Jazz lose to Heat in another close game

SALT LAKE CITY — Something funny has happened over the past few weeks: The Utah Jazz have become a competitive basketball team.

Since December 19, the Jazz have the 13th-best net rating in the NBA, matching a play-in team.

Now don’t expect the Jazz to suddenly jump up the standings. The improved play hasn’t led to a huge surplus of wins — Utah is 4-7 in that span after falling 97-92 to the Miami Heat on Thursday at the Delta Center — but it’s providing some valuable lessons.

“We’re fighting to the end,” Walker Kessler said. “Obviously we’ve got some things to fix and stuff, but we’re competing and it’s fun. It’s fun to be in those kinds of games. Obviously, it’s not fun to lose, but we’re in those matches, so it’s a lot of fun.”

Against Miami, the Jazz were tied with 3:31 left and it was a one-possession game with 11 seconds left.

That has been the norm lately. Utah lost on a buzzer beater on Tuesday and also suffered recent losses to Portland, Cleveland and Philadelphia in the final moments of those games.

That’s a far cry from the team that was near the bottom of the league in almost every metric in the first two months of the season.

So what has been different?

“We’re starting to feel some of the cohesiveness of the group,” Jazz coach Will Hardy said.

He said the team’s communication has improved when it comes to defending actions and playing a two-man game. An example of that was the lineup of Patty Mills, Johnny Juzang, Cody Williams, Drew Eubanks and Micah Potter, who started the fourth quarter for the Jazz.

That group went on an 8-0 run to give the Jazz a 3-point lead with just under eight minutes remaining. Surprising? Not to Hardy.

“That group plays together so much in practice, but we haven’t gotten to see that much in the games,” he said. “But I think as a team, the staff and the players, we know they’ve played a lot together.”

That helped the Jazz stay close to the Heat despite struggling mightily on the offensive end. The Jazz had just two players reach double figures (Lauri Markkanen and Collin Sexton, who both had 23 points) and shot under 40% from the field.

However, the heat was just as bad; they just made the big shots down the stretch.

“I thought our defense was great tonight,” Hardy said. “I thought we made Miami work really, really hard for every basket they got.”

Part of that effort is due to a team bonding off the field. There were plenty of new faces to start the season – the players had to learn the system, their roles and where they fit into the dressing room.

“The guys know each other a lot better than at the beginning of the year,” Hardy said. “It takes a second for those things to settle. … I feel like the group has gotten more cohesive as the season has gone on, and that’s when you start to feel it.”

It also shows on the pitch.

With games coming down to the final few possessions, the team is starting to dissect small moments in the losses more. The distance on one possession, or a bad rotation on another, bad box out, a bad contest, a missed opportunity to rebound.

That has kept the Jazz from the win column, but not from improving as a whole.

“I feel like as a group we play really, really hard and I feel like the team camaraderie has been pretty good,” Sexton said.