Coming into Saturday night’s game against the Dallas Mavericks, the numbers were grim for the Utah Jazz. Teams entering back-to-back contests after playing a double-overtime game were 0-5 in such games in the last two seasons, according to ESPN’s Royce Young.
I guess you can call the Jazz the fatigue-busters, after coming out with their 125-109 win. What’s their secret?
“Just focus on the things that you need to do tonight,” Jazz head coach Quin Snyder said. “It’s last night, it’s not two nights ago, it’s not three nights ago, but it’s last night, not today. One way or the other, you don’t get to decide. Do you have to grieve a while, or do you have enthusiasm?”
It may not have come immediately, but the enthusiasm did come. “Eventually,” Joe Ingles laughed. "It took us a while to get going... I couldn’t walk.”
And, to be honest, playing a beat-up Dallas team was a big advantage, too. The Mavericks, who also played Friday night, sat star rookie Luka Doncic due to a sore right ankle. After trading away the likes of Wesley Matthews and DeAndre Jordan in exchange for the injured Kristaps Porzingis, the Mavericks are a very different team than the one that beat the Jazz by 50 points in the season’s early days.
“They’re deep. They’re very well coached. They’re coming back to altitude,” Mavs coach Rick Carlisle said about the Jazz. “Those kinds of things are emotional and stuff, but they’re very experienced now. Their young guys aren’t young anymore.”
Meanwhile, the Oklahoma City Thunder lost their back-to-back game at home against the Sacramento Kings 119-116.
Jazz charitable donation
Through their “Pass It Along” program, the Utah Jazz donated $5,000 to A New Dawn, a northern Utah charity dedicated to helping women and children in recovery from domestic violence and substance abuse.
"We were and are overcome with the generosity and appreciate the community hearing the call for help and recognizing that this is a need,” Kat Dawn, A New Dawn’s founder, said in a statement.
It’s the fourth such gift this season form the Jazz and sponsor Mountain America Credit Union. The previous recipients were the Big Brothers Big Sisters of Utah, Operation Underground Railroad and Continue Mission charities.
