SALT LAKE CITY — Monday night’s game between the Utah Jazz and Houston Rockets at Vivint Arena was supposed to be the Jazz’s second straight high-stakes affair against a Western Conference playoff team after last Saturday’s intense win over the Dallas Mavericks.
Before the game, however, all three of the Rockets’ best players (James Harden, Russell Westbrook and Clint Capela) were ruled out, and Houston played Sunday night in high-altitude Denver, which made for an incredibly challenging back-to-back.
In other words, there was every reason to believe that Utah would do to a shorthanded Rockets team what it has done to opponents so many times over the last six weeks. That is, cruise right past them to a sizable win.
But even though both squads are wildly different from the ones that faced off in the first round of the playoffs last season, Monday was a strange repeat of that series in one respect, as the Jazz struggled mightily to make shots in the first half and didn’t otherwise get into the game en route to a 126-117 loss.
As if foreshadowing the result during his pregame meeting with the media, Utah head coach Quin Snyder was asked how his team would stay focused playing a team as shorthanded as Houston was going to be.
“Well, I think there’s plenty of examples of shorthanded teams playing well and winning,” he said, “and I think as much as we’ve talked about a couple things — we’ve talked about getting better throughout the course of the year, and in order to do that, we’ve wanted to make it about us and how we play. Obviously competition helps clarify those things for you. Tonight’s no different.”
There are plenty of things to point to that went wrong for the Jazz, but shooting in the first half was a big culprit. After Utah infamously was terrible from distance in last season’s playoffs, which was a big motivating factor in management bringing in the likes of Bojan Bogdanovic and Mike Conley, the Jazz went just 3-of-22 from behind the 3-point line in the first half of their first game this season against the Rockets.
Joe Ingles was 0-for-5 from deep in the opening 24 minutes, Royce O’Neale and Jordan Clarkson were both 0-for-3 and Conley was 0-for-2. Bogdanovic was just 1-of-3.
Utah wasn’t successful inside either, despite the fact that without Capela, the Rockets’ starting lineup featured no one taller than the 6-foot-6 Danuel House Jr. No matter for the road side, as Rudy Gobert was largely ineffective early, scoring just four points and grabbing five rebounds in the first half.
Defensively, Utah had a terrible time on the perimeter, as Eric Gordon lit up the scoreboard for 24 points in the first half alone and Austin Rivers repeatedly blew past his defender (a few different Jazzmen were guilty) for easy baskets.
All told, the Rockets led 59-46 at the break.
“I thought they created some adversity for us in the game and I don’t think we responded to that by collectively raising our level,” Snyder said afterward. “That’s the best way I can say it. I don’t think it was any one thing. There were a lot of different things and we have been in situations where those things have brought us together and made us better and we fought that tonight.”
Coming out of intermission, Utah looked to be getting back in the game, as it cut the deficit to six on two different occasions, but the Jazz couldn’t sustain it, committed a couple of mindless turnovers and soon found themselves down by 15.
The teams went into the fourth quarter with Houston leading by 12, and instead of mounting a real comeback, Utah trailed by as many as 17. The Jazz got to within seven with just under 40 seconds to go, but as had been the case all night long, they didn’t make the necessary hustle plays to get any closer than that.
Gordon wound up dropping a whopping 50 points on an outstanding 14-of-22 shooting. That included clips of 6-of-11 from behind the 3-point line, and he also went 16-of-20 from the free-throw line (the Rockets attempted 49 from the charity stripe). House and Rivers added 21 points apiece.
“They came in here and they were the one who threw the first punch and we were playing catch up,” Conley said. “We tried to find a way to find something in the second half but it was a tough night.”
Donovan Mitchell led Utah with 36 points, and Bogdanovic finished with 30.
Utah will now head back out on the road for a three-game trip against conference teams.