Just as the Jazz were trying to get a handle on themselves, trying to make the most of a season of adversity and fluidity and recalibration and, most significantly, necessary change, who rolled into Vivint Smart Home Arena? None other than the mother of all measuring sticks — Golden State’s Warriors, the device by which every NBA team loves/hates to judge itself.
Typically, teams love the challenge and hate the outcome.
Tuesday night was different, very, very different. And not even Quin Snyder was sure he could see it coming, saying beforehand that the Warriors contest was “another opportunity to have adversity inflicted upon us.”
That’s a brutally candid comment from an honest coach, and typically it would have been absolutely accurate. Not this time. Not even close.
About eight layers deep, Snyder couldn’t have been happier to be so wrong, he just refused to show it afterward, as the lights on the scoreboard read: Jazz 129, Warriors 99.
“It’s one of 82,” he said. “We’ve just got to keep focused on the things that if we do help us play well. … I want our guys to feel good about how they played, for sure, because they played well. But there’s no part of us that can somehow say we did something. We won a game.”
Jazz players, as they should have been, were psyched before the game, energetic during it, and happy-faced afterward, relishing their lopsided victory, understanding that they hadn’t just defeated the best team on God’s green earth, they handed it its worst loss of the season.
The Jazz didn’t make it look easy. They made it look conclusive.
As Snyder wanted to make certain, it was not that. What it was was a helluva one-night stand.
In spite of a 22-28 record, which now places them exactly 17.5 games behind the Western Conference leaders, the Jazz had made a decent accounting of themselves, at least on a few occasions, against some of the top-notch teams around the league. Now, they doubled down against the best one.
Impressive, in that limited sort of way.
The notion that without complication Golden State’s players are superior to Utah’s — a fact — made this slaughter that much more noteworthy. The aforementioned truth sheers the paint off of apparent, and burns straight through to obvious. The only things that could close that margin were the ever-present hopes and cries of an underdog — great hustle, great execution and great luck, and maybe a great home-court advantage.
All of the ’dog’s best dreams came together here.
The Jazz themselves know, and admitted afterward, what everybody knows — they are not better than Golden State. But in the back corners of their minds, they thought perhaps they could be better for a couple of hours on Tuesday night.
That became obvious, too.
The Warriors had, after all, previously been beaten 10 times this season, not once by a more talented team. But they also had a better road record — 21-4 coming in — than they’d achieved at home — 19-6.
Either way, the Jazz went ahead and threw their weaponry — Donovan Mitchell (20 points), Ricky Rubio (23 points and 11 assists), Joe Ingles (20 points), Derrick Favors (18 points and 10 boards), Rudy Gobert’s defense — at Steph and KD and Draymond and Klay. They wrapped Quin Snyder’s brain power with efficiency (they shot 58 percent) to see what kind of dents they could fire into Golden State’s M1A2 Abrams.
They inflicted more than enough to penetrate the Warriors’ armor. They also seemed to get a cosmic kind of exterior boost from their new limited edition City uniforms and new City court — both snappily unveiled on this occasion and described by Snyder as “representative of the beauty of our state.”
The Jazz played as beautifully as the setting sun dancing off Utah’s natural bridges and arches and spires and peaks and canyon walls on a warm summer night.
They led pretty much from beginning to end.
Where then are the Jazz after sizing themselves up against the world’s best team? They are precisely where they were before the measure began — a team that needs seasoning and patience, as Mitchell, its most dynamic player, develops and forms his game with and around Gobert, the Jazz’s most important player. They also need additional help, by way of a trade, a draft pick, a signing.
“The challenge for this team is to get better,” Snyder said. It is not to raise its arms and fists over the world champs.
Everybody already knew that. In the meantime, hopes and cries for great hustle, great execution and great luck, against the backdrop of resplendent new uniforms and a cool new court, can take a ’dog far enough to gain some confidence and satisfaction — for a night, anyway.
“If we beat the Warriors and then lose to a low-ranking team,” Gobert said, “this doesn’t mean anything. A win is a win, and we need a lot of wins.”
GORDON MONSON hosts “The Big Show” with Spence Checketts weekdays from 3-7 p.m. on 97.5 FM and 1280 AM.
Follow @GordonMonson