SALT LAKE CITY — Before Monday night’s tipoff, Quin Snyder called his team’s matchup against the Los Angeles Clippers a barometer game.
Judging their performance — a worse-than-it-looked 88-72 blowout loss at Vivint Arena — the Utah Jazz better hope things drastically improve before the playoffs roll around in a couple of months.
“We can talk about being better and being relevant, but at this point we’re relevant and no more than that. You felt that tonight,” Snyder said. “If there’s something that we held back, it shouldn’t have been tonight. You can have that explanation for some games, but this is a game … I’m disappointed.”
"That," Clippers coach Doc Rivers said after holding Utah to a season-low scoring output, "was as good as it gets defensively."
Snyder didn’t treat his players with kid gloves after his team lost for the third time in a row after a four-game winning streak.
Snyder pointed out the Jazz’s lack of toughness, physicality and mental fortitude against a veteran Clippers squad that leapfrogged them in the Western Conference playoff standings. The Chris Paul-less L.A. team improved to 34-21, while Utah dropped a half-game behind at 34-22.
On the toughness issue: “If we were to make a couple of shots, it would’ve just masked the fact that we didn’t have any toughness on the offensive end in order to execute just collectively.”
On the mental and physical struggles: “Tonight we didn’t compete the way that we need to. Sometimes it’s physical. Sometimes it’s mental. Tonight it was both.”
This one started ugly for the Jazz, who fell behind early, and it got even uglier after Utah briefly regained its composure long enough to take a first-half lead.
It’s the third game in a row in which the Jazz looked listless and lost at times. The mini-slump began midway through the second half in Dallas last Thursday — after a terrific two-and-a-half quarters — when Utah fell apart at the seams en route to blowing a 21-point lead to the Mavericks.
Saturday’s 112-104 loss to Boston — at home, mind you — was equally rough.
And on Monday, the lackluster Jazz fell behind by 29 points in the third quarter after shooting 30 percent in the first half.
"It's unfortunate against this team we had a night like tonight," All-Star forward Gordon Hayward said. "I know we wanted to come out and play well, but sometimes it happens."
It happened in brutal fashion.
It took an 11-0 run just to pull within 18 in the fourth quarter.
The building started emptying out with 5:49 remaining in the game.
The Jazz held the Clippers to 12 points in the final 12 minutes and still lost by 16. They shot just 32.2 percent overall and 4 for 17 from 3-point range.
That’s how bad it was.
In other words, the All-Star break can’t get here quick enough for this team.
Utah does have one last item of business to take care of before it can officially go on vacation — a Wednesday home game against the Portland Trail Blazers.
This was an especially miserable game for Hayward, who barely avoided his season-low of six points by scoring seven on 2-of-12 shooting. Derrick Favors led the Jazz in scoring with 13 points, while Rudy Gobert (13 rebounds) and Dante Exum each chipped in with 10 points.
No other Jazz player hit double figures in scoring.
Blake Griffin had a huge game for the Clippers with 26 points, 10 rebounds and six assists, while All-Star center DeAndre Jordan contributed 13 rebounds, 10 points and three blocks.
It was the Clippers' ninth straight win over the Jazz in Utah.
Gobert said the Jazz can't put too much emphasis on this one loss.
"It's a game that we should have had twice the focus that we had. We didn't tonight," Gobert said. "But hopefully we learned and we can react. It's a long season. We have a lot of games. We've just got to keep getting better and keep being positive."
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