Choose your own adventure stories were a thing; I don’t know if they still are a thing. And to be honest, I never even really read one as a kid but I know they exist.

The Utah Jazz are about to embark on their own adventure, a playoff grudge match vs the Los Angeles Clippers. It can go either way: really good or really bad. Choose your adventure and find out how it definitely-probably-very realistically will play out: for good right here or for worse over here. 

On the heels of a 51 win season, with a solid win against the Spurs on the last night of regular season, the Jazz keep jazzing.

Rudy Gobert finds all the news articles (like here and here and here and here) picking the Clippers to win the series, prints them, and hands them to each player as they board the plane to LA. “TakeFnNote” he says.

In Game One, the Jazz play the entire game like the three quarters against the Spurs – everything is just clicking. They spring out to four-point lead after the first quarter, double it by halftime, and double it by the end of the game to win by 16. The Clips are shocked, coming into the postseason they had two nice wins against the Spurs and Rockets, but the Jazz left Chris Paul looking sad from the onset. It’s a foreshadowing press conference.

Sure, the Clips respond and win Game Two but they now head to Salt Lake City, with a rejuvenated and passionate fan base ready to watch their first playoff game in nearly five years. As the festivities begin, Jazz fans begin pouring into the arena by the hundreds, in hair styles like Hayward and Gobert. Hayward is especially touched to see all The Browards as he breaks the layup line just to stare into the crown and browse all the Hair Gordon’s in attendance. As the game is about to tip, he runs over to the public announcer, takes his microphone, and says, “Utah, I love you. I just want you to know as soon as I can, I’ll be resigning here. Now, let’s go beat the Clips.” The crowd goes wild, the Jazz rip off a hot start with G-Time hitting 3 straight threes and before you know it, the Jazz win by 12.

Game 4. Sunday. 19,911 of the rowdiest Utah fans cram together, and they have to cram because it’s turned into standing room only and somehow capacity exceeds 20,000.  Austin Rivers returns from his hamstring injury, hoping to give life to the Clippers bench, and checks in midway through the 1st Q. He plays decent until Alec Burks surprisingly checks in. As he does so, Quin Snyder can be seen whispering “finish him” and on the next play, Alec crosses Rivers and takes off outside the paint for a thunderous one-handed jam in River’s grill. Rivers leaves the game immediately having “tweaked his hamstring” but the truth is that he is flat out embarrassed. Doc disowns him immediately after the game, and ominously predicts a forthcoming trade to no-mans land, The Orlando Magic.

Now up 3-1, the Jazz vow to blow no leads and take off for Los Angeles one last time. Game 5 proves the closest game of the series as the Clippers are fighting for their lives as this is The Big Three’s last ride. They know it and can feel the collapse coming sooner than desired. So they play scrappy, they play hard, they play whiny, but the Jazz fight punch for punch. It’s a low scoring match, 91-91, with six seconds left. Clippers have the ball and inbound to Chris Paul. Joe Ingles mans him up, strips the ball, picks up the loose Spaulding, dribbles three times and pulls up from 30 for the game winner. Net. Shimmy. Series over. As soon as the game ends, Ingles declares himself mayor of Clutch Lake City.

With the series wrapped up, the Jazz now face the daunting task of playing the Golden State Warriors. As Zach Lowe predicted preseason, the Jazz offer an “interesting counter” to the Warrior’s attack and plays them in a rough, ragged seven game series before coming up empty. Not all is lost as Hayward averages 27 points per game and limits Klay to 20, Rudy had two triple doubles with double digit blocks, angering Draymond Green into a groin kick (as Green was subsequently ejected, Rudy looked his way and gave him the “Rudy Salute.”) and Steve Kerr can only gush about Quin Snyder’s tactics every post-game. With Hayward already back on board, Ingles and Hill stay too making the Jazz the 2017-2018 season favorite to meet Golden State again, this time in the Western Conference Finals.

For the Clippers? Chris Paul backtracks on his commitment to the Clippers and somehow ends up with Banana-Boat-Bud Carmelo in New York. Blake Griffin takes off too, for Phoenix, and Doc Rivers is forced to build an offense around DeAndre Jordan. Spoiler alert: it isn’t pretty.

(Playoffs begin Saturday. I can’t wait.)