The Utah Jazz were looking for five wins in a row, but fell two points short of achieving that feat, with a game that featured a lot of everything on Thursday night, but the Utah Jazz’ break and butter, was nowhere to be found, and that was their defense. The Miami Heat came into Salt Lake City and finished their Rocky Mountain sweep(the Heat beat Denver on Wednesday evening) by shooting 51.2 percent from the field in a 111-110 victory over Utah. With the loss, the Jazz drop to 11-9 on the season and will host the Heat’s opponent from Wednesday on Saturday evening, in the Denver Nuggets.
Gordon Hayward led all scorers with 32 points, but couldn’t get his final shot to go, in what would be the last chance the Jazz would get, that counted. Rudy Gobert had a follow up that he made, but it was after the buzzer, by about half a second. A little controversy clouded the last 3.9 seconds. Jazz head coach Quin Snyder thought there should have been more time on the clock, but the refs disagreed. Joe Ingles appeared to call a timeout, but the question was whether or not Ingles called a timeout, prior to the shot clock expiring for the Miami Heat, which was a difference of the game clock being at 3.9 seconds, because of the shot clock violation or an additional three to four tenths of a second, if Ingles got the timeout in, prior to the shot clock violation. Long story short, 3.9 seconds remained on the clock and the Jazz had an attempt to win the game, with arguably their best player shooting the ball. I don’t think you’d want it any other way, right?!
Yes, the Jazz shot nearly 55 percent for the game, from the field and an out of this world 56.7 percent, as a team on three points field goals. That’s a great night from the floor, for any team, including the Golden State Warriors, but it came with the Jazz playing badly on defense.
Allowing the Heat to shoot over 51 percent from the field, while giving up 27 points to Goran Dragic, who is a pretty good player, but also allowing James Johnson to score 24 points?! Johnson hasn’t had this great of a game in scoring, since February of 2015, when he put up a career high of 27 points, against the Houston Rockets. Wayne Ellington of the Heat also scored 17 points, while Josh McRoberts added 10, rounding out their double digit scoring efforts.
For the Jazz, after Hayward’s 32 point performance, it was 4 other double digits scorers, as Joe Johnson had 18 points, while Joe Ingles, Trey Lyles and Shelvin Mack contributed with 15, 14 and 11 points, respectively. But again, the high shooting percentage given up by the Jazz, combined with 13 offensive rebounds by the Heat, to Utah’s five boards on the offensive end, proved to be too much for the Jazz to overcome. Controversy or not!
