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SALT LAKE CITY — The Golden State Warriors are the best team in the league right now, but the Utah Jazz were in it until the third quarter when the Warriors came out on fire.
The Jazz and Warriors went into halftime tied and it seemed like a battle for the game would ensue in the second half. That all changed when the Warriors scored 20 points in the first three minutes of the quarter en route to a 116-105 victory Tuesday night.
The 53-53 game turned into a 76-63 advantage for the Warriors when the ball never seemed to miss the bottom of the hoop. The Warriors made eight straight shots, after Klay Thompson missed the first shot of the quarter, and five 3-pointers in that stretch to put the Jazz into a hole they never got out of.
“I think we looked tired and they raised the level of their game,” Jazz coach Quinn Snyder said. “They hit some shots, they were tough shots, they were contested. Against a team like that when they get it going, it's not enough to be just near them. You've got to be close enough to them, they are really, really hard shots, but they can shoot them.”
Now the ever-present issue returns as to whether this was because the Warriors just got hot or the Jazz slacked on their defensive responsibility.
“They just made shots more than anything,” Trey Burke said. “I feel like we played solid defensively in the third quarter I just feel like they got hot.”
As fans and observers of the game it is easy to sit back and marvel at the skill and ability of Steph Curry. The opposing players on the other hand, especially opposing point guards like Burke, just have to go out there and compete and can't get caught up in the hype or the show that he puts on, like he did in that third where he scored 15 points on 5-of-7 shooting.
Curry is developing into a special kind of player who can take over games. He's shown it in the past, and the Jazz got a firsthand look at what happens when he gets rolling and that carries over to his team. His unique abilities to get the ball wherever he wants on the court, be it in the hoop or to his teammates, led to a huge compliment from Snyder.
“You watch Steph and the routine he puts himself through, that's why he's arguably the most skilled player in the league,” Snyder said. “I mean I think he is. He passes it all kinds of ways with either hand. He's basically ambidextrous. The way he shoots it, his feel for the game. There's a lot to be learned from that. That's where I want to see our guy go.”
Jazz fans can take a small ray of light from this game. After they were figuratively punched in the mouth in those first three minutes they came back strong, even though it wasn't enough. A 13-point deficit after three-and-a-half minutes was cut to six three minutes later. The Jazz didn't score particularly well, but held the Warriors scoreless in that short burst after their blistering start.
This scoreless stretch saw the Jazz use Derrick Favors and Rudy Gobert at the same time. The stretch started when Gobert replaced Enes Kanter and ended right after Kanter replaced Favors later on.
Even with the big deficit to end the game, Burke felt like the Jazz took a step forward, not back, in learning the game.
“Defensively, as a fan or as a spectator watching you may not see that because we lost and they made shots,” Burke said. “It wasn't easy for them at all, there were a couple possessions where they made the crowd 'ooh' and things like that and it may have looked easy, but we made things hard on them. We made them work tonight. Like I said, the bottom line is they made shots tonight, and it's tough on us to beat a team like that when they are making shots.”
This season has never been about wins and losses but how to develop and flash that development to get fans excited for the future. The first six minutes of the third showed all of that. They might not have what it takes to be a contender yet, but they have the pieces in place to build something that could end up being special.
