HOUSTON — This was not the first time that Kris Dunn and Jabari Smith Jr. have gotten into it.
Back on January 20, both players were issued technical fouls when they got into a push-and-shove (nothing burger) of a fight during the third quarter of the Utah Jazz’s overtime loss to the Houston Rockets.
But on Saturday night at the Toyota Center, rather than just words being shared and a little push here and there, both players took swings.
Just five seconds had elapsed in the second quarter of an eventual 147-119 win by the Rockets, and there were Smith and Dunn, tangled up, Dunn holding onto Smith’s jersey, before both players tried to punch one another.
Neither player landed a punch, but according to the letter of the law, landing a punch does not matter, and both players were ejected.
Following the game Dunn told the Deseret News that it was just two guys who exchanged some words and then it went a tad farther. He also said that he would respect any further discipline that comes from the league.
“I take responsibility for my actions,” Dunn said. “Whatever the league decides, I’ll respect it.”
According to the NBA rulebook, “any player who throws a punch, whether it connects or not, has committed an unsportsmanlike act. He will be ejected following confirmation during review by instant replay and suspended for a minimum of one game.”
While that’s not a huge deal for the Jazz — losing Dunn for one game is not going to impact their place in the standings in a way that they will care about — the Rockets need Smith.
Houston is trying to win games, and the Rockets are doing a really good job of it lately, despite some injury problems. They’re 10-1 in their last 11 games after beating the Jazz and are 1.5 games behind the Golden State Warriors, who are currently in the final Play-In spot.
“We are playing good basketball,” Fred VanVleet said. “We know where we are in the standings, making a push, but more than anything, you have that spirit and that belief and that confidence and you can see it and you can feel it. It’s good to have this time of year.”
Already missing Steven Adams, who had surgery on his right knee before he was traded to Houston, the Rockets are also playing right now without their leading scorer Alperen Sengun (right ankle sprain) and their two top bench scorers, Tari Eason and rookie Cam Whitmore (Eason had season-ending surgery but Whitmore should be able to return before the season ends from a right knee sprain).
The Rockets have a really tough schedule coming up and they need to squeeze out every win they can, especially because Golden State already owns the tiebreaker over Houston, so any game where they are missing Smith, who averages 31 minutes per game for the Rockets, is going to hurt.
Though, you wouldn’t know it by the way they scored on the Jazz on Saturday.
Defensive effort
The Rockets went into half time with an 85-55 lead over the Jazz. The game was already over at that point, but the Rockets continued to lay it on thick, finishing the night by hitting 27 3-pointers, scoring 30 fastbreak points and Jalen Green leading the way with 41 points to his name.
“Whether we scored or even off a miss...we didn’t sprint back on defense like we should have,” Collin Sexton said. “I feel like transition defense is something that we keep harping about but it hasn’t changed. We have to continue to buckle down.”
VanVleet hit five of his 10 3-pointers in the first quarter, and after that, the Jazz were still slow to close out on him or were giving him space for deep looks. But by that time he was already in a rhythm.
“There’s a lot of things that go on in organized basketball that in a weird way would never happen in a pickup game,” Jazz head coach Will Hardy said. “I promise that if I hit five 3s in a row in a pickup game, our team would not let me shoot the sixth.”
The Jazz aren’t expecting to win these games and they understand that there are nights that they are set up to fail, but it’s how they are failing that is frustrating.
“Fred VanVleet was hitting some wild stuff,” John Collins said. “But on our end we need to take some more pride in just stopping guys. Really just, excuse my French, but play [expletive] harder. I don’t have any excuse for that. Like I said, kudos to those guys for being able to make tough shots, but at some point we have got to figure it out.”