PHILADELPHIA — After losing their fourth game of a five-game, nine-day road trip, 103-94 to Philadelphia Monday night at the Wells Fargo Center, the Utah Jazz are happy to be home again.
Boy, are they glad to be home again.
The Jazz, who return home early Tuesday morning, will play five of their next six games at the Vivint Arena, beginning Wednesday night against the Los Angeles Lakers.
This was a road trip to forget as the Jazz were only able to manage one victory, a win over Memphis Friday by the same score they lost on Monday. But that game was a lot closer as the Jazz had to fight back from a 15-point deficit to eke out a win, while this time they were knocked out of the game early.
What made this trip really disconcerting was the way in which they lost. After losing a close game in Milwaukee, they lost by 19 to Indiana, 20 to Toronto in a game they trailed by 40, before losing to the Sixers in a game they trailed by 26 in the first half.
The Jazz shot poorly throughout much of the trip — they were just 22.7% from 3-point range Monday and turnover-prone with 19 Monday after 18 miscues the day before. They also had poor starts in each of their past three games, digging themselves deep holes before improving in the second half.
That was the one bright spot coach Quin Snyder talked about after the game.
“To be down like we were early, particularly after last night’s game on a back-to-back on the (fifth) game of a road trip, to see our team battle like that, says a lot about our team,” he said. “Everybody in the locker room knows we can play better, but the way we play better is by competing and keeping your spirit as a team and that’s what I saw reflected tonight.”
Utah’s best player, Donovan Mitchell, who struggled with his shooting throughout the trip, going 6 for 19 Monday night, also took a positive outlook from the game.
“It’s been a long road trip man,” he said. “It was tough getting the shots we wanted and they weren’t falling. A lot of teams would call it and get ready to go home, but not us — we made sure we stayed in the fight.”
Two players played well for the Jazz Monday.
Rudy Gobert outplayed Philly center Joel Embiid, finishing with a season-high 27 points and 12 rebounds, while Joe Ingles was solid with a near triple-double of 13 points, eight assists and eight rebounds.
“He got himself going in a way he hasn’t been able to do recently as far as playmaking and reading and shooting,” said Snyder of Ingles.
The Jazz were determined to get off to a better start Monday after their dreadful beginning the night before in Toronto, where they trailed by a franchise-record 40 points at halftime, 77-37.
And it worked for awhile as the Utah matched Philadelphia shot for shot in the early going before the Sixers put together a pair of runs that buried the Jazz.
The first was a 15-4 run to end the quarter with a 31-22 lead. The second was 13-0 run that made it 52-27 just before the half.
It was still a 21-point game after three quarters when the Jazz started chipping away.
It seemed like the Jazz had seemingly thrown in the towel when Tony Bradley was put in midway through the fourth quarter for Gobert. But with Embiid, who finished with 16 points and 11 rebounds, on the bench with five fouls, the Jazz put Gobert back in the game along with Georges Niang and three other starters.
The Jazz cut the lead to 10 on four occasions in the final minutes but could never get closer until the final minute when an Ingles’ 3-pointer made it 99-92. But there wasn’t enough time left for a miracle comeback.
As bad as this road trip was, you have to remember the Jazz had a worse road trip just two years ago in November when they lost five of six games. On that trip, they lost to Milwaukee by 17, Chicago by 3, Cleveland by 9, Houston by 21 and Oklahoma City by 28. Their lone win came against Boston by 12.
Also at 12-8, the Jazz are better than each of the last two years when they were 9-11 after 20 games and still went on to the playoffs.
Although he is clearly concerned about several aspects of his team’s play right now, Snyder isn’t hitting the panic button.
“I’m not trying to spin this like we’re rejoicing about what happened tonight,” he said. “We’ve got to play better, there’s things we can do better and we’ll keep doing the things we can do and controlling the things we can control. We’re going to improve. I feel good about that prospect given the fact that we responded this evening.”
Mitchell agreed.
“Obviously we wanted to have a better road trip but we have some things we can build on and work on and this is another step along the road. We’ll figure it out though, for sure.”
"Happy" - Google News
December 03, 2019 at 12:03PM
https://ift.tt/33Kly8A
Jazz are happy to get home again after suffering fourth loss on five-game road trip in Philadelphia - Deseret News
"Happy" - Google News
https://ift.tt/2VPek0I
Shoes Man Tutorial
Pos News Update
Meme Update
Korean Entertainment News
Japan News Update
No comments:
Post a Comment