The Utah Jazz aren’t an inept organization.
They haven’t endured dysfunctional ownership situations or suffered in the face of incompetent management — not for long periods of time, at any rate.
Yes, Ty Corbin coached this team for a period of time and destroyed a lot of stomach linings in Salt Lake City, but decades of Frank Layden and Jerry Sloan — and Larry Miller in the owner’s seat — made the Jazz one of the more laudably stable organizations in the NBA and American sports.
The Jazz are not and have not been a model of what’s wrong with the NBA. They’ve endured periods of struggle, but they’ve generally lived on the opposite side of the tracks relative to the New York Knicks, Sacramento Kings, and other organizations which have a reputation for failing to get out of their own way.
In recent years, the Jazz have assembled the young pieces of what could become one of the league’s more impressive rosters. Unlike the Houston Rockets, making the playoffs was not a face-saving essential for the Jazz this season. This organization — limited by injuries to several players, starting with guard Dante Exum — is pointing to the future, whereas the Rockets are immersed in a present-tense fight for survival and respectability. Even if the Rockets do make the playoffs, it should be noted, a likely four-game sweep at the hands of the Golden State Warriors will make the 2016 season a complete humiliation in Houston. The Jazz never did labor under this burden; the cost of failing to make the playoffs won’t be embarrassment, just the reality of not getting a chance to taste postseason basketball, which would in turn enable this young roster to develop at a faster pace.
Nevertheless, the Jazz didn’t have to clear that high a bar in order to make the playoffs. As noted by Matt Yoder at The Comeback, the 8 seed in the East will have a better record than the 8 seed in the West for the first time this century. Moreover, it’s not as though the Rockets have been impressive in this closing stretch. They lost at home to the cratering Bulls and the lowly Phoenix Suns. They still have to beat Sacramento on Wednesday to nail down a berth.
Houston’s continued frailty created a situation in which Utah merely needed to win three of its last four games. Two were roadies against bad teams, Denver and (Wednesday) the Los Angeles Lakers. The other two games were against decent but limited teams with very little depth: a Los Angeles Clipper team resting its main big-name starters, and a Dallas team which had somehow dragged itself through the final weeks of the season with a scrap-heap collection of a supporting cast surrounding Dirk Nowitzki.
The Jazz’s best path was ultimately to beat Denver and the Lakers, and to split the two home games against the Clips and Mavs.
Friday, the Jazz were torched not be CP3 or Blake Griffin or DeAndre Jordan, but by Cole Aldrich, who threw down a double-double — 21 and 18 — plus 5 steals. They couldn’t beat the Clippers’ B team.
No matter. The Jazz still controlled their fate heading into Monday night’s home finale against the Mavericks. Coach Quin Snyder’s team had a chance to stop Dirk, the man who infamously alluded to the “city of Utah” earlier in his NBA career. Everything was still on the table for this generally competent and responsible organization.
Then the ghosts of the past — and some wicked plot twists — rushed to the surface in Salt Lake City.
Rudy Gobert started this game (as shown in the photo to the left), but he didn’t finish it. An injury suffered before halftime took him out of the mix. With Derrick Favors being limited in his ability to explode off the floor, the Jazz lost the interior defense and rim protection which makes their best incarnation legitimately formidable. That was one way in which the basketball gods struck down the Jazz on Monday.
Then came the larger realities from the Dallas side of the equation.
The Jazz — as an organization and a family, not just the 2016 team — have been lamenting the very sad news that the best coach in franchise history, Jerry Sloan, recently disclosed that he had Parkinson’s disease. In a cruel twist, the man who authored the series of events which pushed Sloan out of his coaching chair in Salt Lake City — Deron Williams — was on the floor for Dallas on Monday, having returned to the Mavericks’ lineup after sitting out several games with an injury.
Accompanying Williams in the Dallas lineup was Wesley Matthews, another former Jazzman who had gone to Portland before re-emerging in Big D. Monday night, Matthews tossed in multiple “are you KIDDING ME?!” shots to blunt each and every rally the Jazz made in the final third of this 48-minute drama.
Dirk was Dirk, using the pick-and-roll to occupy the attention of the Jazz’s defense in ways which freed up his teammates. That and the Gobert and Favors injuries certainly contributed to the Mavericks’ playoff-clinching road win. Yet, strictly from a Jazz-centric perspective, seeing D-Will and Matthews — players who helped the organization win playoff series under Jerry Sloan — contribute to this immensely significant defeat represents yet another major gut punch in the history of the Utah franchise.
It’s not June 14, 1998, with Michael Jordan shoving Bryon Russell in Game 6.
It’s not the Game 7 loss to the Lakers in 1988 or to the Sonics in 1996.
It’s still a nasty twist of the knife.
This competent organization — the antithesis of the insanity unfolding in Sacramento or the twin soap operas consuming the Knicks and Lakers — nevertheless can’t catch a break. Its roster and coaching were just weak enough to lose multiple home games against opponents which were also stretched thin.
It could well be that this young core will learn from 2016 in due time. That said, this team wanted a shot at the Warriors in the playoffs, a chance to grow within the context of the postseason.
As long as Houston beats Sacramento at home on Wednesday, that won’t happen. The abrupt turn of events is jarring for any Jazz fan:
On March 29th, 538 gave the Jazz a 95% chance of making the playoffs and the Mavericks a 27% chance. Massive swing in just two weeks.
— Danny Leroux (@DannyLeroux) April 12, 2016
What’s one more gut punch, right?
