The Weekly Run is The Salt Lake Tribune’s weekly newsletter on all things Utah Jazz. Subscribe here.

New Orleans • While many Jazz fans came away from Monday’s shocking loss to the lottery-bound Pelicans feeling discouraged — and why shouldn’t they, considering how outsized every outcome seems during the stretch run of the regular season? — some others are choosing to see the silver lining in it.

No less than Dan Devine of the nationally-known website The Ringer has seen what the Jazz have done in 2019 (including that Pelicans loss), and wonders in an article out Wednesday morning, “Are the Utah Jazz the NBA’s sleeping giant?”

While he doesn’t outright dismiss the defeat to New Orleans as nothing (“It’s hard to shake the images of [Jrue] Holiday putting the clamps on Donovan Mitchell, Julius Randle bulldozing Rudy Gobert, and the sub-.500 Pelicans having their way with playoff-bound Utah”), he also argues that the game’s first 40 minutes highlighted “a ball-sharing, floor-spacing, 3-point-bombing attack,” and that “The larger sample should carry more weight than the smaller one — especially because the former is very much of a piece with how the Jazz have played for the better part of two months.”

Among Devine’s reasons for optimism about the Jazz: The fourth-best winning percentage in the NBA since Jan. 1; Utah ranking “second in the league in points allowed per non-garbage-time possession”; the Jazz’s big uptick in 3-point makes; and playing with extra shooters freeing Donovan to attack the rim more often and get to the free-throw line.

Given all of that, plus a soft closing stretch to the season, which begins tonight with a rematch against the Pelicans at the Smoothie King Center, Devine is encouraged by the Jazz’s chances, though he does leave off with one parting warning: “That’s the thing about winnable games: You’ve still got to, y’know, win them.”

In case you missed it …

Andy B. Larsen — feel free to call him Blarsen; everyone does it! — and I are always busy trying to bring you as much Jazz coverage as possible. We’re both at every home game, and one of us is at every road game (I’ll have some beignets for you today!). We know you crave tons of Jazz coverage, but we also know that, because the Jazz aren’t your job, you might not get to everything you meant to. Here’s another chance, though. Among the things Blarsen and I have written in the past week:

Yesterday, I delved into what made the Pellies so good late against the Jazz, plus some of the Anthony Davis drama, while Andy wrote about Jake Lindsey, the son of Jazz GM Dennis Lindsey, is ending his collegiate hoops career because of a rare disease. Columnist Gordon Monson was at the Pelicans game and wondered if the result was an aberration or a troubling sign of things to come.

Beyond that, we tackled Donovan’s Western Conference Player of the Week award; the fact that the Jazz are favored in almost every game left on their schedule; the subplot of that win against the Bucks, in which Rudy played poorly, Derrick Favors was great, and Rudy was genuinely happy that Fav played over him down the stretch; how Quin Snyder will take a play from literally anyone — even the pizza delivery guy — if he thinks it’ll work; and, as mentioned before, how Donovan is getting to the line more than ever now.

Other people’s stuff

As you saw from that Ringer story, there are plenty of other people writing interesting stuff about the Jazz, too. Here’s a few more things that might tickle your fancy:

• A bunch of former Jazz players — Darrell Griffith, Mark Eaton, Memo Okur, Bryon (don’t call him Byron!) Russell, Thurl Bailey, and Corey Crowder — got together last week to swap stories about the team. You can get the “Alumni Roundtable” at utahjazz.com.

• Mychal Lowman of slcdunk.com wrote about how the Jazz’s bench has the best +/- of any team since the All-Star break, in spite of limited minutes.

• If you’re a fan of hip-hop music, Eric Woodyard of the Deseret News wrote about how Donovan Mitchell is exposing his fans to someone he himself is a fan of, rapper Dave East.

• If you’re a fan of video games, KSL.com’s Ryan Miller wrote about how Jazz Gaming picked Spencer “Ria” Wyman from Washington with the No. 1 pick of the NBA2K League draft.

• And, just because it’s funny to me, you should check out the Instagram stories of Rudy and Jae, in which they offer their respective perspectives of the latter acting as a rideshare driver for the former. (Georges Niang is also involved.)

Up next

Three of the Jazz’s four games in the next week or so come on the road. Tonight, as previously mentioned, they’re in New Orleans vs. the Pelicans. This two-game trip also includes a Friday stop in Memphis, against the very-new-look Grizzlies. On Monday, they’re back at Vivint Arena to try to salvage something from the season series against the Thunder, and next Wednesday, it’s a road one-off in Phoenix against the Suns.