With the Utah Jazz's season officially over, the next step in the rebuilding process will be the NBA lottery, which won't happen for another month. That means they can watch the playoffs unfold until then, even if they don't really have any stakes.
The picks the Timberwolves and Cavaliers owe the Jazz are already etched in stone, no matter how the playoffs turn out. Note: the Cavaliers' pick will go to the Suns after the midseason trade they made with the Jazz, which looks more and more brilliant for Utah with each passing day.
But we digress. The Jazz can now watch the playoffs for no reason other than there's not much else going on. Anyway, before the playoffs came the play-in, and one particular Jazz killer played in two of those games: Terance Mann.
Mann was pretty bad for his current team, the Atlanta Hawks. In Game 1, he shot zero-for-five from the field in their loss to the Orlando Magic. He did better in their next game, shooting two-for-three, but also had five personal fouls in only 25 minutes of game time.
It's not like Mann has ever been a star, but for Jazz fans, his lackluster play is painful to watch because Mann was the ultimate difference maker when the Jazz lost to the Los Angeles Clippers in 2021.
Why couldn't Mann have played like this against the Jazz?!
Jazz fans will remember Mann until the day they die for how he played a role in basically destroying the Rudy Gobert/Donovan Mitchell era in Utah.
Mann put up a career-high against the Jazz in a pivotal Game 6 between the Jazz and Clippers that ended with the Jazz's elimination. Mann put up 39 points, including 20 in the third quarter, which fueled a major comeback from a double-digit deficit, propelling the Clippers to the Western Conference Finals.
Full context: it was Game 6, and even if the Jazz had beaten the Clippers that night, they still would have had to beat them again to move on. Still, it looked like the Jazz had grabbed hold of the series' momentum until Mann decided it was time for him to turn into Stephen Curry.
The Gobert/Mitchell era had already been on shaky ground, and while they impressively put their differences aside to catapult the Jazz to heights not seen since the Deron Williams days, that era of Jazz basketball had their best shot in 2021, and it ended that night, which permanently killed that era, even if they didn't disband until the following year.
One can only wonder how different things would have been if Mann hadn't gone thermonuclear on them. While it's normal for players to go thermonuclear in the playoffs, that usually comes from the NBA's best players. Mann is solid, but it remains a cruel twist of fate for the Jazz that he morphed into a superstar for one half of basketball, which ended
And his struggles in both play-in games, which contributed to the Hawks' failure to make the playoffs, only make his completely spontaneous explosion, which sparked the Jazz's implosion, look even more frustrating due to its glaring improbability.