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Oakland, Calif. • The word on the whiteboard was written in black, capital letters and underlined three times.
"COMPETE."
That was Quin Snyder's message to his team Sunday morning in Los Angeles before their biggest game of the season. It was a message the Utah Jazz clearly took to heart as they put together a decisive Game 7 victory on the road, eliminating the Clippers and moving on to the second round. And it's a message Snyder no doubt will stress again, though expectations for what being competitive actually looks like may shift.
Jazz Nation was buzzing over the weekend.
Now here comes the buzz saw.
The Jazz have survived injuries and adversity throughout this season, the franchise's best in half a decade or longer, and punched their ticket to the Western Conference's semifinals for the first time since 2010. Their reward? A meeting with the juggernaut Golden State Warriors.
"They are one of the most talented teams to take the floor and it shows," Snyder said Monday. "All you have to do is watch them play, and you can feel it. Our challenge is to stay focused on the things that we can control, try to execute a game plan, try to compete and try to keep getting better, to be honest with you. We've been a resilient group. We're probably going to need that playing these guys because they're capable of blitzing."
The Jazz and Warriors could provide an interesting matchup given their contrasting styles. Golden State, the league's top offense, loves to pick up the pace. The Jazz, one of the league's top defenses, would prefer to slow down things, grind out possessions in the half court and force the Warriors to fight through their long-limbed wings before meeting their shot-blocking star under the rim.
The last team to beat Golden State? That'd be the Jazz, back on April 10 at Oracle Arena. (Full disclosure: the Warriors rested shooting guard Klay Thompson and limited their starters down the stretch.)
Make no mistake about it, life is about to get difficult for the Jazz. The Warriors didn't win a league-best 67 regular-season games by luck. The Jazz may have the deeper bench, but the Warriors' superstar lineup — former MVPs Stephen Curry and Kevin Durant, sharpshooter Thompson and Defensive Player of the Year candidate Draymond Green — shines brighter than any other in the league.
"That's the rules of the playoffs. The further you go, the harder it gets," veteran Jazz forward Boris Diaw said. "We feel like it's going to be even harder in the next round, obviously playing the best team in the league. We're going to do our best and play as hard as we can."
While the Jazz have been slugging it out with the Clippers, the Warriors have been waiting for more than a week for their next opponent since sweeping the Blazers in the first round.
"Obviously they've been resting, have had a lot of time," Jazz forward Gordon Hayward said. "But … we come off a Game 7 win, you feel good, you have some momentum. You can kind of keep it rolling a little bit."
Most pundits, however, expect the Jazz to get rolled. Vegas sports books list the Warriors as 20-to-1 favorites ahead of Tuesday's Game 1. Basketball number crunchers at NumberFire.com give Golden State a 77.5 percent chance of advancing.
Maybe that's why the Jazz weren't celebrating too much after beating the Clippers on Sunday.
"We don't have time to celebrate," Diaw said. "We're still in the playoff. Just enjoy being able to keep playing and not finishing the season yet. It's back to work."
The job description now is especially daunting, some might say impossible.
FiveThirtyEight.com gives the Warriors a 69 percent chance of winning their second title in three years. The Jazz have just a 4 percent chance at winning it all, according to the website's analysis.
Still, Rudy Gobert says he has championship aspirations.
And the Jazz are planning to heed their coach's message.
"We're going to go in and compete," shooting guard Rodney Hood said, "and see what happens."
Twitter: @aaronfalk