Instant analysis: Jazz lose to Trail Blazers in final home game of the regular season

The Utah Jazz lost to the Portland Trail Blazers 105-98 in the final home game of the regular season at Vivint Arena.

High Notes

• I feel like I need to drive this point home every day as the season nears an end: The Jazz are playing without two of their three All-Stars, they are playing two-way guard Trent Forrest major minutes and they are playing against teams that are fighting for playoff positioning. Considering all of that, they aren’t playing horribly. They had a bad shooting night on Wednesday and they were still within striking distance. This is a good team, and when they are at full strength they’ll be fine.
• Lately Georges Niang has been making a really quick decision before he even receives the ball. If he’s open he shoots, and if he has a defender anywhere near him he drives without any hesitation at all. It’s just another example of how he’s continuing to develop and it’s really helping to generate open looks. 
• Enes Kanter made a 3-pointer. It’s just the third one he’s taken all season and the first one he’s made.
• The Trail Blazers have been one of the best offensive teams in the league over the last couple of weeks and they came in shooting the lights out. They cooled off just a smidge in the second half but finished the night out shooting 40.6% from 3-point range.
• To that point, Damian Lillard remains an incredible basketball player who can score on anyone at any time, and C.J. McCollum is so good at scoring over the top of a defender’s outstretched hands. Just really impressive stuff from those two on Wednesday.
• The Blazers defense is not great, but Jusuf Nurkic deserves a lot of credit for how well he was guarding the pick-and-roll against the Jazz. I doubt very seriously if he or the Blazers would be able to keep up that kind of intensity over the course of a seven-game series, but on Wednesday night they deserve the credit.
• The Jazz were down by 16 with less than four minutes left to play, and while they looked utterly exhausted, they did not stop fighting and Jordan Clarkson, who finished with 29  points, wouldn’t give up on trying to get to the rim. They didn’t look defeated, they didn’t hang their heads and they kept fighting. I liked the way that the main rotational players finished this game.

“I just think we’re competing, and as much as anything that’s what I want to see. I think we’re doing that, I think we did it the other night, and even tonight, with the ball not going in the hole, we hung in there.” —Jazz head coach Quin Snyder

• Jarrell Brantley played barely two minutes of garbage time and scored five points and had an assist.

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Low Notes

• I really think that the Jazz are tired, and they absolutely should be. They’re undermanned, most are playing with more responsibility on both ends of the floor than they normally would and teams are doubling players like Joe Ingles, Bojan Bogdanovic and Jordan Clarkson and just making everything harder. The fatigue is showing.

“I’ve been seeing a lot of double teams, top locking, denying — I’ve seen everything in the second half of the season, but it’s good though. I like the challenge. It’s good I’m seeing it in the regular season so when teams start to do it in the playoffs, I’m ready for it. I’m starting to get a little bit more comfortable because I’m getting more reps at it.” —Jordan Clarkson

• Opposing teams are just flat out not guarding Forrest when he’s out on the perimeter, and they’re right to make that choice because he’s not a threat from the 3-point line. But that makes it easier for the defense to double some of the Jazz’s other players and keep them from generating as many open shots so it bogs things down.
• The Jazz, despite everything I just said, actually got a lot of open looks on Wednesday, but just couldn’t get the shots to fall. Again, the fatigue is showing.

“I thought we got good looks and they just didn’t go in. You’ve just got to keep grinding.” —Quin Snyder

Flat Notes

• With less than a minute left in the first quarter I learned something new. Georges Niang was called for a foul on Damian Lillard, but Niang knew that he hadn’t touched Lillard and Quin Snyder obliged by triggering a coach’s challenge. The challenge was ruled successful after the officials also saw that Niang did not make contact with Lillard. But, the officials saw during the review that Rudy Gobert had made contact with Lillard while he was in the act of shooting, so they went ahead and assessed that foul. So Niang wasn’t charged with a foul, but Gobert was. I took the time to check the NBA Rule Book, and the officials do have the ability to see if any other foul “proximate to the called foul” occurred and if it was by a different player. This feels like it completely defeats the purpose of the coach’s challenge and I don’t see the point of it being a part of the rules.