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The season after Karl Malone and John Stockton departed, the Jazz won 42 games with a starting lineup of Andrei Kirilenko, Matt Harpring, Greg Ostertag, DeShawn Stevenson and Carlos Arroyo.

That overachieving 2003-04 team barely missed the Western Conference playoffs, even with a winning record. The standards are lower for the current Jazz (35-37), surprisingly enough. All they probably have to do to make the playoffs is finish 41-41 — as long as one of those wins comes April 11 vs. Dallas.

The Jazz will always be able to say they were inside the playoff cut for 24 hours, as of late March. By losing Thursday at Oklahoma City, the Jazz (35-37) fell outside of the top eight, via a tiebreaker with Houston. Yet everything remains right in front of this team, with 10 games left in the regular season.

This competition is not a race, as much as a case of survival. After Friday night's schedule, only 1.5 games separated four teams — Portland, Houston, Dallas and Utah — in the Nos. 6-9 positions in the West. And only the Jazz (6-4) have a winning record in their past 10 games.

Kirilenko remembers the dire forecasts for the post-Stockton/Malone team, and how the Jazz responded to some of coach Jerry Sloan's best work. "We had a young team … in a position with nothing to lose," said Kirilenko, a 10-year Jazzman who will be honored Monday as part of the franchise's alumni recognition program. "Nobody expected anything from us, and we kind of jumped out of expectations."

Jazz coach Quin Snyder says missing the playoffs would not make his team a failure in 2015-16, considering its health issues. Would it be disappointing, though? Absolutely, just because the rest of the world seemingly has conspired to give the Jazz this opportunity.

Snyder is shrewd when it comes to diverting pressure from his team, contending that playoff experience this year is not vital to the Jazz's growth. It sure would be interesting, however. I would love to find out how Gordon Hayward and Derrick Favors responded to a another playoff opportunity, four years after Hayward made 9 of 33 shots in San Antonio's four-game sweep. And I wonder how Snyder would handle his first NBA postseason setting as a head coach, competing against Golden State's Steve Kerr or the Spurs' Gregg Popovich.

Winning even one game on that stage would be a breakthrough for the Jazz, whose most recent playoff victory came in 2010. Beating the Warriors or Spurs just once would make this season memorable, and that chance awaits the Jazz — even after all they've been through in 2015-16.

In October, who would have imagined a .500 record being playoff-worthy in the West? Now, the Jazz just have to get to that point — and do their part to keep Dallas from doing it.

My forecast is the competition for eighth place will come down to the second-to-last game, vs. Dallas at Vivint Smart Home Arena. The Mavericks were a half-game ahead of the Jazz, going into Friday's game at Golden State, but have lost forward Chandler Parsons to a knee injury and play only four of their last 11 games at home.

Portland has seven of its last nine games at home, so I see the Trail Blazers staying in sixth place. Houston has six of 10 at home and should finish seventh. The Jazz also have six of 10 at home, the problem being that two of those opponents are Golden State (next Wednesday) and San Antonio (April 5). Those are bonus games, though. The Jazz have two games each with Minnesota and the Los Angeles Lakers, one each at Phoenix and Denver and the potentially critical home date with the Mavericks.

If they win those seven games, they're in, for sure. And they will have matched the record of Kirilenko's '03-04 Jazz, one of my favorite teams in franchise history.

Twitter: @tribkurt —

West playoff race

Team W L Pct. GB

6. Portland 37 36 .507 —

7. Houston 36 37 .493 1

8. Dallas 35 37 .486 1.5

9. Utah 35 37 .486 1.5