Utah Jazz: Don’t buy into hyperbole, the team is on the right track

In spite of their rough night in San Antonio, here’s no denying that the Utah Jazz have turned a corner after their early struggles.

A peculiar trend has taken hold in our little corner of the basketball universe. Pundits, prognosticators and fans of the Utah Jazz alike have suddenly become very bad at math.

On Sunday night, the Utah Jazz lost a rough one to the San Antonio Spurs. And, somehow, the result of that one game seemingly trumps the fact that Donovan Mitchell and company had won five of their previous seven contests and clawed their way back .500 before the letdown.

Newsflash: barring major injury, two weeks of work isn’t undone in one night. Five of seven (now, eight) is always greater than one in the L-column. And I would implore you not to give into any of the hyperbole out there that is suggesting otherwise.

One loss aside, the Jazz have clearly found some of what they were missing to start the season and the numbers bear it out. Over the last eight games, the Jazz are 10th offensively, eighth defensively and seventh overall with a net rating of 5.8. Their effective field goal percentage of 56.3 over that span is third league-wide.

Meanwhile, at the individual level, Mitchell and Ricky Rubio, are both trending upward after lackluster starts. Rubio, in particular, has turned things around in a big, bad way, averaging 16 points on 46 percent shooting overall and 40 percent from distance over his last 12 games. That’s the tip of the team’s spear offensively and it’s getting sharper by the day.

Let’s not give more weight to the Spurs loss than it deserves. Unless you’re the 2016 Golden State Warriors, sometimes…you’re just going to lose games. Grandiose declarations about the state of the franchise need not apply. Sure, losing by 13 and falling a game below .500 is never good, but there are reasons the Jazz fell on Sunday.

First and foremost, beating a team twice within a few days time is pretty hard to do, and the Jazz aren’t even the only team to split with the Spurs this week; LeBron James and the LA Lakers also went 1-1 against San Antonio. In all four games, the home team prevailed, which is exactly what you would expect under the circumstances.

Secondly, not all of what went wrong on Sunday can be attributed to Utah’s shortcomings. At some point, you have to credit the other team for actually doing something good. The Spurs hit shots and were masterful at denying Rudy Gobert‘s roll and Joe Ingles‘ 3-point shot for most of the night, both of which are key cogs to the Jazz offense.

Also — while the Jazz definitely looked bad on both ends of the floor during the game, missing shots and defensive assignments left and right in stretches, this wasn’t the listless performance some are making it out to be. At worst, the team’s energy was only lacking in the early going.

Things were totally different in the second half when the Jazz posted an O-rating of 127, shooting 51 percent from the field and 42 percent from three along the way. Ultimately, the Jazz just played a bad half of basketball; one that was made worse by a good team with a great coach executing a strong game plan.

You’d like for the team to play for a full 48, but that’s not always reality. Even the league’s elite come out flat or play a bad half from time to time.

Looking at the broader picture and that 13-14 record, there’s a lot to be said about Utah’s schedule, too. 17 of the Jazz’s 27 games have been on the road; more away games than any other team in the league. That level of travel has effects well beyond the road games themselves and the Jazz are feeling them.

Can you blame everything on the schedule? Not by a longshot, but to simply dismiss it as nothing more than an excuse is patently absurd. The Jazz’s schedule has absolutely impacted them in a major way, and I expect it to do so again when the team takes on the Oklahoma City Thunder on Monday night.

I’d almost put money on a Jazz loss in OKC. After all, they’ll be in one of the toughest buildings in the NBA and on the wrong end of a back-to-back (both games of which were on the road against good teams). I’m not expecting said result because the Jazz are some broken squad that has lost its way, I’m expecting it because that’s what happens to everyone in that situation.

It’s a reality of the league and all the teams in it.

The NBA season isn’t a sprint, it’s an 82-game marathon. And things are rarely as terrible or amazing as they seem during the high or low moments that come throughout the campaign. Through those highs and lows, there’s always an overriding truth for every team in the league.

Truth is — the Jazz are good. Do they have some problems? Absolutely, but the fixing process is well underway.

Getting to where they want to be will take time, and there will be steps forward and back along the way. For your own sanity (as well as mine), I would suggest not getting too caught up in the inevitable peaks and valleys.

At the least, don’t ignore basic math.