All of those teams are at least five games under .500. The Jazz have lost three combined games to the teams with the three worst records in the NBA.
Considering that the Jazz are 19-17, still firmly in the NBA’s play-in picture, and still above .500 almost halfway through the schedule, it’s tough not to lament some of these losses. It’s OK to lose one or two such games because bad losses are going to happen in the course of an 82-game schedule. But the Jazz are making this a troubling trend, which becomes a bit more disturbing now that there is a clear path to the playoffs for this team.
It’s probably something to look at in this manner.
The four top teams in the Western Conference are the Denver Nuggets, New Orleans Pelicans, Memphis Grizzlies and Los Angeles Clippers. The Jazz have beaten Denver once. They beat New Orleans three times without a loss. They have beaten Memphis twice without a loss. They beat the Clippers twice against one defeat. Utah is 8-3 against the top of the Western Conference. The Jazz have won eight of 11 games against the teams that would have home-court advantage as of today in the first round of the playoffs.
Why?
It can be human nature not to play your best against the teams that don’t play the best basketball, and that’s some of what Monday night was about. The Jazz played about the last six minutes with urgency, and when they did, they shaved an almost 20-point deficit down to almost a single possession. The rest of the game defensively featured a highway to the rim, an affinity for fouling too much, a lack of rebounding and a lack of keeping the basketball in front of them off a live dribble.
Utah’s Collin Sexton shoots against the Spurs’ Zach Collins on Monday. (Darren Abate/Associated Press)
Offensively, most of Monday night for Utah was played without much energy. It was played without Utah’s normal penchant for moving the basketball, which explains why the Jazz notched just 20 assists on 39 made baskets when that number for a game is usually much closer to 30. The lethargy of it all through almost 3 1/2 quarters was easy to see. Credit the Jazz for once again showing real resilience and not quitting Monday when they easily could have raised a white flag. But they are a better team than the Spurs. And if the Jazz have previously done so much work against a difficult schedule, then they should probably go ahead and win the games they are supposed to win. The outlook on the season, if nothing else, is different for the Jazz as they head into the New Year. The Western Conference is wide open. There is little separation between the fifth and 10th spot in the standings, and the Jazz have a chance to make the playoffs.
What’s missing?
One of the reasons the Jazz have these kinds of games: The margin for error is just smaller than it is for other teams. That’s probably what separates the tiers in the league. For instance, the Clippers on Monday night went to Detroit to play the Pistons. They built a big advantage in the first half, lost that advantage in the second half, then trailed by double digits deep into the fourth quarter. And then they turned the jets on, rallied, sent the game into overtime and won going away.
The Clippers played with their food Monday night, and they got away with it because they are deep and ultra-talented at so many spots on the floor. The Jazz played with a similar lack of urgency against the Spurs, and they paid for it. The margin for error is smaller. For Utah to win, it needs to operate at near-peak efficiency. So, what’s human nature for such things? Nobody is going to ever acknowledge this, but it’s easier to be excited to play against Zion Williamson and the New Orleans Pelicans than it is to be excited to play against Keldon Johnson and the San Antonio Spurs, on the day after Christmas and in an empty arena.
There might not be a remedy to this.
If this were college basketball, with a season that’s 30 games and you play three times a week at most, a head coach could lean on a team to be excited every time it takes the floor. Alas, this is the NBA, which is a marathon and not a sprint. It’s 82 games and not 30. As many as five games in seven nights, and no time to take between games. There was always a chance that the Jazz would come out flat Monday night. The question was whether they would be able to overcome it. They couldn’t.
The status quo
Utah forward Lauri Markkanen scored 32 points Monday and grabbed 12 rebounds. Earlier in the season, such a stat line would have been met with a lot more conversation than it generated against the Spurs.
This goes to show how good Markkanen has been this season. Not many blinked at how well he played because he has been so consistent. Earlier in the season, the thought was to take a wait-and-see approach to how well he had been playing. Was he having a career-best start? Sure. Was there staying power? That’s a question that needs to be answered, and only time and more games would answer it.
Markkanen is Utah’s best player — of that there is now no question. He’s an All-Star Game candidate as a reserve. His consistency has stood out this season. He’s producing at a high level every night, and he’s doing so even though teams put him at the very top of their scouting reports. He’s producing with remarkable efficiency, and he’s doing so no matter who is in or out of the lineup around him.
He’s Utah’s biggest win this season because this is a win that transcends whatever result the season brings. The Jazz know they have a high-level player in Markkanen. They know that Markkanen is someone they can build around. It will be interesting to see if he garners his first All-Star Game appearance in February. The Western Conference, as everyone knows, is deep in talent. He will have stiff competition.
But if there was a question before the season as to whether Utah’s next All-Star was currently on the roster, the answer would have been widely no. And the fact that this question now warrants serious consideration is a huge win for the Jazz.
(Top photo of Utah’s Jordan Clarkson diving for the ball: Darren Abate / Associated Press)
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