LifeOnaPlate
Well-Known Member
Recently:
Pels beat Lakers by 3 (on a b2b2b, though)
Pels beat Dallas by 10 (we got screwed by the officials down the stretch)
Houston beat Detroit by 4
Spurs beat Wiz by 8 (led by as many as 22)
Clippers beat Bucks by 7
There are a few outliers, such as when Denver crushed Bulls by 33. We also annihilated the Suns by 28. Some tanking teams seem to try some nights and not others. Maybe it's a chip I have on my shoulder, but I rarely get the feeling that tank teams aren't trying against the Jazz. Like there's this mentality that teams are more motivated to compete with the Jazz because losing to the Jazz is embarrassing or something.
Anyway, I agree with you that some of the recent victories haven't been impressive as we'd like them to be, which is to say the team needs to stay hungry, get hungrier. It's interesting to think about the psychology going on. What if our guys didn't want to panic against the Hawks, so they tried to play it pretty cool, but ended up giving them too much as a result?
Also think about the schedule. Utah played every other night from March 2 through the 17th, including one back to back, and they finally got two days of rest before, you guessed it, losing to the Hawks. Rubio's playing through an injury. Favors was playing through a minor injury until he took a night off. (Likely all those every-other-night games wore on his body.)
Tonight is a big game. I'm trying, once again, not to take it as a defining moment for the entire season—unless of course we win, and then I'll assume we don't loser another game until we're holding the championship trophy.
