Memphis Grizzlies beat Utah Jazz 114-104 despite Donovan Mitchell’s 38 points

Memphis • It took the Jazz’s perimeter defenders awhile to figure out how to competently contain Memphis’ dribble penetration. And so, it took awhile for the bigs to be spared from having to pick their poison in the Grizzlies’ 2-on-1 forays into the paint. As a result, it took awhile for the Jazz to finally claw their way back against an opponent with the second-worst record in the Western Conference.

Yeah, all of that took awhile. As for finally getting over the hump and finishing things off … well, that never did actually happen.

And so, on Friday night at the FedEx Forum, the Jazz dropped a 114-104 decision against an opponent that, records aside, simply played better for longer.

Memphis scored 60 points in the paint and shot 51.1 percent from the field to shrug off every Jazz comeback attempt.

“Overall, they were just the more aggressive team,” said forward Kyle Korver. “They did a good job; they’ve got some quick guards, they got in the paint. And we just never quite figured it out tonight.”

Indeed, Mike Conley — reported to be a Jazz target at the trade deadline — got around defenders at will, opening up easy looks both for himself (11-of-18 shooting for 28 points), as well as his teammates (as he totaled a game-high 11 assists).

His Jazz counterpart, Donovan Mitchell, wound up with 38 points (hitting 12 of 24 shots) and five assists, but lamented his own defensive inadequacies against the Grizz.

“My biggest thing is I allowed some backdoors, didn’t fight over ball screens, missed some assignments — that’s where my head is at,” Mitchell said. “Points are gonna come; it’s just a matter of getting stops, and we didn’t get enough.”

In addition to Conley’s 11 dimes, teammates Avery Bradley and Delon Wright contributed six and five, respectively. The biggest beneficiaries were starting center Jonas Valanciunas (12-of-17 shooting for a season-high 27 points) and reserve big man Ivan Rabb (7 of 11 for 15 points).

Utah coach Quin Snyder said the main issue began with breakdowns on the defensive perimeter, which gave the Grizzlies (27-40) too-easy access inside.

“We didn’t do a good enough job defensively. They got by us too easily,” he said. “… It can’t be that easy to get in the lane. It just breaks you down.”

Meanwhile, Utah (37-28) was doing itself no favors by hoisting up a team-record 48 tries from 3-point range. Memphis did well to force the strategy by packing the paint and playing aggressively on pick-and-rolls.

“Some of those 3s we shot were great and wide-open, and we missed; and some weren’t, maybe, quite as good, but I didn’t feel like we took a ton of bad ones,” Korver said. “That’s just what was there for us tonight — I just wish we made a few more.”

Snyder didn’t quite agree with that assessment, noting that while the Jazz actually converted a good number of their deep attempts (37.5 percent), simply taking that many contributed to a stagnant and predictable pattern of attack.

“I thought we settled at times,” he said. “… We had some guys that I thought had good looks across the board … but it’s good to mix it up, too. We had opportunities to drive the ball on a kick-out. Frankly, we didn’t space well. And as a result, there were times open driving lanes weren’t as available as open shots.”

Despite all of the issues, the Jazz still rallied back.

There were myriad occasions when they’d trim their deficit to four or five points, but that would be as close as they’d get. Each time, Memphis would respond with another few critical baskets, and so the Jazz were never truly in position to get over the top.

Everyone was at least in agreement on what made the difference down the stretch.

“Stops. It just really came down to getting stops,” said Mitchell. “The shots were there for us — we were finding shots all night. But all of us, we’ve got to be on the same page [defensively]. A lot of times we were miscommunicating — the little things that we normally do, we didn’t do tonight. We’ve all got to fix it.”