On the Jazz whiteboard, in assistant coach Mike Wells’ immaculate script, one sentence stood out among many: “THIS IS THE GAME!!!”
Wearing new incandescent jerseys and playing the reigning league champions, it was Utah’s opportunity to make a statement on Tuesday night at Vivint Smart Home Arena.
The Jazz did.
A 129-99 win over the Golden State Warriors (40-11) — not the resting-for-the-playoffs version the Jazz beat last spring — saw Utah (22-28) play its best basketball of the season, including some things the team had not done to that point.
Joe Ingles had never made six 3-pointers before. Ricky Rubio hadn’t had 11 assists in a Jazz uniform before. It had been a while since the Jazz were able to extend a lead with Donovan Mitchell sitting on the bench. And Utah hadn’t scored 129 points in any game this season.
Somehow, these things came together for the Jazz, who resembled the Warriors more than the Warriors resembled themselves — if only for one surreal night. There was a stunningly rare sighting of Golden State pulling its starters midway through the fourth quarter, not because they had built an insurmountable lead as they often do, but facing one.
“Against them, sometimes even a 20-point lead is uncomfortable,” Ingles said. “But every huddle, we were trying to talk about [playing hard for] 48 minutes and just staying with what had got us to where we were at that point in the game.”
Utah won for only the third time in the team’s last 17 meetings with Golden State. But nothing seemed common about this matchup from the start.
It was Ingles — not two-time MVP Stephen Curry — who started out hot, hitting his first five looks from 3-point range. Golden State’s defense, which coach Steve Kerr readily acknowledged pregame has lacked urgency on some nights, looked vulnerable as Rudy Gobert crashed into the paint for massive dunks and Rubio (23 points) drove into the paint, often leaving Curry in his wake.
Even when Mitchell, the team’s leading scorer, sat on the bench for the entire second quarter with three fouls, the Jazz kept pushing past the Warriors. By halftime, they led 69-56.
Durant (5 for 13) and Curry (4 for 13) sludged through below-average nights. The only one of Golden State’s four All-Stars who looked up to legend was Klay Thompson: He skewered the shot chart with 27 points on 12-for-17 shooting. But the team was just 5 for 25 from the 3-point line for the night, and had 19 turnovers to just 11 from the Jazz.
The 58.2 percentage Utah shot from the field was the highest shooting percentage any Kerr-coached Warriors team has allowed on defense. It was far enough out of the ordinary that Jazz coach Quin Snyder took measured tones when talking about dealing Golden State its biggest loss of the year.
“We had a great shooting night — they didn’t have the kind of night they can have,” Snyder said. “Shooting is an equalizer. I thought we came out and Joe Ingles set the tone. The confidence with which he shot the ball, I thought that helped our other guys shoot the ball.”
After halftime, the same words were on everyone’s mind: third-quarter rally. The Warriors have been the masters of the second-half comeback this season, including a 42-point walloping of Utah back in December in the critical third.
But the storm never came. In fact, Utah outscored Golden State in that period, 34-29. In every timeout, the Jazz kept rallying around playing a complete game — something they felt they hadn’t done in that last meeting.
The win seems to cast some unexpected optimism on Utah’s season, which looked to be on lottery-pick course after the last month and a half. The Jazz have won three straight while holding opponents under 100 points in each game — including two of the NBA’s top three offenses.
They’re also relatively healthy, which is an increasingly rare trait in teams contending for the last spots in the Western Conference.
Three-and-a-half games out of the top eight, the climb, to be sure, is steep with just 32 games remaining. But more than they ever have this season, on Tuesday night, the Jazz looked ready for it.
“It’s great to beat them,” Gobert said. “It just shows that when we’re locked in, we can beat anyone.”
