Why would you believe in the Jazz?
I mean, heck: from a sheer tactical standpoint, what happened to the Jazz tonight is pretty much what happened in their last matchup against the Lakers a couple of weeks ago. It’s also exactly what happened in that Game 6: The opposing team went small. Against that, the Jazz’s offense got pretty stagnant and unconfident. Like a weak fencer, they played offense with helpless jabs. The defense was again a tire fire, absolutely baffling at times.
Okay, sure, you can make all sorts of excuses. Rudy Gobert wasn’t playing at 100%. Mike Conley’s tired. Rudy Gay, the Jazz’s big offseason signing that was supposed to help with all of this, wasn’t playing.
I’m not buying it, at this point. There have been too many key failures in the last few seasons. The Jazz lost a 3-1 series lead to the Nuggets. They lost a 2-0 lead to the Clippers, and the aforementioned Game 6 happened after the opposing team lost their best player to injury. During their best regular season in decades, they went a pretty standard 14-10 against top-10 competition; this year, they’re 8-10. And that ignores losses like tonight’s, against an absolutely woeful team that has lost seven of nine and lost their second-best player to injury before halftime.
The trade deadline has come and gone, and their only acquisition was two players well out of the rotation. I have zero hope for them in the buyout market — if players didn’t come last year, when they had the literal best record in the league, why would they join the West’s No. 4 team?
In the playoffs (beyond the first round, anyway), they’re going to go up against All-Star starters; first and second team All-NBA players. The only way that the Jazz work is if they have a more team cohesion than their opponents. But when they’re this mentally weak, they have no prayer of doing anything notable in the postseason.
Their only hope is to change their mentality. Otherwise, they’re toast.
