Utah Jazz at San Antonio Spurs: Keys to the Game

The Utah Jazz will be in for a daunting task tomorrow afteroon as they look to earn their second win in San Antonio this season.

The Utah Jazz’s seesaw season just keeps on going through its ups and downs. After a stretch in the second week of March that saw Utah win three of four games including huge victories over the Houston Rockets and Los Angeles Clippers, they followed it up by losing three straight, two of which were disheartening losses to teams on second nights of back-to-backs.

Not long after that, the Jazz lost a crucial game to the Clippers in which it appeared that the team forgot to show up. That loss was the fourth in five games and Utah’s outlook for nabbing the fourth seed in the West was starting to look a little bleak. However, since then the seesaw has made its way back up as the Jazz have now won three straight contests including a physical, down-to-the-wire bout with the red hot Washington Wizards last night.

It’s been a win streak in which Utah has look revitalized and much more energized than we’ve seen them in quite some time. The game against Washington last night was truly a grind and an impressive victory, especially in wake of the injury to George Hill.

But if you thought that life would get easier after that hard-fought win over the Wizards last night, you were terribly mistaken. Tomorrow afternoon the Utah Jazz will be thrust in the limelight as they take on the San Antonio Spurs on the road on ABC. The Jazz were able to get it done in San Antonio earlier in the year, but with nearly an entire season under both teams’ belts, that’s likely to be a much tougher task this time around.

The Spurs are solidly in second place in the West and have won six of their last seven contests, with the only loss during that stretch coming to the Golden State Warriors after blowing a huge early lead. The unprecedentedly good Warriors may prove to be San Antonio’s ultimate undoing, but outside of them, there’s few teams, if any, that stand much of a chance against them.

They boast an MVP candidate in Kawhi Leonard, a solid set of role players throughout their 10-man rotation and one of the greatest coaching minds in the league in Gregg Popovich.

Not to mention, while Utah’s early win over the Spurs was impressive, it also happened to be their first victory in the AT&T Center in their last ten tries. While I’d like to believe that the prior win marked a reversal of the trend, I have a feeling it’s more likely that the Spurs will instead look to recreate what had been a long-standing streak.

However, there’s no questioning that this is a tough Jazz team capable of causing problems for even the best of the best with its suffocating defense anchored by the daunting Rudy Gobert and its ever-improving offense that features prolific scorers such as Gordon Hayward and Rodney Hood as well as a solid bench with guys like Joe Ingles, Joe Johnson and in the last couple of games, Shelvin Mack.

So while tomorrow’s game will undoubtedly be an enormous challenge, if the Jazz can maintain the high level of play they’ve displayed over the course of their three prior contests, then they should be able to at least give the Spurs a run for their money. And if they can also find a way to excel in these following key areas, they may even put themselves in position to steal yet another game from the Spurs on their home court.