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SALT LAKE CITY — Quin Snyder said it was pain he's rarely felt. It was soul crushing, sleep-depriving pain — the type that dwells with a person and forces them to relive the moment over and over.
That's how Snyder described the time the Jazz were ousted from the playoffs last season after surrendering a 25-point lead to the LA Clippers.
Life can be cruel; it also apparently has a sense of humor.
It's been just over nine months since that fateful June day, and the same thing happened on Tuesday: A 25-point lead against the Clippers was erased in a showcase by Paul George. Hey, at least it wasn't Terrence Mann this time.
On the surface, the stakes weren't as high on Tuesday — the season isn't finished. There are six games left of the regular season and a likely postseason, too. Still, the loss Tuesday spoke volumes.
Snyder talked candidly before Tuesday's game about the torment that Game 6 loss caused. To say that and to feel that and then have your team go out and collapse in the same manner, it's hard to fathom. The whole season has felt like a crescendo to that moment. All the double-digit losses prepared the fan base and the team for a deja vu moment from hell. It's the 14th time this season the Jazz have lost a double-digit lead. That's a pattern, it's an identity, and the exact opposite of the one the Jazz hoped to have.
The pain felt last summer was supposed to be the catalyst to a new level for the Utah Jazz. Now, nearly a full-season later, it feels like a weight they can't escape.
"We had the best regular season in the history of the franchise and it didn't matter," Snyder said before the game. "At the end of the year, losing in the playoffs, you didn't remember anything other than that. It was one of the longest summers."
And it's become one of the longest seasons.
Starting back at the beginning of training camp, the Jazz claimed they didn't necessarily care about the regular season. The reasoning for that was simple: After last year's playoffs, nothing about the regular season meant anything — not the All-Star appearances, not the awards, and certainly not the record. All they had from the year was the pain of the postseason collapse.
Snyder remembered seeing all the accolades from the last year covered up at Vivint Arena. That, to him, was appropriate. It was over and the Jazz had bigger goals in mind. The regular season success felt so empty that everything since has been geared with an eye toward the playoffs.
Minutes have been limited, players have had rest days and Utah has brushed off the importance of any regular-season matchup. All of that has failed, of course. The Jazz aren't healthy, they look mentally done, and have consistently struggled to rise to major moments all season. That's not a team using past scars to get stronger; it's a team succumbing to them.
When the Jazz lost in Game 6, it was an Xs and Os issue; the Clippers went small and the Jazz didn't have a counter. On Tuesday, LA caught Utah with a big in the lineup — a middling big, no less, in Isaiah Hartenstein.
There was no roster weakness that created a problem; the Jazz just collapsed. They committed unforced turnovers, dribbled into bad shots, fouled too much and even called a timeout they didn't have. Snyder put the loss on his team trying too hard to split double teams and a poor effort on the defensive glass — these are simple basketball things. Maybe they're waiting for the playoffs to care about those, too.
"The good thing about this game is it's not Game 6," Snyder said. "You can just point to those two things I just talked about and just fix those two things. That's a question of us focusing on those areas and making them more important; and when we do that, we'll get a different result."
For now, though, Utah's not in a good place. The lightheartedness and fun that used to fill the locker room has been replaced by frustration, confusion and even tension. It's fine to not worry about the regular season until you unravel before the playoffs even begin.
A couple wins — if they come at all — heading into the postseason don't seem like they will turn the tide. It feels too far gone. The Jazz, like they have so many times before, said they still can find the right mindset and the fight to still make a deep run. Does anyone still believe them?
"I don't know what constitutes success in the playoffs. It's really relative to expectations," Snyder said.
In that case, they might have some. Since even a competitive first-round series seems a bit far fetched at this point.
"I believe we can be good," Snyder said before Tuesday's game. "We have been good. We are good. That's an exciting prospect. I also know that we are not going to remember January. We'll be talking about what happened in the playoffs."
It likely won't be as painful this time around.
