Some unique circumstances proved to be the balm the Jazz sorely needed


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SALT LAKE CITY — Before Sunday's game, Denver Nuggets coach Michael Malone took issue with the league's schedule makers.

His team was about to play its third game in four nights and was on the backend of a back to back.

The Jazz? Well, they hadn't played since Wednesday.

To Malone, that seemed a bit unfair.

"It's impossible for all 30 teams to wind up happy, but the league's got to do a better job with that," Malone said.

The Nuggets' situation on Sunday was far from unique. Every team will have a few games — or more — where they draw the short end of the stick when it comes to scheduling. It's the nature of the NBA. There are 30 teams playing in 29 arenas, and to make an 82-game schedule work, there's going be some tough stretches.

The Jazz have been the best team with a rest advantage (they had a day off the day before and their opponent did not) this season. After the Jazz took down the Nuggets 125-102 on Sunday in Denver, they are now 11-1 in games when they are the more-rested team.

So what's the secret?

Some of it's a bit obvious.

"Run. I try to push the pace as much as I can," Donovan Mitchell said. "You've got to continue to run and put the pressure on. … Just being relentless and not really feeling sorry for them having their schedule. There have been nights we've had that, too. So we've got to go out there and just continue to compete and push the pace a little bit more. When you know they are maybe a little fatigued."

While that is usually the biggest reason for the success in rest-advantage games. It likely wasn't on Sunday.

Utah's week was unique. The Jazz are on the backend of a COVID-19 outbreak that helped lead to a rare four-game losing streak. It had been nearly two calendar years since Utah had dropped four straight in the regular season. On top of that, they had a three-day break between games — something that's almost unheard of in the NBA.

Those three days gave the Jazz a chance to do something that, surprisingly enough, isn't all that common: practice.

Utah went through lengthy practices on both Friday and Saturday ahead of Denver's game. Externally, those training sessions were overshadowed by a minor media back-and-forth between Rudy Gobert, Mitchell and Jordan Clarkson. Internally, though, a lot of necessary work got done.

For players, it's often easy to see things on film that need to be different. A review of the games during the skid would clearly show a team that was out of sorts — there was no denying that.

With new guys coming in and out of the lineup due to the virus outbreak, and the Jazz being forced to play a different style at times, it was hard to really dial things in. They could see the mistakes, but without repping situations over and over at a practice, things don't always sink in the way they need to.

That's why this week came at a perfect time. For one, it gave some extra days to get guys back, especially Gobert. On top of that, it gave the time needed for the Jazz to click again.

"You go on the court and you do it in practice, so you're getting those reps and those familiarity," Mitchell said. "It's one thing to just show it on film and go out and try to do it, especially in a tough stretch where you have COVID. We don't have our bigs, we don't travel to Toronto, like there's so many ins and outs throughout the four-game streak.

"Now to finally be back, to have most of our guys back, have a practice, sit down and watch — we're able to talk and we know what to say to each other."

Following Sunday's win, Quin Snyder praised Utah's attention to detail and communication. Gobert mentioned how the Jazz came out with the correct defensive mindset and specifically praised Mitchell and Clarkson's efforts. Bojan Bogdanovic revealed that when the Jazz are aggressive defensively, they seem to talk a lot more — and on Sunday, they were aggressive.

"Every single guy on the court was locked in defensively," Gobert said.

Some rest, some practice and a tired opponent proved to be the balm the Jazz sorely needed.

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