NBA Game Preview - Utah at San Antonio

Sun Apr 2, 2017 3:30 PM EDT

How the Utah Jazz fare in two late-season games against the San Antonio Spurs will go a long way into determining their playoff seeding in the Western Conference.

The first of those two games is Sunday at the AT&T Center in San Antonio as the Jazz try to keep their tenuous on the fourth spot in the standings and the home-court advantage that comes with it.

Utah (47-29) leads the Los Angeles Clippers, who the Jazz are likely to see in the first round of the playoffs, by one game with six remaining.

Five of those games are against teams that would be in the playoffs if they started today.

Along with the two against the Spurs (including the season-finale in Salt Lake City on April 12), Utah also will play at home and on the road against Portland (which currently holds the eighth playoff spot) and at league-leading Golden State.

That daunting late-season schedule is what made Utah's 95-88 home victory over playoff-bound Washington on Friday so important. The Jazz have won three straight games, including a physical, down-to-the-wire bout with the red-hot Wizards on Friday night.

While the Jazz's normal cast of go-to players did their part in the win, it was reserve guard Shelvin Mack who made a series of huge plays down the stretch to clinch it.

Mack, who missed 11 games in March because of a sprained ankle, was pressed into service on Friday because of injuries to starting point guard George Hill and reserve Raul Neto.

With Utah up 87-83 with just over two minutes left, Mack scored seven straight points over a 1½-minute stretch. He finished with 15 points.

"It was great to grind out a win like this," Mack said. "I'm pretty sure we'll have a few games in the playoffs like this. You've gotta find a way to win, and we did that tonight. We showed that we've grown up as a team and we're continuing to get better."

Gordon Hayward also came up big when needed, scoring 10 of his team-leading 19 points in the fourth quarter, and Rudy Gobert had 16 points and 10 rebounds.

Jazz coach Quin Snyder said the win over Washington was the type of game that will help his team toughen up and build confidence for postseason play.

"More than anything, it shows us just the mental capacity to understand that you just keep playing, keep playing, keep playing, and hopefully something good happens," Snyder said. "And that's what happened for us (Friday). It was a great effort for our guys."

The Spurs are solidly in second place in the West and have won six of their last seven games, with the only loss during that stretch coming to the Golden State Warriors after blowing a huge early lead.

San Antonio (58-17) heads back to the Alamo City after a rousing come-from-behind 100-95 road win over Oklahoma City on Friday.

The Spurs trailed by 21 points, but cut the Thunder's lead to five entering the fourth quarter. A 10-2 run by the Spurs over the final minute and a half clinched the victory.

San Antonio led for only the final 37 seconds of the game.

Kawhi Leonard led the Spurs in to the win and scored 20 of his 28 points in the second half. He also took 10 rebounds in the game and added to his resume as an erstwhile MVP candidate.

"It's what I have been seeing from (Leonard for 74 games," San Antonio's Manu Ginobili said. "The kid can play. He is strong and he's hard-nosed and he's going to keep going. In the second half, he really stepped up and made some huge plays."

Pau Gasol added 17 points and LaMarcus Aldridge scored 14 for the Spurs.

"We needed one like this," Ginobili added. "We didn't play good for 30 minutes of the game. But we bounced back, we played aggressive, we stayed together. In this league, you have to play 48 minutes."

Utah and San Antonio split two games early in November, with the Spurs winning, 106-91, in Salt Lake City on Nov. 1 and the Jazz evening things up with a 100-86 victory three nights later in San Antonio.