CLEVELAND — The Utah Jazz fell to 10-18 on the season with a 124-116 loss to the Cleveland Cavaliers at Rocket Mortgage Fieldhouse on Wednesday night.
Here’s a look inside the numbers from the Jazz’s loss:
Best performance: Sam Merrill, the former Utah State University standout, scored a career-high 27 points for the Cavaliers, hitting 8 of 14 from 3-point range.
Worst performance: Usually when Ochai Agbaji has a low scoring game, there are a lot of things he does that don’t show up in the box score, particularly on the defensive end. But on Wednesday night Agbaji got caught making some bad decisions and being a liability when he was out of position, and that was on top of only hitting a single 3-pointer.
3: The Jazz were only trailing by single digits in the last few minutes of the game, but then they committed three fouls in a span of 23 seconds, putting the Cavs in the bonus and playing at more of a disadvantage through the final possessions.
26: The Jazz’s old habit of allowing points off turnovers reared its ugly head on Wednesday and they allowed Cleveland to capitalize on their 16 miscues for 26 points.
11: Talen Horton-Tucker had a career-high tying 11 assists.
Best of the best: Merrill was coming off a career night, having scored 19 points in a Cavs win over the Rockets on Monday. This all comes after racking up nearly as many DNPs this season as he has games played.
Worst of the worst: Agbaji was unfortunately one of the main defenders on Merrill early on in the game and failed to close out hard enough on a few of Merrill’s first open looks, which allowed the Utah native to get into a good rhythm en route to a career night.