Roughly 14 hours after the Utah Jazz fell to the Los Angeles Clippers in Game 5 of their Western Conference semifinal series at Vivint Arena, Quin Snyder offered an optimistic tone when discussing his team on Thursday afternoon.
The Jazz trail the Clippers, 3-2, with Game 6 set for a full-capacity Staples Center on Friday night. Mike Conley is hurt, Donovan Mitchell is banged up, Paul George looked like “Playoff P” in Game 5, but still, Snyder did not sound like someone ready to throw in the proverbial towel.
“I think we are resilient,” Snyder said Thursday on a Zoom call with the media. “You can’t help but feel positive about our group, even when you’re faced with a situation like we have, coming off a loss and heading into a Game 6 that’s a win-or-go-home-type game for us, so it’s something our guys have responded to.”
Snyder is correct, the Jazz have responded to adversity, namely Conley missing 21 games this season due to injury, and Mitchell missing 16 of his own, plus the playoff opener against the Grizzlies, with a sprained right ankle. In spite of it all, the Jazz had the best record in the NBA, a top-5 offense in terms of points per game, and a top-3 defense in terms of points allowed per game.
That was the regular season, though. This is a much different, more-dire situation, a playoff series in which the Jazz trail, with one more loss sending them into an unexpectedly-early offseason.
Conley has not played a second of this series vs. the Clippers, still dealing with a strained right hamstring injury suffered in Game 5 of the last series vs. the Grizzlies.
JAZZ-CLIPPERS SERIES SCHEDULE
Clippers lead, 3-2
Game 1 • Jazz 112, Clippers 109
Game 2 • Jazz 117, Clippers 111
Game 3 • Clippers 132, Jazz 106
Game 4 • Clippers 118, Jazz 104
Game 5 • Clippers 119, Jazz 111
Game 6 • Friday, 8 p.m., at Los Angeles, ESPN
Game 7* • Sunday, 1:30 p.m., at Utah, ABC
* — if necessary
At times, Mitchell has been exceptional vs. the Clippers despite his balky right ankle, but his limitations were glaring on Wednesday evening. He scored 21 points, but shot 6-for-19 from the field, 4-for-14 from 3-point range, and was noticeably limping up and down the floor. Mitchell will play in Game 6, but he admittedly isn’t 100%, nor will he be for the duration of this playoff run.
“We can’t sit here and sulk,” Mitchell said late Wednesday night. “The series is not over, we have a lot left to give, a lot of juice left to give. We just have to go out there with a level of desperation we’ve never played with before. Otherwise, we’ll be home.”
A significant piece of the fascination in the Clippers winning Game 5 is that Kawhi Leonard missed it with a reported sprained right knee, suffered two days prior in Game 4. With Leonard unavailable, that pushed George under a bright spotlight, and he responded with 37 points, 16 rebounds, five assists and a reminder that when he gets it cranked up, he is one of the league’s elite two-way specimens.
George is averaging 29.2 points, 9.6 rebounds and 4.4 assists across the five games of this series. In the last three games, all Clippers wins, George has been monstrous, going for 31 points twice before the 37-point outburst on Wednesday.
“I’m incredibly positive about our guys, their competitiveness, their urgency,” said Snyder, who is 19-25 in 44 career playoff games with the Jazz. “I think our execution needs to be more consistent in a number of areas, and that’s the thing where our focus needs to lie. We know what’s at stake. We feel good, feel confident that we’ll head down there and do everything we can do to bring the series back here.”
Added Rudy Gobert on Wednesday night: “We’ve gotta win. We have to get out there and do anything we can to win the game. We know that we’ll need a better collective effort than we had [Wednesday]. Hopefully, we have some more urgency in the next game, because if we lose, we’re going home. We have to get our minds right, get a win over there, and see what happens.”
A year after blowing a 3-1 conference-semifinals lead to the Denver Nuggets in the Orlando Bubble, the Clippers are bidding to advance to the Western Conference Finals for the first time in their 51st season of existence. The Jazz have not been to the Western Conference Finals since 2007.
