A team’s first game back from the All-Star break always has the potential to be a little bit challenging, given the little bit of rust that can accumulate with a week or so off.
Fortuitously for the Utah Jazz, their return to action Friday night at Vivint Arena was against a G League opponent. They might not have beaten an NBA team, the way they played.
OK, admittedly, that was a bit harsh. Then again, given who the Houston Rockets actually had available, it wasn’t much of a stretch. And given who the Rockets had available, the Jazz opening their second-half schedule with a 114-99 victory wasn’t much of a surprise.
It was, however, a little more of a fight than Utah apparently anticipated.
Houston did not have Christian Wood. Or John Wall. Or Victor Oladipo. Or Eric Gordon or PJ Tucker or Danuel House or Dante Exum or Rodions Kurucs.
That wasn’t the Jazz’s problem. But somehow, some way, it became their problem.
A 23-point third-quarter lead was down to just 94-90 with about seven and a half minutes to play.
Asked to assess his team’s performance, coach Quin Snyder didn’t mince words.
“Very poor. Very poor. On a lot of levels. We gave everything up — we gave up the paint, gave up 3s, we were lucky they didn’t make more shots, because we were porous defensively,” he said. “We executed the last three minutes, but we had a [23-]point lead and we let up. They had everything they wanted on the offensive glass — 20 offensive rebounds. We turned it over 20 times. There wasn’t a lot that we did well tonight.”
Things started off decently enough.
Though seemingly going at three-quarters speed for much of the opening half, Utah nevertheless appeared to have too much talent and firepower not to eventually overwhelm their overmatched opponents.
Donovan Mitchell set an aggressive tone from the outset, notching 13 points in the game’s first nine minutes, and went into halftime having totaled 20 points, five assists and three rebounds. The rest of his teammates, though initially sluggish and a bit tentative, ultimately followed suit, getting into the paint with impunity and racking up 21 free-throw attempts by the break.
The Rockets, meanwhile (or at least those individuals wearing their jerseys out on the court) put up some cringe-inducing 36-21-44 shooting splits in the first half, seemingly paving the way for what indeed wound up being a 15th consecutive defeat.
But, man, did the Jazz’s lack of effort and execution at times make things uncomfortably close.
Utah committed five turnovers apiece in the first and second quarters, and finished with 20 for the game.
Their third quarter was pretty much an unmitigated disaster — one that saw them allow 31 points and attempt zero free throws, one which saw that aforementioned 23-point advantage reduced to just 13 over the final four and a half minutes of the period.
Their start to the fourth was somehow worse.
Houston simply chipped away by simply playing harder. They started exploiting Utah’s lack of boxouts by soaring in for offensive rebounds and put-backs (they’d finish with 19 offensive rebounds and 24 second-chance points). They got aggressive with their defense and forced seven turnovers in the first seven minutes of the quarter — a stretch in which the Jazz managed but 10 points.
Utah did not attempt a free throw in the second half until there was but 3:12 to go in the game.
In the end, the Jazz did just enough down the stretch to avoid disaster — a couple timely 3s by Royce O’Neale, a layup and a 3 by Mike Conley, and plenty of intimidating defense by Gobert (who finished with six blocks) — to hold on.
Joe Ingles conceded it was difficult to focus on the game at times due to the death of the team’s longtime massage therapist, Doug Birrell, this past Sunday. After the team attended his viewing following Thursday’s practice, a moment of silence was held for Birrell prior to Friday’s tipoff.
“Not that this is an excuse or anything, but we had a pretty big week with Doug and everything that happened there. It was a tough week. This dude’s been such a massive part of our organization for 21 years. And to not have him with us for the first time, it’s extremely sad,” Ingles said. “… But when we were out there playing, we’ve got to be locked in, and there’s obviously times we weren’t tonight.”
Indeed, when you’re playing a team that could be confused for a G League roster, “holding on” is not exactly an inspiring result.
And the Jazz acknowledged as much.
“There are definitely things externally, there’s definitely things that are all going on, but I think the biggest thing is when we play a team like this, with their guys out, we’ve got to understand — and I think we did, to an extent — that they’re playing free,” said Mitchell. “… They’re playing free, and they’re coming to attack us. Everybody’s coming to attack us. And no matter what’s going on, we’ve got to be able to communicate and talk, we’ve got to be able to defend, we’ve got to be able to guard.”
And they’ve got to be able to do all that better than they did it Friday.
