It's easy to forget — and perhaps healthy — that the two teams blew a 3-game-to-1 series lead against the Denver Nuggets in last season's Western Conference playoffs.
But fate has matched those teams — the Utah Jazz and LA Clippers — against each other in the second round of this year's playoffs, a sort of group session on how to bounce back from the postseason meltdown. And there are too many notes to compare.
All season long, both teams have had to make their peace with the difficulty of the outside world believing in them, no matter how well they play or what they achieve.
Take the Jazz, who recently served at home with two impressive victories over the Clippers, on the back of two scintillating performances from star Donovan Mitchell — who scored 37 in a 117-111 victory in front of 18,306 fans at Vivint Arena on Thursday night. Ended with points. Salt Lake City, Utah.
He also had the best record in the NBA this year, defensive player of the year at Rudy Gobert, and sixth record of the year over Jordan Clarkson.
But even jazz players will tell you that they haven't proved or done anything yet.
"Over the years, we've gone through a lot of adversity on and off the court," Gobert said. "We are at a point where we all understand that we have a great opportunity to achieve something special this year. We don't want to miss this opportunity."
When you make a 3-1 series lead (which has only happened 13 times in NBA playoff history), it's hard to get respect. Both the Clippers and the Jazz have had to admit it this season. But both have used it as inspiration and also as a learning experience. Each showed how much they had grown in Thursday's game.
"I think we understand how to handle these things, and that's what you saw tonight," Mitchell said. "The experience level in the bubbles helped ... we continue to do what we do and understand that they are going to punch back and we have to keep fighting."
The Jazz seemed to be heading for an easy win for most of the first half. But in a tight seven-game series against the Dallas Mavericks in the first round, Tyrone Lew's club remained ready and made important adjustments.
Utah was excellent at scoring the dribble, hitting 17 of 25 shots, so the Clippers switched to a zone defense to try to clamp down on Mitchell's drive (he was 8-for-11 on drives in the first half). .
It worked. LA scored 46–23 and took a 101–99 lead at a 3-pointer with 6:37 by Reggie Jackson to go into the fourth quarter.
According to data from Second Spectrum, the Jazz shot just 29% on 18 properties, in which they faced a field Thursday night.
"When he played the zone, I thought our vacancy was broken," Jazz coach Quinn Snyder said. "Whenever you are not given space, it is difficult to move the ball. ... I thought it affected us mentally."
But Jazz didn't panic. Joe Ingalls hits a layup by banking in a scoop shot from the backboard, just as he was playing at Horse's backyard game. Then Bojan Bogdanovic hit a 3-pointer to bring the Jazz back to 104-101.
"There's going to be adversity," Mitchell said. "We're not always going to put them out, put teams out. It's the playoffs. It was great until 21, but at the end of the day, they executed as they should. They've been here before They've got guys who've gone to finals, been to playoffs, they've got rings, they've got championships, so there's nothing they haven't seen before."
The Clippers came back again, however, receiving two free throws from Paul George to cut the lead to 104–103, and a steal from Kawhi Leonard set up Marcus Morris Sr for a 3-pointer that could give LA the lead. was.
Instead, Morris missed, then Patrick Beverly missed, and 57 seconds later, the Jazz was up again seven points after a three-point play by Rudy Gobert and a 3-pointer by Royce O'Neill.
Ingalls assisted on both of those plays, then hit his own 3-pointer in 3:07 with 113-103 to put the game out of reach.
"I've been answering a lot of questions about [Ingalls] and [Clarkson], and I think their game is kind of reinforced by who they are," Snyder said. "Not that anyone needed to know. They didn't need to prove anything. But it just didn't show on the box score. I thought Joe played with tremendous calmness and confidence, and Jesse, when he came So the game, he's able to make plays and hit shots that are usually really pace shots."
For the Clippers, it was their second straight chance to steal a game on the road against the top seeded team in the West. But there was also a lot to feel good about in LA.
Then there were the contributions of Beverly, whose defensive pressure forced two major turnovers while the Clippers were organizing their rally, and DeMarcus Cousins, who was dominant in the short run against Gobert.
But it mostly felt like he had a chance to win both games in Utah despite a quick turnaround from the Dallas series.
"We have to give them credit," George said. "It's a tough opponent. They weren't No. 1 in the West for no reason. It's a tough team. But, you know, we're approaching the same way Dallas was; we still think our There is a lot of wealth that we can clean up and a lot of the property that is harming us is our fault.
"So as good as they are playing, as good as this matchup is, as hard as this matchup is, we still feel like there are moments in this whole game, this series, that, you know, we're making plays like that. There are people who are self-inflicted. It's very tough, but we're optimistic that we can get it under control and go home and one game at a time and try to tie this series."