If a team is winning they are playing well and if they are losing, they are playing poorly, right? Well, that’s not really the way the Utah Jazz see things.
It seems like every year, right around this time, there is a general feeling of malaise about the NBA regular season.
Players, coaches, reporters, analysts, broadcasters and fans alike are all pretty much just biding their time until we get to the games that actually matter.
7, when the Jazz were in Orlando, Jordan Clarkson was chatting with fans next to the Jazz bench saying that he was ready for the playoffs.
The eventual property they’re aiming to construct is one that houses a team prepared for all situations, one that is built to weather any storm.
In order to build that, the Jazz have to be a team that is willing to examine their performances more intricately and willing to take criticism after wins.
“It shows a level of maturation,” Snyder said.
This shift in how they evaluate games has been a new way of looking at the game for most of the players.
In Memphis I feel like we were grinding for every win that we could get,” Conley said.
It’s that the Jazz are trying to dissect every game, no matter what ends up in the win and loss columns so that when the regular season is over and the playoffs are knocking on the front door of the building that they worked so hard to stabilize, that they’ve done everything they can to improve and be prepared.
I think an eight-game win streak is nice, but we have to keep going,” Donovan Mitchell said.
Following that win streak the Jazz lost back-to-back games at home to the San Antonio Spurs and Washington Wizards, then they beat the Charlotte Hornets.
The Jazz then played the Wizards without Conley, which isn’t ideal, but they have to be able to prepare for all possibilities, including not being at full strength.
But the goal is to tweak and refine things enough over the next few months so that when the postseason begins, the Jazz won’t have any lingering questions about what more they could have done during the regular season to prepare.
While the wins and losses will matter and they will determine playoff seeding, as they always have, the Jazz don’t believe that it’s all black and white.