Estimated read time: 4-5 minutes
This archived news story is available only for your personal, non-commercial use. Information in the story may be outdated or superseded by additional information. Reading or replaying the story in its archived form does not constitute a republication of the story.
SALT LAKE CITY — You could say it was unbelievable, except for all the other times it's happened.
Still, Utah's latest collapse might have been the most impressive. It came after the Jazz answered a number of Golden State pushes and after Utah figured out every defense the Warriors threw at it.
Mike Conley was absolutely vintage in his play, Utah's bench unit came alive, and the Jazz were up by 16 points with seven minutes late in the game.
Klay Thompson hit a 3-pointer, Jordan Clarkson air balled his own, and Andrew Wiggins got free in transition and buried another triple. At that point, Utah's lead was still at 10 points, but the cracks were already showing.
The first 41 minutes of mostly superb basketball couldn't erase a season-long plaque. Everyone knew — the Jazz, the Warriors, the fans and the media — Golden State was going to come all the way back; we'd all seen this script before.
Golden State rolled off an 18-0 run in three and a half minutes to continue Utah's ongoing nightmare and to beat the Jazz 111-107 at Chase Arena Saturday. It was the 15th time this season Utah has lost a game it led by double digits.
"Collectively, there has to be a calm sense of, 'These are the things we are going to do with four minutes left,' and then go out and execute it," said Conley, who had 26 points on 10-for-18 shooting and eight assists.
It sounds simple enough; and after seeing the same thing over and over, it's pretty clear what's happening: There's a mental component to all of it. A team doesn't continually collapse late without there being some effect on the psyche. Saturday's game was revealing because of how different things were from the first 40 minutes to the last seven.
Utah made one shots — yes, one — in the final 7:54 of the game. The Jazz scored 103 points in the first 40 minutes of the game and scored just 4 the rest of the way. Utah went over five minutes without scoring a point; and that run only ended when Bojan Bogdanovic was fouled 90 feet from the basket — and he still only made 1 of 2 free throws.
"I don't think we're in a good place for the last six minutes, and it's not a good feeling in the locker room right now because guys want to win," Quin Snyder said. "We should understand that when we do play a certain way and we continue to play that way — whether it's in transition, after a made basket, when they are trapping us or switching, whatever — the theme has to be that we play together, move the ball. And you might not move it as much late, but you still need to move it."
There are some easy examples to see from the game: Clarkson's air-balled 3-pointer that helped start the whole spiral; Mitchell driving into a four guys and then flipping it out to the top of the arc in the hopes that someone would be there (they weren't); and Mitchell using two straight possession to try and score over multiple people.
The most damning moment, though, might be from the final two minutes. Rudy Gobert had Thompson sealed under the basket, but Mitchell looked him off (ironically, this was the one possession the Jazz hit a shot in the final 7:54 — Conley drove in for a tough layup).
Rudy Gobert gets Klay on a mismatch, seals him in the restricted area, and gets completely ignored pic.twitter.com/6NK07PFH1n
— ProCity Hoops (@ProCityHoops) April 3, 2022
"We've got to keep playing the same way; the ball was moving the whole game," Gobert said.
"I mean, as much as you want to look at the offense, defensively, they got four or five open looks late," Mitchell said.
Those two quote might just reveal why the Jazz have struggled to closeout games. Gobert and Mitchell clearly aren't on the same page when things get tough. That just puts another layer to the dark cloud that gathers seemingly every fourth quarter of the season; a cloud that makes normally simple plays — like Gobert throwing an outlet pass out of bounds or Bogdanovic air-mailing a corner 3 — feel all too tough.
"It's mentally draining on all of us when something like that happens," Conley said. "You see a guy who shoots 50% — 70% from the corners it feels like — and he misses like that and you're like what, and then they go out and get a layup or a dunk.
"Those situations are crazy, but at the end of the day, that's basketball and not everything's gonna be perfect. Not everything can be drawn out the way you thought it would be. You've got to be able to regroup and be mentally tough enough to withstand stuff like that because it's going to happen. As a group, we have to be better."
That stands for everyone. Mitchell needs to move the ball more late, Gobert needs to get up higher to contest perimeter shots, and Snyder might need to try a new closing lineup. Danuel House Jr. (+21) and Juancho Hernangomez (+20) had the best plus/minus on the team; they probably could have helped down the stretch.
"I think, collectively, we have to — in the last four or five minutes — trust each other," Conley said.
