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Sarah Todd
Guest
WASHINGTON, D.C. — In a hoodie and sweats, Donovan Mitchell stood in the visiting team tunnel at the corner of the court at Capital One Arena watching the last few minutes of Sunday’s game.
It was the first game that Mitchell has missed this season, and even though he was sick and supposed to be resting, he couldn’t help but get as close to the game as possible and he was there to high five and congratulate each one of his teammates as they headed for the locker room after the Utah Jazz came from behind to beat the Washington Wizards 127-116.
The Jazz secured the victory with a second half surge with Rudy Gobert turning things around on the defensive end and scoring 19 of his 21 points in the final two periods and Jordan Clarkson adding 17 second-half points in yet another impressive outing off the bench.
“This team is one of the best teams. They’re on the hottest streak in NBA,” Wizards coach Scott Brooks said. “The game was different from the first half than in the second half but they had a couple of hot players. Clarkson always seems to be a guy that we have trouble staying in front of and he proved it again tonight.”
Sunday’s contest had all the makings of a tough game.
It was the first of a three-game stretch on the road on the East Coast, against a team that’s fighting to breakout from the bottom of the standings that had won three of their last four games, and it was a matinee game with a 3:30 EST tipoff.
Then, to top it all off, Mitchell, under the weather, would not be on the court to help.
Despite everything, including a rough first half, the Jazz prevailed for their ninth consecutive win — the longest such Jazz streak since March of 2018 — improving their record to 27-12 on the season and temporarily moving into second place in the Western Conference standings.
For days Mitchell hadn’t been feeling top notch, but finally had to give his body some rest on Sunday, and for the first 24 minutes of the game, with Emmanuel Mudiay starting in Mitchell’s absence, the Jazz played like a team that was missing a key ingredient.
The defense was off, missing switches and not contesting shots, and the offense was having trouble penetrating and getting to the basket. Even with Bojan Bogdanovic scoring 22 of his 31 points in the first half the defense wasn’t active enough to keep the Wizards from going into intermission with a 66-55 lead.
“Obviously Donovan is one of our key guys so there’s always going to be a little adjustment,” Jazz coach Quin Snyder said. “I thought our guys did a good job of absorbing that collectively.”
After an uncharacteristically poor defensive performance in the in the first half, Gobert took it upon himself to make sure that things would be different down the stretch of the game.
“I was being indecisive and we gave up a lot of bad cuts, a lot of layups and they got confident,” Gobert said of the first half. “We really wanted to come out in the second half and start to play some defense.”
The Jazz held the Wizards to a 39.1% from the field and 21.4% from beyond the arc in the second half, a far cry from the 61.7% overall and 50% from deep that they allowed in the first half.
On the other end of the floor after only taking one shot through the entirety of the opening two quarters, Gobert made the Wizards pay in the paint, working through contact and playing with discipline in the fourth quarter after notching his fifth foul.
The Wizards were paced by Bradley Beal who finished the night with 25 points and Davis Bertans, who hit some big transition threes in the first half, with 18 points.
The Jazz continue their road trip on Tuesday in Brooklyn against the Nets before heading to New Orleans to face the Pelicans on Thursday.
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