Utah Jazz No Longer Control Their Own Destiny

With the Jazz loss to the Blazers last night and the Clippers win over the Spurs, the Utah Jazz no longer control their own destiny for earning the fourth seed in the West.

If you weren’t paying attention last night and just so happened to wake up and look at the updated NBA standings, you would see a discouraging sight. After holding onto the fourth seed for so long, the Utah Jazz were finally surpassed last night by the Los Angeles Clippers by merit of a tiebreaker. Utah is now in fifth place where, unfortunately, they’re likely to stay.

On a night where the Jazz couldn’t get any help from a 61-win Spurs team that was unable to defeat the Clippers at home, Utah also came out flat against a Blazers team that looked night and day different from the squad that showed up in Salt Lake City on Tuesday. Damian Lillard was red hot from the onset, torching the Jazz for a career and franchise-high 59 points.

With no George Hill in action to make life more difficult for him and with Raul Neto – who despite having just returned from a groin injury played far and away the best defense of any remaining Jazz point guard – spraining his ankle midway through the game, Lillard was licking his chops and scoring at will.

Simply put, Dante Exum and Shelvin Mack both looked atrocious last night in yet another instance of point guard inconsistency, where any one of them can look great or awful on any given night. With Hill injured, Neto leaving the game and Mack and Exum’s struggles, all four of them ended up being just complete non-factors minus Neto’s short stint before the injury.

Thus the Jazz dropped an extremely important game on the same night that LA won, moving both to a 49-31 record and dropping Utah to fifth place. They still have a chance of ending the season with the fourth seed, but the disheartening news is that the Jazz no longer control their own destiny. Reaching the fourth seed is no longer completely in their control meaning that now, even if they win out, they’ll need some help from another team.

And this game against Portland was vital because winning out seems like an immense long shot given that Utah will be in Golden State on Monday and at home against San Antonio on Wednesday. Sure, the Spurs may rest some players, but even the thought of that is already giving me PTSD to last year when Utah lost to a Clippers team that was resting all of their main guys, essentially dooming their playoff hopes.

Not to mention, the injury bug continues to rear its ugly head as not only is Hill out and Neto likely done for the remainder of the regular season if not longer, but it was also reported that in last night’s game Hayward suffered a left quadriceps contusion and will be reevaluated today. That’s the same injury that he suffered against the Clippers not long ago, but apparently this one is a new bruise, not a re-aggravation of the same injury.

Thus with those issues facing the Jazz, not only does beating even a potentially resting Spurs squad seem unlikely, but toppling the Warriors within Oracle Arena seems nearly impossible. Utah, like most of the rest of the league, has struggled immensely against Golden State the past few seasons. And with Kevin Durant back in action and Steph Curry expected to play on Monday, it’s not likely that Utah overcomes their barrage of injuries to win that contest.

If Damian Lillard was able to torch Utah like he did, imagine what Curry will do in the wake of the absences of Hill and Neto. Yikes.

In trying to be optimistic, however, if Utah somehow manages to do their part and win both games to end the season, the one ray of hope that exists is that the Clippers play Houston on Monday. Houston has blown LA out of the water in both contests so far this season, so if that trend can continue than Utah will still have a shot.

However, Houston is locked in at the third seed, so they may be somewhat unmotivated as they don’t have all that much to play for. After that LA hosts Sacramento and there’s little chance at all that the Kings put together enough of an effort to stop the Clippers and therefore help the Jazz.

In other words, not only is Utah’s destiny no longer in their control, but their outlook of even doing enough to win out and put themselves in a position where they can be helped looks very dismal. If Utah loses tomorrow to Golden State and the Clippers manage to defeat the Rockets, the fourth seed will then officially be out of reach.

If that’s the case, then Utah, like the Spurs, could very well be resting most of their key guys for the showdown between the two teams in Salt Lake City on Wednesday. That would make for a less than exciting game with absolutely no meaning, except for Utah’s somewhat ambiguous attempt to reach 50 wins.

If they don’t get it, falling one victory short, there’s several games that come to mind that will sting so much more. The huge blown leads against Sacramento and Dallas, falling to Chicago and Indiana who were playing on second nights of back-to-backs, the closely contested losses to the Thunder, and of course the uninspired defeats at the hands of the Clippers, among others.

Of course missing out on 50 wins will be a disappointment, but not so great as missing out on home court advantage in the first round of the playoffs. Yet given Utah’s incessant battle with injuries and their inability to match up with the Clippers this season, perhaps it wouldn’t have mattered much anyway.

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Hopefully the Jazz can make me eat my words for that kind of thinking, but it’s going to take a major surge in health and production for them to do so. At this point with attaining the fourth seed looking as bleak as ever, the Jazz have to simply hope they can find a way to arrive to the postseason healthy and steal at least one game on the road against the Clippers.

Either way you look at it, the Jazz have a daunting task ahead of them in the weeks ahead.