Three thoughts on the Utah Jazz’s 104-102 loss to the San Antonio Spurs from Salt Lake Tribune Jazz beat writer Andy Larsen.
1. The biggest play of the game
The Jazz had a 15-point lead with 10 minutes left to go in this game. Then they lost it.
This is not a new story, we’ve seen it countless times this season. Tonight, there was one play that encapsulated the Jazz’s lack of quality play, the lack of effort, and the lack of focus down the stretch. The play was cited by Jazz head coach Quin Snyder numerous times in his postgame press conference: a free-throw rebound allowed to Keldon Johnson that made the game a 2-possession one late, a deficit they had little chance to come back from.
It simply cannot be this easy. Keldon Johnson is 6-5, 220 lbs. Royce O’Neale is 6-4, 226 lbs. Johnson cannot move O’Neale under the basket so easily on a critical possession. For him to allow it is, frankly, soft.
It’s funny, because it’s a physical kind of soft: O’Neale seems to like the high-contact bad play over the smarter, easier play. Like, boxing out Johnson was the move, not wrestling under the basket with his arms. Or here, explain why O’Neale actually changes direction on his screen here to make sure he runs into Poeltl.
But I think it’s fair to ask why O’Neale was in those situations at all. Dejounte Murray scored 15 points in the fourth quarter, with O’Neale guarding a lot of those possessions. Why was he still the choice late, and why wasn’t an adjustment made? And of course, when you need a free-throw rebound, why not just put in the gigantic Hassan Whiteside in the game? (All I can think: Maybe Snyder wanted to save his timeouts, and run after getting the ball back? But that’s counting chickens before they hatch.)
And then, of course, you have to think — well, Bojan Bogdanovic was out of the game, so who else should Snyder have played down the stretch? Clarkson? He’s obviously not the rebounding and defense answer. Rudy Gay? He hasn’t looked brilliant this season, either. Eric Paschall, maybe? But he’s a secretly bad rebounder: O’Neale outrebounds him on a 36-minute basis, even though Paschall’s played a few minutes at center this season. The Jazz’s front office, after everything, still haven’t gotten them the kind of defender/rebounder that’s really obviously the right option to play in that circumstance.
In other words, I’m blaming nearly everyone: front office, coaches, and players are at fault for this loss.
2. Donovan Mitchell tries to take responsibility
Who I wasn’t blaming is Donovan Mitchell, who tried to take responsibility after the game, saying “I put this one on me. As the leader of the team, I shouldn’t have let this happen.”
I didn’t think it was Mitchell’s fault. On a night when Conley was completely poor offensively, no Bogdanovic, and the Spurs hyper-focused on the All-Star guard, he scored well enough and, impressively to me, tried to find his teammates more often than not. I think he could have had double-digit assists in this game, if it weren’t for some unfortunate missed shots.
Even his bad moments were defensible, in my opinion. To me? This is a foul: Vassell is way out of legal guarding position when the contact occurs.
Maybe there’s no whistle because Mitchell largely dribbled out the clock before that, but still, it should be called, in my opinion.
I did think it was interesting that Mitchell tried to take that on responsibility tonight. The cynic in me, which grows by the day, might suggest that he was taking on that responsibility because it was his friend, O’Neale, shouldering that blame before he stepped in. After the game, O’Neale was getting a lot of criticism online.
It also might be good leadership for Mitchell to attempt to shoulder the responsibility. But the fact is that the loss was pretty clearly not Mitchell’s fault, and so the attempt is pretty transparent, which does hinder its effectiveness. At least to me, anyway. Maybe it works in the locker room, I truly don’t know.
The other issue is that, to be honest, I sometimes think Mitchell shoulders too much responsibility as is. I understand that that’s the way NBA narratives are written, that team wins and losses are assigned nearly solely to the one or two best players on any given team. But that’s just not at all reflective of reality: this loss isn’t Mitchell’s fault, just as the Clippers series wasn’t his fault either.
And I fear that the shouldering of responsibility will take away Mitchell’s joy of the game, which is one of the best things about watching him play. Truthfully, I think it already has, a little.
3. Gregg Popovich setting the all-time record in wins
Sometimes, it feels as if the Jazz exist primarily as a backdrop for the greatness of others. Karl Malone and John Stockton would probably disagree with that, but there is certainly a track record here: Kareem Abdul-Jabbar set the NBA’s all-time scoring record against the Jazz, now Popovich has set the league’s all-time coaching win record. Michael Jordan had his greatest moment against the Jazz, and Kobe Bryant’s 60-point final game certainly belongs in the conversation, too.
Popovich might be the most unlikely of all of them, though. His resume is a bit bonkers: he went from an Air Force assistant to head coach of Division 3 Pomona-Pitzer, to being an assistant coach for the San Antonio Spurs thanks to his friendship with Larry Brown. He then became the Spurs’ general manager, then fired the team’s head coach after a 3-15 start, and named himself coach. It’s an insane thing to do.
When he took over in 1996, he had a model: the Utah Jazz. Like the Spurs, they were the only professional team in town in a small market, but the Jazz had found success with long-time stars in Stockton and Malone. Popovich hoped to accomplish that with Tim Duncan, drafted the next year. “Whether it’s a cut, a pick or running the floor, they do everything with great energy and always have,“ he said later. “It seems to be in the water in Salt Lake City.”
And as for Jazz head coach Jerry Sloan, he said: “He’s more of an idol to me than anything else.”
Popovich took it to another level, though: Duncan’s an all-time great, but he surrounded him with late draft picks Tony Parker and Manu Ginobili, and made the most out of them, making them Hall-of-Fame caliber players. On the defensive end, his mid-00s teams were as tough as they came.
But I’ll remember Popovich for his offensive teams, especially in the 2010s. He instilled just a brilliant system, in which his teams played some of the best basketball ever played: beautiful passing and movement and creation for others, the most five humans have ever acted as a cohesive whole in my history of watching basketball.
This is an all-time classic NBA YouTube video, and rightfully so: after losing in heartbreaking fashion to the most celebrated trio in LeBron James, Dwyane Wade, and Chris Bosh, the Spurs reloaded, got even closer, and just passed the ball around the Heat like traffic cones in a drill. It’s gorgeous:
I think you can make a case that Popovich has lost a step in today’s NBA, but his teams are clearly never outright easy to beat; see tonight.
Speaking of all-time NBA YouTube videos: this is one of the best, too. After Shaquille O’Neal called his Hack-a-Shaq strategy cowardly in the playoffs, Popovich started the next regular season with this:
The two videos sum up Pop well: strategic, brilliant, forceful in his ways — and despite leading the NBA in wins, ever, he never took himself too seriously.
Congratulations, Pop.
