The Jazz had given up a large lead and were trailing Memphis by four points deep into the third quarter Friday night. Coming in the wake of a bad loss to Boston, one that general manager Dennis Lindsey called “painful,” it was a dire situation in a game they could not lose, not if they had serious intentions of making the playoffs.
It was, as former Jazz player Greg Foster once so eloquently termed it, “nut-cutting time.”
The Jazz went ahead and cut those nuts, a phrase that sounds different, more crass than its actual origins. It refers to the significant moment when the cutting off or away of nuts from bolts that have been immobilized by rust to the point where there is no other way to remove them is necessary.
In other words, it was time for the Jazz to up their performance.
They had to calm their nerves, clear their brains and raise their games.
And they did exactly that, winning by the count of 107-97.
Quin Snyder knows that such circumstances are good for his players, no matter how hard they are on his own well-being.
“It’s something we can learn from,” he said.
Lindsey said Snyder has “appropriately called these last 20 games a playoff season for us. … Being able to handle our nerves, minute by minute, quarter by quarter, half by half, game by game, these last set of games are going to be really important to move into that second season.”
The Jazz now are in their final six-game regular-season stretch — with four teams in the West in positions five through eight tied with 33 losses entering Saturday, including the Jazz, all of whom are battling to the end. Only one game separates the last five teams.
That’s as tight as a stretch run can get.
A stretch of tightness that can advance the Jazz — individually and as a team — not just in this season, but in their overall evolution moving forward.
“It’s a combination” of mental and physical, Lindsey said. “… Four parts mental to one part physical. There’s a lot of mind, body and spirit that are all tied together. We’re dealing with human beings and pressure and expectations and wanting to do good. Even when you are trying your best, your hardest, many times you can get in your own way. Being able to relax and have great competitive poise with intensity and having that balance, that’s what teams have to go through.”
Which is to say this version of the Jazz is finding its way through the fog that pressure creates. That’s part of the reason the Jazz look so proficient on some nights and struggle to gather themselves on others.
Recent home losses to Atlanta and a compromised Celtics team are prime examples. The fact that the Jazz lurched again, here and there, against a 21-win Grizzlies team underscored the notion.
Still, as Snyder said afterward, “The strength of our team is … our team. That was a team win.”
Everybody’s in the pool, then, thrashing on through.
The Jazz are adapting as they go to that compressed condition, so different than games in November. Winning no longer is optional.
The Jazz distanced themselves from Memphis in Friday night’s final six minutes with a big shot from Donovan Mitchell, a number of terrific plays by Dante Exum, a slam dunk in transition from Joe Ingles and a whole lot of clutch plays at the defensive and offensive ends. It hurt them not one bit that Marc Gasol, who torched them for 28 points over the first three quarters, did not play in the fourth.
The Jazz happily would take victory, any which way.
A physiologist once informed me that the human body — yours, mine, all the Jazz players’ — functions and reacts differently under pressure than it does otherwise. Just like your mind and body react differently when you’re driving in the fast lane under regular driving conditions and when you’re speeding along and a sofa suddenly tumbles out of a pickup truck directly in front of your car.
Endorphins fire off from your brain and cascade down the central nervous system straight through to the synapses in various body parts — and a bunch of other anatomical stuff I have no real clue about. Bottom line, you have to learn how to react when under duress, when your actions carry increased meaning with them.
It’s not a matter of greater effort, it’s more a matter of staying calm and controlled, staying, as sports psychologists preach, in the present.
“You want to win so bad,” Ingles said, “sometimes you start overthinking it, over-trying.”
The Jazz, of course, train for such conditions. They talk about them, they work through them, they groove their moves, bumping and skidding — their loss against Boston — at times, and fighting through them — the bounce-back win over Memphis — at others.
“We’re just focusing on one game at a time,” said Royce O’Neale. “Just focusing on ourselves.”
It’s a cliche because it is truth.
The goal is to thrive as the nuts are cut, when the Jazz face, one game, one cut at a time, the Timberwolves, Lakers, Clippers, Lakers again, Warriors and Blazers.
Gordon Monson hosts “The Big Show” weekdays from 3 to 7 p.m. on 97.5 FM and 1280 AM The Zone.
Follow @GordonMonson
