Through three quarters it looked like the Utah Jazz were on their way to a win against the Portland Trail Blazers Thursday night in the final game of a five-game road trip.
The Jazz were playing incredibly well on the offensive end despite being without three of their top five scorers — Jordan Clarkson (plantar fasciitis), John Collins (left hip contusion) and Keyonte George (sprained left ankle) — and had done a good job of keeping the Trail Blazers out of the paint.
Against Portland, the Jazz shot 50% from 3-point range and allowed just 32 points in the paint through the first three quarters.
In just his ninth game on the court with the Jazz, Svi Mykhailiuk started and came out of the gate hot, hitting a career-high tying six 3-pointers.
Lauri Markkanen was all over the place, pacing the Jazz with 25 points to go with six rebounds and three steals, and Collin Sexton had a 19-point, 11-assist double-double.
But in the fourth quarter, the Jazz’s defense waned. Deni Avdija and Shaedon Sharpe made a point of getting to the rim and making the Jazz pay for mistakes on the perimeter.
The two combined for 26 fourth-quarter points and helped the Blazers eat away at the Jazz’s lead.
“We had given up 23 points at the rim through three quarters, and we gave up 24 points at the rim in the fourth quarter alone,” Jazz head coach Will Hardy said.
“Our defense just sort of fractured.”
The teams played pretty even in the final six minutes, tying and trading leads with nearly every possession, including a game-tying 3 from Markkanen with just 14 seconds left.
But it was second-year guard Scoot Henderson who had the ball in his hands on the Blazers’ final trip down the court, and with just one tenth of a second left on the clock, he hit a game-winning shot from 12 feet out to give the Blazers a 122-120 win.
“We came into the game with the notion that we needed to do a few things based on their personnel, but overall, we felt like if we could take care of the rim and execute offensively, we had a really good chance to win this game,” Hardy said.
“And through three quarters, we did that. I felt like in the fourth quarter, maybe we overreacted a little bit to a few guys making a couple of 3s, but the rim was the most important thing.”
With injuries depleting some of the Jazz’s roster, it gave the team’s rookies a chance for some extended play. Isaiah Collier, Kyle Filipowski and Cody Williams were all with the team and able to play against the Blazers in a game that, although resulted in a loss, will ultimately be valuable, close-game experience for the youngsters.
“I feel like it’s a great experience for all of us because we have a young team and close games teach us a lot,” Mykhailiuk said. “I hope we learn from our mistakes, and I hope to keep going forward. This is a great experience, because it gives us opportunities to play late-game and see how we need to approach it.”
The Jazz will be back at the Delta Center on Saturday to face the Philadelphia 76ers and then will be at home again on Monday to play the Denver Nuggets.