Memphis, Tenn. • The Utah Jazz have had plenty of losses to be angry about this season.
Friday’s wasn’t one of them.
Sure, their 119-109 defeat at the hands of the Grizzlies was the Jazz’s fourth loss in a row and the 10th in their past 12 games. And OK, even on its own standalone merits, it featured plenty of problems — the turnovers in the non-Mike Conley minutes … the iffy transition defense that yielded 29 fast-break points … the combined 4-for-22 3-point shooting from Bojan Bogdanovic, Joe Ingles, and Jordan Clarkson (vs. everyone else’s 13 of 24).
But when you consider that they had no Rudy Gobert and no Donovan Mitchell, that Conley was limited to 30ish minutes due to a season-long restriction, that Bogdanovic is playing with a fractured finger, and that, oh yeah, they were taking on a very good Grizzlies team, well, being upset about this loss in particular is perhaps an indication of a lack of perspective.
“You’re not going to go into the locker room and see a bunch of smiles, but you’d probably see some guys that have some pride and can feel good at least about the way they’re competing,” coach Quin Snyder noted afterward. “Over the long term, that’s what wins.”
He’s been preaching a lot of long-term thinking lately. “I just want us to be playing our best at the right time” has become something akin to a mantra for him recently.
If nothing else, it’s a bit of positivity to latch onto amidst all the short-term drama.
Then again, there really wasn’t any drama Friday night at FedEx Forum, much to the consternation of some.
“Things aren’t falling for us, things aren’t going our way, it’s not as pretty as it once was, but I was really proud of our effort today,” said Conley.
“We played well, we competed, we had a chance to win,” added Clarkson.
“We just gotta get a few more stops and rebound the basketball, and I think we’ll be straight,” Danuel House joined in.
“We competed our tails off. … We battled. Four-point game, three minutes to go — we’re right there. We were right there. And that was after being down double digits at various times. These guys are leaving it out there,” observed Snyder.
“You know, no moral victories, but we feel like we’re getting closer and closer to being back to who we are,” concluded Conley.
That sure sounds like a whole mess of moral victory.
Where’s the urgency? Why the lowered standards?
Turns out, sometimes a loss is just a loss. It doesn’t always need to be a microcosm of a team that clearly doesn’t care, of a season that’s already wasted and lost, of hopes and dreams crushed under the oppressive weight of impending doom.
On the contrary, this loss, this one in Memphis, actually produced some signs of encouragement, as far as the Jazz were concerned.
“The last week or so, we’re playing with a much more urgent mindset, we’re playing harder, guys are giving everything they’ve got with who we have out there,” said Conley.
“We cut it down to [four] tonight late — that gave us the opportunity to win,” added Clarkson. “We’re all calling each other out right now in terms of what we need to do and what we need to get better at. But I think we’re right there.”
“We played like a hungry team. That’s who we need to be — we need to be a hungry team,” concluded Snyder. “… We were scrambling and playing hard. It wasn’t perfect, but … When you play hard, good things happen. When you play unselfish, good things happen. And that’s what we did.”
The coach started reeling off players on the team who he saw “raise their level” against the Grizzlies — House, Rudy Gay, Hassan Whiteside. He added that Trent Forrest did the same the other night against Phoenix.
Actually, he added, he’s seen a lot of that from a lot of players throughout this four-game losing streak, as the competitiveness has become infectious. Then he noted that Utah needs everyone on the team to do that, including Mitchell and Gobert when they return. “Let’s take it up another notch. … Let’s be stronger. Maybe that’s the answer.”)
The Jazz’s point guard had a similar sentiment. Three weeks ago, he explained, the team was pretty “lackadaisical,” and the Jazz were “losing interest in some parts of the game.” And between all the COVID-19 diagnoses, and concussions, and various other injuries, they’ve certainly had a lot go wrong. Hard to argue anything else, given the results.
And yet, he explained: “Honestly, I’ve been really proud of the guys that have been able to go out there.”
Proud? Why?
Because in spite of the mounting losses, he believes the Jazz are this close to a breakthrough. That soon enough, the open shots that are missing will be dropping. That they’ll reach the proper level of communication and see their defensive breakdowns dissipate.
“Things are going to start falling our way,” he said.
Clarkson, the free spirit and unique thinker, was apprised of Conley’s comments and asked why there is reason for hopefulness in this moment.
“It’s a crazy little flow to the season right now in terms of things going on and us losing these games — 2-10 in the last month,” he said. “It’s gonna take a little second, but once we get rolling again, we’re gonna rack up a bunch of wins and be right where we want to going into the playoffs.”
