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SALT LAKE CITY — If Quin Snyder's sentiments are true, which they are, Royce O'Neale undoubtedly is fully aware of his increasing legions of distractors among the Utah Jazz fan base.
During his nearly 20-minute discourse chastising the media almost two weeks ago, the Jazz coach admitted Jazz players know the criticism that comes their way via social media and through traditional outlets. He was specifically rebuking the theories of only his team blowing late leads and Donovan Mitchell's hesitancy to pass the basketball to Rudy Gobert.
Snyder could have gone down a checklist of complaints, including among the trashing O'Neale has received in recent weeks. Bench O'Neale in favor of Danuel House Jr. in crunch time, many of the faithful demanded.
Remember that workplace cliché — the boss is always right? Turns out Snyder knows more about his team than all those passionate fans.
Even as O'Neale's shooting continues to struggle, Snyder keeps giving him heavy minutes. Good thing, too, or else the Jazz might be down 1-0 in their best-of-seven playoff series against the Dallas Mavericks.
With the game hanging in the balance, O'Neale calmly buried a three-point shot to give the Jazz a much needed four-point lead with only 57 seconds remaining in the game. The cushion, followed by a defensive stop, forced the Mavericks into fouling on subsequent possessions and paved the way for a 99-93 win Saturday in Dallas.
In the final five minutes the Jazz had wasted all but one point of a nine-point lead and appeared to be headed to the kind of loss that has defined the team over the last month. With the Jazz clinging to the one-point lead and Dallas enjoying all the momentum, O'Neale found himself with the basketball ball driving in the lane.
At the same time, the collective groan among Jazz fans was practically audible 1,000 miles away in Utah. They had good reason, too, considering O'Neale prolonged shooting slump and the fact he was 0 for 3 in this game.
O'Neale missed his fourth attempt but used spectacular athleticism to generate a rebound off his own shot. The ball came back to him a few seconds later, setting the stage for his difference-making 3-pointer.
"I trusted myself," he said afterward.
Good for him. Hardly anybody else not wearing a Jazz uniform felt shared his sentiment.
Forgive his teammates if at least a flicker of doubt crossed their collective minds, too. After all, over his last 10 games, O'Neale had made only 13 of 56 shots from the field and 10 of 42 from behind the 3-point line.
But there he was, wide open. Gotta fire away in that case.
"He's made that shot 1,000 times in practice," Gobert said.
And, yet, none of those pressure-free shots had the same level of importance. For all the late-season foibles — no matter what Snyder insists, the Jazz have blown way too many leads — this team needed O'Neale's shot to go down.
Squandering another lead, even if it wasn't as big as those in the high-profile losses to the Golden State Warriors, Los Angeles Clippers and Phoenix Suns in the last five weeks, could have devastated the Jazz — especially since the Mavericks didn't have all-everything Luka Doncic, who is out with a strained calf.
Never mind the Jazz must win at least one away game to capture the series, they needed this game for confidence sake as much as the mathematical part of it. They got it, all the while falling far short of playing their best basketball.
With Mitchell scuffling for much of the first half, the Jazz seemingly were running uphill until the third quarter. The three-time All-Star then dominated, scoring 30 of his 32 points in the second half and complement Bojan Bogdanovic's consistency (26 points) throughout the game.
Even with the team's two top scorers leading the way, both willingly took a backseat when it came to O'Neal making the biggest shot of the game.
