San Antonio was surging again and, after the Jazz led for most of Thursday night’s game, everyone in Vivint Smart Home Arena expected them to keep fading in the fourth quarter.
Well, I did, anyway. Tony Parker hit a jump shot to cut the Jazz’s lead to 82-81 with 7:20 remaining, and I was prepared to deliver the next update: “Spurs’ first lead since it was 14-13.”
You know what they say: The best tweets are the ones you never send.
The Spurs never did retake the lead, thanks to the Jazz’s answer of nine straight points — including Rodney Hood’s seven in the critical phase of his 29-point effort. Jazz 100, Spurs 89.
“It was good to see us respond in a couple situations,” Jazz coach Quin Snyder said.
“We played with poise and made plays in the end,” Derrick Favors said.
Simple statements, and so true. The Jazz (15-18) needed this win, during a month that they somehow need to finish with a decent record.
Having already made one declaration of doom, I was ready to issue another, going into Thursday’s game. The back story: In mid-November, when the Jazz fell to 6-8 after losing badly to Minnesota at home, I said the Jazz may never get back to .500 this season. They soon dropped to 7-11, only to win six games in a row.
So they were 13-11 in early December, entering the scheduling stretch that everyone dreaded. As of Wednesday’s blowout loss at Oklahoma City, the Jazz stood 14-18, with these December games remaining: vs. the Spurs and OKC at home, at Denver and Golden State and home vs. Cleveland. The potential existed for the Jazz to lose all five games and fall to 14-23, making the climb into playoff position in the Western Conference look arduous.
But they beat the Spurs, in an impressive showing. The Jazz have managed to stay only one game back of New Orleans, which stands No. 8 in the West, while the two Los Angeles teams (Clippers and Lakers) remain closely behind them.
So now the issue becomes how much more the Jazz can salvage from December, with those four games ahead. Could they win two of them? That would put the Jazz at 17-20, which would be acceptable going into January, considering everything they’ve gone through lately.
They faced the Spurs without Rudy Gobert, Donovan Mitchell and Raul Neto, forcing Snyder to adjust his rotation again. “We just need to get them back, is the main thing,” he said before the game. “Sometimes, it just doesn’t happen on the timeline you want and you try to survive as long as you can.”
The Spurs were missing Pau Gasol, Manu Ginobili and Danny Green, so the degree of attrition was fairly even Thursday and each team had played the previous night. Then again, the Spurs are a better team and Jazz had just completed a six-game road stretch, mostly against elite competition.
Hood labeled the schedule “very brutal – especially when you’re coming up short and you feel like you played well.”
That description covers the Jazz’s competitive losses at Cleveland and Houston, but Wednesday’s 28-point defeat at Oklahoma City is in another category. In the NBA mentality, with the Thunder coming to town Saturday, losing that badly is probably a good thing. The Jazz will be eager to answer, the way they continually did against the Spurs when their lead was in danger.