San Antonio Spurs Swept the Utah Jazz Out of the Playoffs

Despite a valiant come-from-behind effort on the part of the Jazz in the fourth quarter last night, the Spurs put them out of their misery and completed a brutal 4-game sweep. From the Deseret News: “Reflective of their never-quit season, the Jazz scraped and clawed their way back into Game 4, somehow making a tight game out of a seeming blowout in the last minute to pull within four with 49.4 seconds remaining after trailing by 21 points only five minutes earlier. ‘We weren’t going to let each other off the hook and come out and lay down and let these guys take a win here,’ Jazz coach Tyrone Corbin said. ‘I thought we fought and continued to fight and make sure to show who we are.’ It hardly came as a shocker that Tony Parker and Manu Ginobili teamed up to remind the Jazz who they are in the final half-minute while bringing Utah’s valiant comeback effort to a screeching halt. The Jazz had a chance to cut into the Spurs’ suddenly shaky lead — 81-60 with under six minutes, down to four — when Parker stole the ball from Paul Millsap and tossed it to his Argentine assassin for an easy game-clinching layup with 18.9 seconds remaining. ‘It’s a bad experience, a bad feeling, to just know your season’s over with,’ Jazz center Al Jefferson said after his game-high 26-point peformance. ‘(After) all the hard work we put in and all the fighting and all the things we had to fight through, it just (stinks) to know the season’s over.'”