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Sarah Todd
Guest
Brooklyn Nets’ Kyrie Irving (11) drives past Utah Jazz’s Rudy Gobert (27) during the first half of an NBA basketball game Tuesday, Jan. 5, 2021, in New York. | Frank Franklin II, Associated Press
The Utah Jazz played their worst game of the season in a wire-to-wire, 130-96 blowout loss to the Brooklyn Nets on Tuesday night in the first game of a back-to-back set on the road.
High notes
- Kyrie Irving was leaving no stone unturned with Kevin Durant sidelined. He scored in every way possible and took advantage of switches and sleepy Jazz defense with reckless abandon. Irving pushed in transition and completely roasted Royce O’Neale in the first half. When a team is missing a player of Durant’s caliber, it’s the responsibility of the other players and stars on the team to pick up the slack, and Irving led the charge for the Nets.
- Jarrett Allen, who was knocked from the Nets starting lineup this season, completely dominated the paint. In a contract year, he’s making a case for himself to get paid a nice amount.
- You might notice that the high notes were from the Nets. That’s not a mistake.
Low notes
- The Utah Jazz were one, big, ugly low note on Tuesday night.
- How is it even possible for the Jazz to look so confused and taken off guard by a team that switches everything? There were maybe a handful of offensive possessions where the Jazz looked like they actually knew what they were doing or had a plan and the rest were just a frantic mess of bad decisions.
- This was the worst game of the season not only for the Jazz as a whole but also individually for many of the Jazz players, including Rudy Gobert, who has been so consistent to this point. It’s rare that a player really outplays Gobert on both ends but Allen did just that on Tuesday, scoring easily over Gobert and protecting the rim for the Nets on the other side. Additionally, Gobert let other driving players into the paint with too much ease.
- O’Neale has been playing really well this season but really looked out of his league against Irving and wasn’t able to stay ahead on most of the Nets’ switches. But even when he was able to contain Irving after a few dribbles, he would give Irving enough space to shoot.
- Not helping the matter was the Jazz’s defensive rotations and lack of effort against every Nets player.
Flat notes
- The Jazz in the first quarter, the Jazz in the second quarter, the Jazz in the third quarter ...
- The bad decision-making was incredible. There were fast breaks when the Jazz had a 2-on-1 advantage, there were wide open looks, unexplainable turnovers, bad fouls and everything in between and the Jazz seemed to make the wrong decision in every scenario.
- The Jazz committed 16 turnovers, which is not great on its own, but they allowed the Nets to score 27 points off those turnovers, which is completely unacceptable.
- Bojan Bogdanovic was forcing shot, Joe Ingles’ fouls were obvious and ill-timed, Gobert’s finishing was horrible, Jordan Clarkson’s turnovers were confusing at best and Donovan Mitchell, who scored 31 points, had to work way too hard for a 10-of-22 night and defensively wasn’t really present.
- DeAndre Jordan committed four fouls in four minutes. Not great, but it didn’t really matter because Allen was killing it.
Full Story from the Deseret News...