While Utah appears to be having a break out season, the season DOES go on for 82 games. Lots of time for injuries to happen, attention spans to wander, you name it.
The Spurs, with this group, have been there before, and as I recall, often struggle early in the season, when fans start calling out Popovich as being a mediocre coach and if only SA had a better leader, blah, blah, blah. Yet they seem to do pretty well once they get going.
His fault is one of judgement once the games start to mean something, because his squad, realistically, is not all that deep, with role specialists on the bench rather then multi-taskers like Dallas enjoys. Utah has a great coach and some players to use, but they still have to do this for several years before expectations can realistically be raised about the Jazz. I could be wrong - Sloan does not allow much in the way of slackers to get too comfortable, but that team needs seasoning regardless of how well they might play against the Spurs in the regular season.
