Before today, the Utah Jazz had little reason to be down about how their season had started. Yeah, they were 1-4, but outside of their blowout loss to the Memphis Grizzlies on opening night, they had hung with their competition. It took a Luka Doncic magnet ball for the Los Angeles Lakers to beat the Jazz. Then it took overtime for San Antonio to beat Utah.
Those losses aren't fun, but they are easy to stomach. Today was a different story. The Portland Trail Blazers are also a pretty good team. They only have one loss on the season, and that was to who but the Grizzlies. Hence, it comes off as no surprise that the Jazz lost to a worthy opponent like them. However, this felt different.
Utah was outclassed for pretty much the enitre game. The Trail Blazers just knew how to come at them. Even worse, while the Jazz are dealing with their injuries, Portland is missing the resurgent Ja Morant, meaning that beating them could have been an easier task than usual.
The Jazz made their mini-runs, but never really got back into the game against the Trail Blazers. Portland controlled the game. It's not surprising that they did this, but if this had been a repeat of what we had seen, it wouldn't...