[ad_1]
SALT LAKE CITY – After Wednesday's game, Donovan Mitchell expressed his utmost confidence in every player on his team.
"We could have half of the guys out and I would always trust our team to go out there and do what we do because everyone is stuck," he said.
It was not a blind trust either. Mitchell had more or less seen it.
Wednesday morning, the Jazz already knew that they were going to be deprived of Derrick Favors, Kyle Korver and Dante Exum. But as the match drew closer, the bad news continued to arrive.
First, Jae Crowder was dismissed with a right bruise. Then, less than an hour before the news, the Jazz announced that Ricky Rubio would also miss the match because of the tense hamstrings.
So maybe it was not a big surprise: the Jazz won 5 points in 5:36 in front of the Phoenix Suns teams with the worst record of the Western Conference.
But in the last minutes, the Jazz did what they did recently.
Utah beat the Suns 19-3 in the final at 5:02 to win the 118-97 win in Phoenix on Wednesday. It was the sixth consecutive victory of Jazz and his 11th in his last 12 games. Utah improved to 48-30 over the season.
"The next man," said Mitchell. "We've been saying it for two years now. Every game, you see why. It's more common in games like this one. "
Mitchell pointed to Georges Niang, who scored 11 points in 26 minutes and is part of the final formation of Utah who eliminated the Suns.
He mentioned Grayson Allen, who scored a career-high 14 points. Allen provided a key spark on the bench in the first half after the Jazz found themselves in a quick 15-0 in the opening minutes of the game. He scored 10 points in the second half and it was his corner scorer who tied the game at 33 points in the second quarter – the Jazz would have no place in the competition.
Mitchell mentioned Ekpe Udoh, who had six points, seven rebounds, four assists and two blocks – in just 11 minutes.
And he also mentioned other players – like Joe Ingles and Rudy Gobert – who, along with Mitchell, led the fourth-quarter Jazz race to close the game.
Ingles tied his career high of 27 points on 10 shots out of 13 and got eight assists. Gobert earned 17 points and 13 rebounds for his 63rd double of the season, beating Carl Malone's franchise record. Mitchell had 29 points, six assists and five rebounds.
"Resist their race and go back," said Mitchell about the final stretch of the Jazz. "I think we had all the tools. Joe did it, I fired shots, Grayson defending and running in transition, Royce doing his thing, George (Niang). When everyone is on the same page, it is very easy to make those efforts, especially late. "
But it was a race that Jazz coach Quin Snyder would have liked to see happen a little earlier. At the beginning of the second half, the Jazz made a terribly slow start to the match, but did not take advantage of a few chances to put the game away.
"I felt we had missed an opportunity at the end of the third, early in the fourth when we had stops," Snyder said. "There was a period when we had a turn-over, we fired quickly without making a pass and they attacked each other, and we've never really been able to do it. stretch in advance.
Even in the absence of Devin Booker, who left the game in the first quarter after a scary turn at the ankle, the Suns managed to scare the Jazz. At least until the last minutes.
"Joe and Donovan hit big shots," Snyder said. "They were timely."
The Jazz return home Friday for a game against the Sacramento Kings.
[ad_2]
Source link