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Monson: Playoff opportunity now awaits the Jazz with wide open arms

(Trent Nelson | The Salt Lake Tribune) Utah Jazz center Rudy Gobert (27), forward Joe Ingles (2) and forward Royce O'Neale (23) celebrate as time runs out as the Utah Jazz host the Phoenix Suns, NBA basketball in Salt Lake City, Wednesday, Feb. 14, 2018.

Twenty-four.

That’s the number of games the Jazz are looking at now, after the All-Star break, as they prepare to make a proper run at what so many thought was outside their reach before the season began — the playoffs.

The prospects are remarkable, really, considering the physical and psychological adversities the team has faced. You know the individual items on the list, but taken together, overcoming it remains impressive:

Rejection • Gordon Hayward and George Hill want out and bolt.

Addition • Ricky Rubio, Ekpe Udoh, Jonas Jerebko, Thabo Sefolosha are brought in.

Adaptation • Rookies Donovan Mitchell and Royce O’Neale live and learn and thrive.

Depletion • Injuries of various kinds and severities to Dante Exum, Rudy Gobert, Sefolosha, Joe Johnson, Rodney Hood, Rubio, Raul Neto.

Speculation • Whom will the Jazz trade before the deadline — Hood or Derrick Favors or Johnson?

Disruption • Hood and Johnson are gone.

Recalibration • Jae Crowder is brought in.

Discombobulation • December’s schedule straight into January not only was brutal, it was unfair.

Course correction • After the Jazz lost 15 of 19 games, they quickly gathered themselves upon Gobert’s return to go on their still-live winning streak of 11 straight.

Connection and correlation • Quin Snyder setting a tone while piecing it all back together.

It’s a pretty cool story, although the ending is yet unwritten.

For everything the Jazz can see in their rearview, there’s so much more to experience straight through the windshield in these final 24 games, although that terminology hints at a crash.

There’s no real reason to expect any kind of head-on.

The Jazz have one of the most preferred remaining schedules of any of the teams fighting for playoff position in the West. Fourteen of their remaining 24 are home games, 13 are against teams currently on the wrong side of the playoff threshold, among them a couple of the league’s worst teams. They have just four back-to-backs left.

Utilizing a combination of complicated formulas, the website FiveThirtyEight.com projects the 30-28 Jazz to finish the regular season with 46 wins, which in a not-so-complicated computation means the team will blow through the final 24 and across the finish line at 16-8. The site figures the Jazz’s odds of making the playoffs now sit at 87 percent.

Would anyone have guessed any formula short of a fan’s ultimate fantasy would make that kind of projection at this point about the Jazz six weeks ago?

There are other NBA observers who are being convinced by the Jazz’s recent play that they are, indeed, a legitimate playoff team. That’s what happens when they don’t just rack up victories over dogs in that win streak, rather they beat the Spurs twice, home and away, Warriors at home and Raptors on the road. Various power rankings and those who compile them have the Jazz among the league’s top 10 teams.

Again, go back before the season started and look for anybody who guessed that the Jazz would find their recent success, that they would be held in that sort of regard after Hayward and Hill went different ways. There was plenty of respect for the Jazz as a club, in a man-that-sucks-they-got-so-royally-screwed-over-by-Hayward-after-helping-him-develop-then-losing-him sort of way.

But nobody saw the emergence of Mitchell, not like this. Nobody saw Favors coming on the way he has, Rubio coming on the way he has, O’Neale coming on the way he has, Joe Ingles coming on the way he has. Nobody knew Favors and Gobert could play together and tag-team so effectively. Nobody knew Crowder would join the group. Nobody saw the Jazz’s upward flow in offensive rating (a decent-enough 14th overall). Nobody saw Snyder melding together a far-flung bunch of players to achieve what it’s done over the past month.

And of course nobody knows exactly how these last 24 games will play out.

What everybody does know is that Snyder wants nothing to do with any kind of projection. He’s never been about getting ahead of himself or being plagued by presumption or allowing his team to do anything of the kind.

When asked night after night about another win — or loss, for that matter — Snyder talks about improvement and ever-so-slight progress, never about the win-loss record or position in the standings or blowing anybody’s mind with a win streak.

“All I’ve wanted for this team is for it to get better,” he said recently.

And so it has — with 24 games yet ahead.

He’ll dial in on the playoffs as a just reward for the effort after that effort has been actualized and rewarded.

Gordon Monson hosts “The Big Show” with Spence Checketts weekdays from 3-7 p.m. on 97.5 FM and 1280 AM The Zone.