The Jazz were finished off by the Rockets on Wednesday night at Toyota Center, on the short end of a 100-93 count and sent home for better or for worse from their first-round playoff series, having won just one of five games.
The hopeful wanted to take encouragement from the fact that the Jazz had improved over most of those games, losing by 32 points, then by 20 in Houston, then by three, and winning by 16 in Utah, and, at last, faltering on the road in a competitive elimination game by — for those devoid of arithmetic skills — seven.