CLEVELAND — After his team suffered one of its worst defeats of the season Sunday night, losing by 20 to San Antonio and scoring its lowest point total (69) in more than nine years, Utah Jazz coach Quin Snyder might have been inclined to bring his team in for an intense three-hour practice early the next morning.
Instead he went the opposite way. Snyder gave his players Monday off from practice, allowing them to enjoy the 75-degree weather in San Antonio — perhaps to take a stroll down to the Alamo — before having a fairly light practice Tuesday morning prior to leaving for cold Cleveland, where they’ll play the Cavaliers Wednesday night.
Snyder, who takes pride in his team working as hard as any other in the league, believed it wasn’t best to put his team through another hard practice in the middle of a weeklong road trip in the middle of January.
“We took a deep breath (Monday),’’ Snyder said. “It was a chance for the guys to think about how we can continue to get better. Now we get to go to Cleveland and play against one of the hottest teams in the league.’’
Snyder said it’s more than allowing his players to rest their bodies.
“It’s not so much the day off, he said. “It’s to build a mental toughness that allows you to be honest with yourself about why you succeed or fail. You either continue to do what you’re doing or make changes. That’s something I think our guys have been pretty good about over the course of the first half of the season.’’
With a 14-27 record at the halfway point of the season, the Jazz have the sixth-worst record in the league and are a long way from making the playoffs. But the Jazz are trying to stay loose and keep having fun as they showed at the end of their practice at a community gym in San Antonio Tuesday morning.
The players and coaches gathered around to see if the diminutive Lamar Skeeter, one of the team’s first-year player development/video analysts, could dunk the ball as he claimed. He aborted his first try, but given a second chance, he succeeded, silencing the hooting Jazz players before they headed to the bus.
The Jazz will be plenty serious Wednesday night when they play the Cavaliers, who finally seem to be turning things around after a sluggish start that included an eight-game losing streak which ended last week.
The Cavaliers, now 22-20 with the fifth-best record in the Eastern Conference, have won three straight, winning back-to-back games in Los Angeles against the Lakers last Thursday and the Clippers on Friday, before easily beating Chicago 108-94 on Monday night.
The surge has coincided with the return of LeBron James, who sat out for eight of those 10 games with nagging knee and back injuries. He returned last week in a 107-100 loss to Phoenix, where he sank 11 of 18 shots for 33 points. In the three wins, he scored 36, 32 and 26 points, respectively, making exactly half of his shots (35 of 70).
“They’re clicking and they’ve got a lot of weapons,’’ said Snyder, who believes the Cavs needed a few months to get on track with James and Kevin Love joining Kyrie Irving and the rest of the team this year.
“I think it takes time when you get a new group together to get to know each other,’’ Snyder said. “It’s true in any relationship, whether it’s a new business, a new job or a new family.’’
Snyder pointed to himself as Exhibit A since he is in his fifth position in five seasons.
“I’ve experienced it the last four or five years where you go into a new organization and you try to find your way,’’ he said. “Everybody’s in a different position than they were the previous year and you have to find your role. It’s to be expected and I think they’ve been patient. What you’re seeing now, they’ve begun to figure out more and more who they are as a group.’’
Besides James, Love, and Irving, the Cavs added scorer J.R. Smith in a trade with New York and 7-foot-1 center Timofey Mozgov, who they acquired from Denver. Smith has averaged 13.7 ppg in his seven games with the Cavs, while Mozgov is coming off his best game — a 15-point, 15-rebound outing against Chicago.
The Jazz will be short-handed at the two-guard position with Alec Burks out for the season and Rodney Hood back in Salt Lake after reinjuring his left foot in the fourth quarter of Sunday night’s loss in San Antonio. The Jazz got word Tuesday afternoon that Hood would be sidelined until after the All-Star break in February.
Rookie Joe Ingles is expected to start again, with another rookie Elijah Millsap expected to see a lot of minutes. Dante Exum may see more time on the court at a guard position, along with starter Trey Burke.
Snyder said he didn't anticipate any more changes for the Cleveland game, meaning Enes Kanter will start inside with Rudy Gobert coming off the bench.
After Wednesday night’s game, the Jazz head over to Milwaukee for a game Thursday night before returning home to face Brooklyn Saturday night.