Spurs Demolish Jazz 114-83 in Game 2 Beatdown

That. Was. Embarrassing.

What is there to say about this game as a Jazz fan? They lost by 31 points and the game never felt even as close as that. I’ll still go through the recap by quarters as usual but I emotionally checked out early in the 2nd half. I kept the game on in the background while distracting myself with anything else.

The Jazz started off the game missing their first 7 shots, setting the tone for the entire game. At the first timeout they were down 15-4. It didn’t get much better for Utah, trailing 17-28 at the end of the 1st. Early in the 2nd quarter, David Locke pointed out on the radio broadcast that the Jazz had made 6 shots and committed 6 turnovers. The Jazz woke up in the 2nd quarter, going on an 8-0 run to close the deficit to 5 points. After newly-awarded Coach of the Year Gregg Popovich called a timeout, San Antonio responded with a 9-0 run to put the Spurs back up by 14. As if that wasn’t enough, after the Jazz called timeout the Spurs continued building on that run to close out the 1st half on a 22-2 run, putting them up 53-28 at halftime.

The Jazz shot 23% in the 1st half, the Spurs shot 55%. During my live notes I was taking I tried to keep some hope up that the Jazz could respond in the 2nd half but I wasn’t very optimistic, the Spurs were thoroughly outplaying the Jazz and Utah looked lost and discombobulated. The 2nd half started out with a glimmer of hope as Devin Harris converted a 3-point play but that hope was extinguished rather quickly. The Spurs didn’t let up, increasing their lead to over 40 points during the course of the game. I stopped taking notes before the 4th quarter, didn’t see much of a point to it. The only observation I had was how impressive Kawhi Leonard has been for the Spurs this year. San Antonio seems to have a knack for drafting players that fit perfectly into their system, Leonard is a good example of that. He had a terrific game.

This game was really depressing to watch. You could see it on the faces of the Jazz players on the bench during the 4th quarter, they looked devastated. A friend of mine pointed out that Jeremy Evans looked “destroyed” early on and the rest of the team didn’t look much better. This isn’t a criticism, I can’t expect them to look upbeat and motivated down by 4o points but it was still discouraging to see. The Spurs are clearly the better team and there was no doubt about it tonight. The Jazz were outmatched, outplayed, out-shot, out-hustled, out-everything. I feel too down to go over the stats but the Jazz had two players score 10 points, which was a team high. The Spurs had 7 players reach double figures.

The final comment I want to make about this game is this. My dad has been a fan of the Jazz since they arrived in Salt Lake City. He played basketball. He loves the sport and the team. Today, instead of watching the Jazz in a playoff game he chose to watch American Idol for the very first time with my mom. I can’t even criticize him or blame him. I watched the first 20 minutes of it myself before I begrudgingly went back to the game to see if the Jazz had made it slightly competitive. They had not.

Saturday night is Game 3 and it’ll be in SLC. I’ll be at the game, treating my nephew to his first playoff game. We’ll be fired up for the team, showing as much support as we can. The two days off should let me get over this loss as a fan, hopefully the team can regroup and come out to play hard at home to make this a series.