4 reasons why the Utah Jazz season ended prematurely.
The Utah Jazz had a storybook 2021 season all lined up. The team came into the season with renewed vigor and a hyper-focused offensive approach developed by coach Quin Snyder. Utah, after a slow start, pulled off winning 22 games in a 25-game stretch and was bar-none the best team in basketball.
This Jazz team went on to put together one of the most prolific offenses in the history of the game – an offense centered around passing, generating 40-plus 3’s a game and hitting 39 percent of them.
It was a season where three Jazz players were selected for the All-Star game, where Rudy Gobert won his third Defensive Player of the Year award, and where feel-good story Jordan Clarkson won his first 6th Man of the Year award.
It was a season where the Jazz earned the 1-seed and home advantage in the brutal Western Conference. Everything looked primed for this group to get the first NBA title and the franchise’s history…
But, as Henry Hill said at the end of Goodfellas: “… and now it’s all over.”
The Jazz season came to a painful end in Game 6 against the LA Clippers in the Western Conference semifinals in which they blew a 25-point lead in the second half. This is a series where the Jazz led 2-0 and had double-digit leads in both Game 5 and Game 6 against a team without their best player.
Utah’s magical Cinderella season turned into a pumpkin and went splat on the road.
By no means think this is an “upset.” This series was a battle of the two best point differential teams in the league, it was a battle of two of the best offenses in the league, and both Utah and LA had some absolutely dominating five-man lineup – the tale of the tape from the numbers showed that this was going to be a heavyweight match.
Alas, once the smoke cleared, it was the Clippers who rose to the occasion and dismantled the Jazz in what feels like a six-game sweep.
How did the worm turn so wrong for the Jazz so fast? How did a team that didn’t lose more than three games in a row all season, up and lose four against a shorthanded Clippers team? Here are some takeaways on why the Jazz season is now over.