Utah Jazz: Can they keep their poise to avoid peaking too early?

The Utah Jazz are on a roll of late, but they must not let their recent success trap them into peaking too early.

Things are going great for the Utah Jazz right now.

Things were also going great for the “Lob City” Los Angeles Clippers seven years ago. Led by their star duo of Chris Paul and Blake Griffin, the team jumped out to a 25-6 start after going undefeated through 17 games in January.

They looked like solid championship contenders that year in a loaded Western Conference boasting the defending champion San Antonio Spurs, and the up-and-coming Oklahoma City Thunder.

They were on the tops of power rankings all throughout the internet, and a few months later DeAndre Jordan would throw down the dunk of the year on top of Brandon Knight‘s head.

On January 24th of 2013, the Clippers were 32-12 and had a grueling stretch ahead of them before the All-Star break, including an eight game road trip dotting all over the United States.

For comparison, the Jazz have won 18 of their last 20 games. They boast the top net rating and offense during that span, and have the league’s best five-man unit on the whole season.

They were recently put as a top two team in NBC Sports power rankings this week, and named one of the top three teams in the league by TNT’s crew of NBA analysts. They sit at a 31-13 record after 44 games, just one off of the Clippers of yesteryear.

And just like the old Clippers, the Utah Jazz have a critical stretch ahead of them to test their recent winning ways. 13 of their next 14 games are against playoff-bound teams, including a heavy density of Western Conference foes they could very well face in a playoff series.

Was the 10 game winning streak legit or will it just result in a good regular season team that doesn’t go that far in the playoffs?

The Clippers went on to win 24 of the final 38 regular season games, placing them with a 56-26 record and the fourth seed in the Western Conference. They were the much more talented team as far as star-power goes when they faced off against the Memphis Grizzlies in the first round of the playoffs.

They say the team with the best player will win series, and Lob City was fortunate to have two that were superior to any Grizzlies players. But what happened instead was a six game elimination from the hands of Mike Conley and Marc Gasol.

The Clippers jumped out to an 2-0 lead, but Memphis defended their home court and rode that momentum to rattle off four straight, including game five in Staples Center.

This only added to the questions of Chris Paul’s leadership skills, and lack of an appearance in any series beyond the second round. The Clippers would go on to become the talented team that always choked in the playoffs, choking one final time to…. the Utah Jazz in 2017.

That final elimination started a rebuild for the Clippers as they moved on from Chris Paul, Blake Griffin, and DeAndre Jordan in the following year.

Hopefully the Utah Jazz will be able to keep their poise through what will be a grind the next two and a half months. After they make it out of the woods of their next 14 games, they will still have to complete a four game road trip that includes playing the Boston Celtics on their home floor.

At that point in the season (March 6th), the Celtics will be in their finest shape all season long and most likely at full strength with a complete gelling of whatever piece they may add at the trade deadline.

Fortunately for the Jazz, we can also say the same thing and treat Mike Conley as a midseason acquisition. As for the 2012-13 Clippers, they  didn’t make any major changes during the season to juice up their roster despite being rumored to have interest in Paul Millsap.

So will the Jazz be able to keep their poise throughout the remainder of the regular season? From the sounds of it they already have their hearts set on playing until June while keeping their focus on the task at hand.

In interviews after practice today, Quin Snyder described the upcoming stretch as “an opportunity for us to see ourselves, and try to keep getting better against some tough competition in the West”.

Mike Conley added “We’re not shying away from the task at hand. We understand that we have a lot of good teams coming in … but I think we’re in a good place physically and mentally”.

It’s a lot on Quin Snyder’s plate to make sure all of his players are staying hungry until the bitter end of the season. But as Bruce Wayne says in The Dark Knight, “that’s why I gave it to you”. Snyder has the poise to go deep in the playoffs, and will lead by example to help his players do the same.