Estimated read time: 5-6 minutes
SALT LAKE CITY — It's telling, isn't it, that the most memorable moment from Monday night's Utah Jazz game technically came after the game?
Following one last missed shot by the Wizards in the waning seconds, Jordan Clarkson grabbed the rebound and heaved the ball downcourt to a cherry-picking Collin Sexton. As the final horn sounded, the guard jogged into the paint, spiked the ball, leapt to catch it midair, put it between his legs, and rammed home a dunk that was equal parts vicious and pretty.
Everything before that?
Let's just say the footage won't be making any classic-rewind appearances on NBA TV.
The raucous Delta Center faithful continued to show out, even for a game that didn't deserve their full-throated energy, attention, and affection. There were some fun Clarkson heroics down the stretch of what wound up being an all-too-rare-these-days 127-115 victory. So it was that the fans got a few belated moments of excitement, and the Jazz got to escape the ignominy and embarrassment that would have resulted from a defeat at the hands of an opponent that has now, instead, lost 15 in a row.
But, man, was it tedious getting to that point.
And with 20 games remaining in the 2023-24 season, what has become yet another stretch-run slog is getting increasingly difficult to care about.
To that point: What exactly is there for the fan base to look forward to at this point beyond merely attending the games that are left in the season-ticket packages they've already paid for?
This matchup began without both Lauri Markkanen and Walker Kessler, who were shelved on account of injuries. Compelling rookie Keyonte George departed after just 5 minutes and 46 seconds of action, owing to illness. Recently-redeployed top-10 pick Taylor Hendricks was having a nice performance … before exiting with a sprained big toe.
And still, the game somehow went downhill from there.
There were nine turnovers combined in the first 12 minutes. There was so little defense being played that, at one point, Wizards guards Jordan Poole and Tyus Jones were a combined 19-for-22 from the field. And when the teams did somehow manage to miss a shot, they did so in particularly heinous and egregious fashion, with multiple attempts caroming hard off the backboard and avoiding the rim (to say nothing of the net) altogether.
Of course, this singular matchup is merely representative of a bigger problem.
In the aftermath of dealing Simone Fontecchio, Kelly Olynyk, and Ochai Agbaji at this year's trade deadline, general manager Justin Zanik infamously strained credulity by claiming that the front office was not attempting to manufacture any particular outcome for the team. Except, y'know, that winding up in the lottery becomes somewhat more probable when you send three rotation players out and get zero in return.
The decision-makers' rationale for those moves was pretty transparent and straightforward — namely, trying to retain a rare top-10 draft pick. But the unfortunate side effect is that what remains of the team became inevitably doomed to produce some less-than-compelling basketball.
At this moment, the Jazz find themselves in a particularly horrifying iteration of basketball purgatory — their 28-34 record has them well out of play-in tournament contention, but is not quite awful enough to keep that aforementioned pick from conveying to the Thunder this summer. As it stands now, Utah is the 11th-worst team in the NBA.
So, again, why should anyone bother with these 20 remaining games beyond sheer habit? Beyond the serenity of having three-ish hours of your evening accounted for multiple times per week?
And what is there for the players to care about, given that their bosses have made it abundantly clear that it'd be just peachy if the team were to lose as many of those games as possible?
All that matters now is finding anything that matters, anything that's meaningful.
The first-half defense Monday night was abominable. And after head coach Will Hardy showed the players some video clips at halftime of their "unacceptable" and "glaring" miscues, their effort in the second half was … actually markedly improved?
Does that mean anything in the grander scheme of things? Who knows. But these are the straws we have to grasp at.
Can George continue to develop his nascent floor-general skills so that his ceiling may become something more valuable than a high-volume/low-efficiency scoring archetype à la Clarkson, Lou Williams, Jamal Crawford?
Will Hendricks avoid weeks on the sideline? And if he does continue to get thrown out there, can he display some level of hoops IQ that will augment and unlock his prodigious physical tools?
Might Kessler show signs of snapping his prolonged sophomore-season funk, find some consistency, and once again bring the game-altering defensive acumen that made him so forceful and so fun as a rookie?
Can John Collins amass enough two-way efficacy to revert from contractual albatross to asset once again? Will third-wheel first-year wing Brice Sensabaugh do enough beyond shooting the ball to become a viable rotation piece? Might Johnny Juzang — glibly mentioned by Zanik in his post-trade news conference as someone he'd like to see more of — go from near-zero afterthought to productive on-court presence when given an opportunity, as was the case in Monday's "rock-solid 20 minutes," as Hardy put it?
A potential postseason appearance was kneecapped by the Jazz's top brass for a second consecutive year. The final quarter of this season will not be overflowing with dazzling displays of a well-oiled hoops machine.
But maybe there will be just enough moments of brilliance, just enough encouraging signs to convince those in danger of becoming agnostic to instead keep the faith, and to continue worshiping at the altar of "next year."
