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Get used to it. What everybody saw happen to the Jazz against the Warriors on Monday night is going to happen a lot this season.

No, not a loss.

A tight game.

That's why what occurred at the end was so significant. The Jazz possessed the ball, down one point, with 16 seconds left. All they had to do was execute a good play or find good fortune, get one score, just one last time, to beat the best team in all of basketball, a team that nobody else had beaten this season — in 18 previous tries. It was there for the taking, and the Jazz had properly earned that rarefied position.

They had played well, made it a great game, and worked hard for that.

The Jazz trailed by single digits for much of the contest and scrapped their way back, despite getting hammered too often on the boards, for their shot at winning. Gordon Hayward scored 24 points, Derrick Favors had 23 and Alec Burks got 19. Favors, in particular, was efficient, making nine of 15 shots, hitting all five of his free throws. His improvement at the offensive end is plain to see and notable.

At the end, after a timeout, Rodney Hood inbounded the ball to Burks, who gave it back to Hood on the right side of the floor. He dribbled left, terminated the dribble, passed the ball to Rudy Gobert, who handed it back to Hood just outside the top of the 3-point arc. Hood dribbled right, looking for Hayward on a flare, and, getting a bit jumpy, Hood, having a clean look from right-side deep with nine seconds left, abandoned the pass, instead firing off a 3, even though there was still plenty of time remaining and a two-point shot was enough to win.

It missed.

And that's the difference between beating the best team on the planet, a team with the best player, a team that is now 19-0, and tasting the bitterness of defeat — for the eighth time now.

Hayward, afterward, said of that last sequence: "The timing was off. … We've got to get better in crunch time."

Said Hood: "It broke down a little bit. … It's a tough one."

Quin Snyder said he'd take Hood with an open shot like the one the wing took any place, any time and live with it.

On this occasion, he died with it.

Thing is, if you're good enough to make the count 104-103 with 16 seconds left and the ball in your hands, aren't you good enough to win?

That's the gap the Jazz now have to bridge, especially since, with the way they play defense, with their more deliberate style, they will not often blow out teams, nor get blown out of games themselves. To their credit, they will almost always be within shouting distance at the end, regardless of the quality of the opponent.

That's the exact reason they must become masters of the last minute.

It's harder to do without a dominant star. When the Warriors are faced with a similar situation, they get the ball to Steph Curry, who can shoot or make a play. The same is true with other playoff-level teams, who have trusted, established playmakers. To whom do the Jazz turn?

A week or so ago, I asked Snyder that exact question: What he would do, which player he would call on, were the Jazz down one point with 15 seconds left in a game. His answer essentially was: It depends, depends on matchups and, as he said it, "who we feel like is in a good place."

The coach also underscored the star formula: "The challenge for us is … the game doesn't always look the same for us. If you play Cleveland, you kind of know what it's going to come down to at the end. LeBron's going to have the ball … the question is, is he going to shoot or pass to someone else who's open? For us, the balance we have can be an advantage — oftentimes, it's that throughout the course of a game — but at the end … we're trying to put the ball in the right place. We have to continue to become better and better at that."

As December turns into January and February turns into March, and then April, as Snyder searches, that answer needs to become more evident, more certain.

What the Jazz do, finding who they can rely on, at the end of these tight battles — not just this season, but over the next few — will make the difference, game by game, between victory's sweet taste and whatever it was they tasted on Monday night.

GORDON MONSON hosts "The Big Show" with Spence Checketts weekdays from 3-7 p.m. on 97.5 FM and 1280 AM The Zone. Twitter: @GordonMonson.