There are two sides to the Utah Jazz’s fourth quarter issues

SALT LAKE CITY — The Utah Jazz started the fourth quarter of their 121-115 win over the Portland Trail Blazers on Thursday night with a 20-point lead. In the span of 7 minutes, 20 seconds, that lead dwindled to just one point.

As there are two sides to every story, there are two ways to look at what happened down the stretch of the game that improved the Jazz’s record to 19-12 on the season.

On one side is the team that — with a lot of new pieces, including Jordan Clarkson who made his debut with the Jazz — was able to withstand the runs the Blazers put together and still come out on top. They closed out the game. They got the job done.

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On the other side is a team that has not fared well in the fourth quarter of games this season and gets itself into situations where it is forced to grit, grind and fight its way to the finish line.

The stats show that for the most part, the Jazz tend to heat up little by little through the first half, peaking in the third quarter. They are at the top of the league in third-quarter 3-point percentage (43.4%), have the sixth best offensive rating (115.4) and the eighth best defensive rating (106.4).

The fourth quarter stats do not look so good. The Jazz drop down to 24th in 3-point percentage, with the 21st offensive rating and 19th defensive rating. A pretty steep drop.

What is the answer to fixing these problems?

As always, Jazz head coach Quin Snyder says that everything has to start on the defensive side of the ball, which is what helped the Jazz ultimately beat the Blazers Thursday.

“Usually there’s a couple things that trigger it,” Snyder said. “It’s either not taking care of the ball or the offensive boards. ... Getting stops on defense is the main thing. That impacts your offense, too.”

It’s not just the objective third party that looks at the game from two different angles. Within the team itself, there are differing ways of looking at how fourth quarters have played out.

Despite Damian Lillard and CJ McCollum going on an offensive tear and sometimes hitting shots that are impossible to defend, the Jazz came away with the win. For Joe Ingles, who started the game shooting completely lights out and contributing to an early lead, the win is all that matters in the long run.

“It may be nice to keep a lead and continue on instead of letting them come back, but there’s a lot of really good players and good teams in this league,” Ingles said after the game. “You’ve got to be really good and really disciplined to keep that lead and push it out.”

Again there is the other side, where Donovan Mitchell looks at the way the game ended and is disappointed and wants badly to find a way to make the bleeding stop.

“We should have won this game, not by six, but by more. We should have put them away,” Mitchell said. “If we’re up 20, we need to stay up 20. I think this is like the third or fourth time we’ve done that. If there’s one negative, we have to find a way to keep the foot on their throat on both ends of the floor.”

There is no cure-all answer. Some nights in the NBA are going to be a dogfight or a shootout. But when the regular season starts to wind down, the Jazz would be wise to have figured out a way to stop letting the fourth quarter get away from them.

Good thing is that there’s plenty of time between now and then, plenty of time to learn from mistakes.