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By the time he had made his way to the podium just minutes after a frustrating loss, a blown opportunity to close out a playoff series and move on to the second round, Quin Snyder already had prepared his pregame speech for the next one.

"It's really simple," the Utah Jazz coach said. "You just say, 'Game 7.'"

After six months — and six hotly contested postseason meetings with the Los Angeles Clippers — the Jazz's season comes down to this. Win Sunday afternoon in L.A. and the Jazz punch their tickets for the Western Conference semifinals for the first time since 2010. Lose and say goodbye to the franchise's best season in half a decade.

The pressure is on, and Gordon Hayward says he welcomes it.

"If you would have told me at the beginning of the year there would be a Game 7 against the Clippers in L.A., I would have said, 'Bring it on,'" the Jazz's all-star forward said after Game 6, when he certainly would have preferred to have shifted his focus to a second-round matchup with the first-place Warriors.

The Jazz squandered a golden opportunity Friday night, failing to eliminate the Clippers in front of 19,000 roaring loyal fans and giving up their precious 3-2 series lead.

"The hardest thing to do is close teams out," veteran point guard George Hill said, "especially when they're desperate."

"It's about who wants it more," Hayward said, "so we've got to be the team that wants it more."

Win and keep playing. Lose and empty out your lockers, kickstarting an offseason that likely will see Hayward opt out of his contract and become a free agent.

"At this point in time, it's obviously win or go home," Hayward said.

To win, the Jazz will have to find a way to slow down all-star point guard Chris Paul, who has dominated games, especially late, to push the series to seven games.

"We have to be better defensively, especially in pick-and-roll situations," Hayward said. "Too many easy looks for them at the rim or jump shots that are workout shots, and I think we'll clean that up. But at this point in time we know what they're going to run and they know what we're going to run."

Utah also will have to hope that Rudy Gobert's ankle, which the center tweaked late in Game 6, won't be a problem come Sunday.

One thing that might give the Jazz some comfort? Home hasn't meant all that much in this first-round matchup, and the Jazz know they can win at Staples Center. They did it in Game 1, when Joe Johnson's buzzer-beater silenced the crowd. They did it in Game 5, with Hayward scoring 27 points on the way to victory.

Perhaps it's fitting, though, that the Jazz and Clippers would go the distance, deciding things in dramatic fashion with a seventh game.

This opening-round matchup between the West's four and five seeds has had it all: buzzer-beaters courtesy Iso Joe Johnson; injuries to star players Gobert and Blake Griffin; transcendent individual performances from all-stars Hayward and Paul; and even a bad sandwich that knocked Hayward out for a game with food poisoning.

"It's been a rollercoaster," Snyder said.

And the two teams have traded star for star, adjustment for adjustment, blow for blow. In total, with the Jazz and Clippers now tied at 3-3, L.A. now has scored just four more points than Utah in the series.

"This series deserves a Game 7," Clippers coach Doc Rivers said late Friday night. "It really does."

Twitter: @aaronfalk