SALT LAKE CITY -- With apologies to the Indiana Pacers, the Utah Jazz were the most inspiring story of the NBA season.
Going into the season, fresh off the sting of Gordon Hayward leaving for the Boston Celtics, the Jazz seemed to be heading to that awful place known as NBA purgatory: Not nearly bad enough to tank, but not nearly good enough to be considered true playoff contenders. They were a franchise with a great, underrated coach in Quin Snyder, a great defensive big man in Rudy Gobert, but beyond that just a bunch of question marks and spare parts: A cast-off in Ricky Rubio, an intriguing draft pick in Donovan Mitchell, a journeyman in Joe Ingles, an injury-derailment in Dante Exum, an aging glue guy in Derrick Favors. Could they compete for the final playoff spot in a stacked Western Conference? Maybe -- if everything went right.
And then something funny happened on the way to April: The Jazz turned from a franchise stuck somewhere between a rebuild and a contender into, well, a real contender. The Jazz had, when healthy, the best defense in the league. They struck gold with the 13th pick in Mitchell, who is, for my money, the NBA's Rookie of the Year, and a 2019 All-Star. They turned around Rubio's underwhelming career, they revived Favors, and they turned Ingles into a respected NBA starter who's now one of the top 3-point threats in the league. They engineered a smart trade at the trade deadline, flipping an inconsistent Rodney Hood for Jae Crowder, who fits in perfectly with this tenacious, defense-minded group. Jazz fans went from a fan base angry at being spurned by their biggest star (Hayward) into a fan base madly in love with their newest star (Mitchell). They ended the regular season 29-6, embarrassed the Oklahoma City Thunder in a first-round series, and then shocked the Houston Rockets in Game 2 of their second-round series, sending things back to home territory knotted up at one.
Yes, the Jazz were the most inspiring story of this NBA season.
Wait a second -- was that past tense? Am I proclaiming this remarkable season for the Utah Jazz to be over despite only being down 3-1 in this series against the Houston Rockets? Am I forgetting the fact that James Harden has not exactly been the most stellar playoff performer in his career, and neither has Chris Paul, and that Paul in particular has a recent and awful memory of being up 3-1 in the conference semifinals only to have everything go terribly wrong. Does Clippers versus Rockets, 2015, ring a bell?
Yep. Sorry, Jazz. It's past tense now. This series, and the Jazz's remarkable Cinderella season, is over. And so is the Warriors-Pelicans series that's also sitting at 3-1, by the way, which will send us to a Western Conference finals for the ages, where the NBA's modern dynasty will face a Rockets team that general manager Daryl Morey has intentionally constructed to take down the Warriors.
On Sunday night, the Rockets went into Vivint Smart Home Arena and quieted the raucous Jazz crowd for the second time in three nights.
Mitchell was good, but not great (25 points but on 24 shots), and Ingles was fine, but not nearly what he needed to be (15 points, but only two made 3s). Gobert was mostly a non-entity (minus-27 in his 31 minutes), and Exum was amazing but limited (he got his third foul on a trash call in the first quarter, then later left the game with a hamstring injury). The Jazz were fine, and they made an impressive comeback in the final quarter. But it just wasn't enough.
"That game could have easily been a blowout," Snyder said afterward. "Obviously 13 points is not a close game. But the fact our team was able to cut it the way they did says a lot about who they are. There's no moral victories. But we gave ourselves a chance to be in the game."
It's true that there are no moral victories, but when taken as a whole, you can't help but be blown away by this Jazz season: An upending of a franchise narrative, from trending downward after Hayward's departure to trending very much upward with a home-run draft pick in Mitchell and a very well-constructed roster by general manager Dennis Lindsey. Yes, they are falling short -- have fallen short -- against the Rockets in these playoffs. But what team wouldn't?
And here's where one of the most interesting questions of these playoffs comes in: The Rockets haven't played great Rockets basketball in these playoffs. A team that's renowned for 3-point shooting has shot above 40 percent from behind the arc in only two of nine games so far; they have shot below 31 percent from 3 in five playoff games. And yet, especially against the Jazz, their often-overlooked defense has stepped up in a big way. Clint Capela blocked six shots and altered 20 shots on Sunday night. Trevor Ariza has been playing lock-down perimeter defense. At times, even Harden has been playing lock-down defense, too.
So what can these Rockets look like in the conference finals if – or when – that offense really starts clicking?
Whew.
"Houston's that good," Snyder said after limiting a team that averaged 112 points per game this season to only 100. "Give them credit. They know how to control a game."
This is the team that D'Antoni and Rockets general manager Daryl Morey have been building toward for a couple years now: An offensive power that can also win a big game when their shots aren't falling -- like on Sunday, when the Rockets only shot 26 percent from 3.
"Without a doubt -- you gotta do this," D'Antoni said afterward. "We haven't shot well the whole series. It's been a while -- maybe the first game we shot just OK. (But) there's all different ways to win. We're not strictly a jump-shooting team. We've added some elements. Chris (Paul) has got the mid-range, James (Harden) gets to the hole, you got Clint (Capela) down there. We've got a lot of other stuff we can go to. The whole plan was to get that, so we wouldn't be a one-dimensional team."
The Jazz, the most inspirational story of this NBA season, haven't played great this series. Some of that has been on them (see: Game 3, Donovan Mitchell, 4-of-16 shooting). But so much of it has been on the Rockets, who are the team that looks primed to end Utah's Cinderella season in Game 5 in Houston on Tuesday.
And if that happens, that's a whole bunch of Rockets momentum heading into the most anticipated conference finals matchup in a long while.
