‘It was a really good win’: Resilient Utah Jazz come back, outlast Brooklyn Nets for 4th straight victory

SALT LAKE CITY — In the last week, the Utah Jazz have racked up four victories in four games after dropping two straight, and each win has come in rather different fashion from the others.

There was the staving off of the Philadelphia 76ers, the late-game heroics against the Milwaukee Bucks, the comfortable win over the Golden State Warriors, and on Tuesday night against the Brooklyn Nets at Vivint Smart Home Arena, there was the comeback.

Down by 15 points at halftime in the second game of a back-to-back, the Jazz rallied to within two before falling back down by eight entering the fourth quarter. Utah charged back again, however, and then made the plays in the closing seconds to secure its eighth win on the young season by a final score of 119-114.

“There was no way we were going to shut down,” Jazz coach Quin Snyder said of his team’s mindset at halftime, “but the resolve that they showed, and then to carry it forward, it was a really good win.”

Down the stretch, a bunch of Utah players stepped up. Jeff Green and Emmanuel Mudiay were huge in getting the Jazz back in it early in the final period, Joe Ingles played phenomenal defense on Nets star Kyrie Irving as Irving missed his last eight shot attempts and Rudy Gobert scored a couple of buckets and pulled down a couple of rebounds in the final 90 seconds.

“There was no way we were going to shut down, but the resolve that they showed, and then to carry it forward, it was a really good win.” — Jazz coach Quin Snyder

Then with 3.8 seconds remaining and Utah leading 116-114, Mike Conley made one free throw before missing his next, but Bojan Bogdanovic tipped the ball out to drain clock. Donovan Mitchell was fouled with a second left and made both free throws to seal the deal.

“That speaks to the whole team, where our mindset is at,” Mudiay said. “It’s definitely tough, especially on a back-to-back, but if we want to be a great team, we can’t use that as an excuse. We’ve just got to go out there and try to win every game that we play.”

As Mudiay indicated, from a scheduling perspective, Tuesday’s game was primed to be one of the Jazz’s most challenging of the season, even if Brooklyn entered the night with just a 4-5 record.

Not only was it the second game of a back-to-back after a road contest, but tip off occurred less than 24 hours after Monday night’s win over the Golden State Warriors began, something schedule makers try to avoid.

The Jazz landed back in Salt Lake City after 2:30 a.m. on Tuesday morning, and it certainly looked like it early, as Utah was lethargic on both ends of the floor in the first half, especially in the second quarter, as it was down 68-53 heading into the locker room.

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But Utah turned it around quickly, going on a 13-0 run to start the third quarter.

“I think the biggest thing is to try to figure out and be honest with ourselves as a group why you’re playing the way you’re playing,” Snyder said of the halftime conversation. “We weren’t defending the way that we could, and then that also, we were sluggish offensively, and we just had to be sharper mentally. These guys have a lot of character. I think it’s a competitive group, and they competed together.”

Gobert said, “We really wanted to come back second half and make it a little tougher on them and try to run a little more offense and get back in the game. At the end it was just the team that was going to get the stops and get the clutch buckets at the end.”

Even though it’s so early in the season, Gobert noted how big games such as Tuesday’s can end up being in the bigger picture of the campaign.

“We know that at the end of the season, it’s going to be the difference between being first or second in the West or being fourth or fifth,” he said. “We know these games matter. There’s not many teams that would be able to do what we did tonight against a good team.”