Dallas • The wait is over. The playoffs are right here.
The Utah Jazz have acknowledged from the outset that their 2021-22 marketing campaign would finally be judged by what the workforce accomplishes — or not — within the postseason.
With Sport 1 towards the Dallas Mavericks tipping off at 11 a.m. MT, it’s put-up or shut-up time.
Although their rollercoaster season featured loads of drama and raised loads of points, the Jazz have however asserted over the course of their weeklong prep that they’re extra prepared for the playoffs than they’ve been in years.
“I believe [the preparedness is] psychological, however it’s additionally on the courtroom,” stated Donovan Mitchell. “Seeing various things, going by means of sure heartbreaks — that builds character.”
Now, they declare, all these lingering questions are about to be answered.
Comparatively wholesome? Test.
Whereas earlier seasons have seen the Utah Jazz go into playoff matchups lacking such integral items as Ricky Rubio, Bojan Bogdanovic, and Mike Conley, the one gamers to seem on the workforce’s harm report Friday have been backup level guard Trent Forrest and third-string middle Udoka Azubuike.
“That is the primary season we’ve been wholesome going into the playoffs,” stated coach Quin Snyder. “… I believe our well being might be the largest factor that we are able to level to proper now which supplies us a chance that hopefully we are able to benefit from.”
On top of things on their opponent? Yup.
After incomes the league’s greatest document a yr in the past and having to attend the higher a part of every week to see who emerged from the play-in event because the No. 8 seed, this time the Jazz knew as quickly as the ultimate horn blew on their regular-season finale that they’d be matched up towards the Mavs.
“It’s an awesome benefit from what we had final yr,” stated Mike Conley. “We knew instantly, principally, after Portland, who we have been enjoying, and we have been already eager about what we are able to do, how we are able to alter, what changes shall be made with Luka — a bunch of issues have been already clicking in all people’s heads, and our coaches have been already placing a gameplan collectively, so it’s a a lot cleaner transition to the primary sport of the playoffs than it was final yr, once you didn’t know who you have been going to play till principally [one or two days before].”
Outfitted to deal with small-ball? They declare they’re.
“We obtained so much higher this yr than we have been final yr,” stated Rudy Gobert. “Final yr, we didn’t actually get put in these conditions till the playoffs. This yr, we obtained to experiment with a variety of completely different conditions. A variety of groups did that to us in the course of the common season — went small — and I really feel like we obtained so much higher at it as a workforce.”
Able to each bringing it and protecting it? So they are saying.
Whereas Utah has had season-long troubles sustaining giant benefits — a pattern punctuated by three of the workforce’s remaining seven video games that includes blown leads of 25, 21, and 17 factors — they’re retconning these embarrassing-at-the-time defeats now as beneficial classes that acclimated them early to adversity, and thus could have them prepared for all that playoff strain.
“We’re hopeful that the time we spent collectively the final two or three months, the adversity, has hardened a variety of completely different guys,” Conley added. “A variety of our workforce hadn’t actually been in these conditions a lot as a gaggle; we have been used to beating groups by a variety of factors, and now we’re in shut video games and sure conditions, and groups are enjoying a sure manner. I believe we’ve grown so much from that. To need to see that so typically in the course of the yr, I believe there’s no higher approach to put together for the playoffs than having gone by means of it like that.”
Armed with a bit of one thing additional? Oooooohhhh … that one’s intriguing!
“We’ve obtained a variety of weapons that we have been saving for the playoffs,” ahead Bojan Bogdanovic stated cryptically on the finish of Thursday’s post-practice media session.
After every week of getting peppered with queries about Luka Doncic’s calf pressure, and squandered double-digit leads, and Gobert’s capability to punish smaller defenders, and their protection’s skill to deal with five-out methods, and the decision of alleged inner beefs, and lingering PTSD from final yr’s Clippers sequence, and the accrued carryover strain that comes together with a number of years of playoff flame-outs …
They’re able to lastly let their play do the speaking.
“I imply, we haven’t completed something, so we’ve obtained to show it,” stated Gobert. “We had an awesome common season final yr, and clearly, we needed to get additional than the second spherical, however it didn’t occur. We had some adversity, and the Clippers have been the higher workforce within the sequence. Now we’ve got a special sort of alternative.”
The workforce’s go-to buzzword of those previous few days has been “focus.”
Everybody’s been centered.
All of them want to remain centered.
Tune out the exterior noise, neglect about latest historical past, ignore the big-picture penalties, don’t even acknowledge the existence of something peripheral.
“We’ve obtained our guys centered on the correct issues and never what’s happening exterior,” stated Conley. “We’re capable of lock ourselves in and go after one thing all of us need.”
The wait is over.