Utah Jazz coach Will Hardy found a silver lining after his team’s 106-94 home loss to the Dallas Mavericks on Saturday night.
His team, which will host the Los Angeles Lakers on Sunday night in Salt Lake City, has lost three games in a row and seven of its last eight. But Hardy liked parts of what he saw in the double-digit defeat against a Dallas team playing without Luka Doncic (wrist sprain).
“Tonight’s a perfect example of there’s a difference between playing bad and shooting bad,” Hardy said. “If the competitiveness, the togetherness, the energy, the fight is at that level every night, there’s a lot of good things ahead in Utah.”
To the Jazz’s credit, they made it a competitive game after falling behind the Mavericks by 20 points in the first half. Despite a rough shooting night, Utah got within three points in the third quarter and was within striking distance in the fourth.
Utah ended up shooting 35.8 percent from the field while hitting 23.1 percent of its 3-point shots.
Lauri Markkanen scored a team-high 19 points but only made 7 of 20 shots from the floor, including 2 of 11 from beyond the arc. Walker Kessler made 7 of 9 shots while finishing with 18 points, 10 rebounds, five blocks and three steals, but the other three players in double figures– John Collins, Collin Sexton and Brice Sensabaugh — shot a combined 15-for-40 from the floor.
“Probably my favorite game of the year. We couldn’t throw the ball in the ocean,” Hardy said. … “(But) we guarded well enough to win the game. We competed well enough to win the game. We just didn’t shoot well enough to win the game.”
The Jazz shot much better in their most recent game against the Lakers, a 124-118 win by Los Angeles on Nov. 19.
Unfortunately for Utah, the Lakers made 55.3 percent of their shots in that victory. Dalton Knecht hit 12 of 16 — including 9 of 12 from 3-point range — for a game-high 37 points. LeBron James and Anthony Davis each scored 26 points on a combined 19-for-32 shooting from the floor.
Knecht scored a team-high 20 points in the Lakers’ 101-93 loss to the visiting Oklahoma City Thunder on Friday night.
“There were a half-dozen to a dozen plays that just shot us in the foot even before the late-game stuff,” Lakers coach JJ Redick said. “We played well enough and hard enough to win against the best team in the West. So there’s definitely good stuff.”
Los Angeles enters this matchup having lost four of five games.
Redick liked his team’s defense against the Thunder. The Lakers trailed by only one point before Shai Gilgeous-Alexander drained a 3-pointer with 1:35 left.
“That was as connected as our group has been on that end of the floor since the first game of the season,” Redick said. “Just, you know, a really outstanding job with a lot of the stuff we talked about.”
This will be Utah’s second home back-to-back set in less than a week. Utah was upended by San Antonio 128-115 on Tuesday and then got tripped up by Denver 122-103 on Wednesday night.
–Field Level Media
