DALLAS — They seem to be playing their best basketball of the season, having won five straight and eight of their last 10 games.
Mirage or not, it still may not be enough.
So it goes for the Jazz, who with just three games remaining in their regular season — including tonight's visit to Dallas — continue to find the NBA's Western Conference playoff field tougher to bust than many of American's Most Wanted.
"It's frustrating," rookie point guard Deron Williams said, "but that's all we can do right now. We know all of it is not in our hands. But we can do our part by keep playing, keep winning — and hope."
A few hours after the Jazz started a three-game trip that ends Monday in San Antonio by beating the New Orleans/Oklahoma City Hornets 105-103 on Friday, the West's seventh-place Los Angeles Lakers beat Portland.
That reduced the Lakers' magic number for eliminating Utah from postseason contention to just one.
In other words: If the Jazz lose one of their final three, or if the Lakers win one of their last two (including this afternoon's game against the Phoenix Suns), Utah can no longer catch L.A.
Then there is eighth-place Sacramento, which visited Denver on Saturday night — the Kings' third-to-last game of the season. Because the Kings beat the Nuggets, Sacramento's magic number for dashing the Jazz's playoff hopes also is one.
In other words: If the Jazz lose one of their final three, or if the Kings win one of the last two, Utah can no longer catch Sacramento, either. The Lakers and Kings are the only two teams Utah still has any mathematical chance of catching.
No matter what, then, winning out simply will not suffice for the Jazz.
Even if they take care of their own business, they're gonna need a load of help, too — from the Suns and Hornets against L.A., and from the Hornets and Seattle Sonics against Sacramento.
It's enough to drive a tax accountant crazy, let alone the Jazz.
"That's a tough pill to swallow, but that's the position we're in, and there's nothing we can do about it," forward Matt Harpring said. "We just hope for the best."
And continue to play their best — if they really are — at a time when they'll need it most.
Two games from now, after all, it will be much easier to tell if the Jazz's recent streak indeed is legit — or if it's been padded with wins over the likes of a Denver team that had clinched the Northwest Division title one game earlier and was playing without would-be starters Kenyon Martin and Marcus Camby; a Houston team that was already missing Tracy McGrady because of a bad back and lost fellow All-Star Yao Ming in the first half due to a broken foot; a pitiful Portland team that's been out of it for quite some time, and; a Minnesota team that did not even bother to play All-Star Kevin Garnett in the fourth quarter because they already had been eliminated from postseason play as well.
That is because Utah — in a back-to-back road set, its last of the season — merely faces two of the truly best in the West.
Dallas and San Antonio are still very much battling for the conference's best record, and homecourt advantage in the playoffs through the Western Conference finals.
The Spurs have won 60 games, second only to Detroit's league-leading 63 victories. The Mavericks have won 59.
"It's not gonna be easy for us," big man Mehmet Okur said.
Yet the Jazz have no one to blame for the predicament they're in but themselves.
"We wish we could have done it a few weeks earlier," Harpring said of the Jazz's winning ways of late, "but that's just the way it is."
E-mail: tbuckley@desnews.com