Winning is hard on the road, and without a traditional center available to play, on the first night of a back-to-back, trailing the Brooklyn Nets heading into the fourth quarter, it wouldn’t have been shocking if the Utah Jazz took their lumps and moved on to tomorrow’s matchup.
Instead, the Jazz continued to fight and capitalize on the Nets’ weaknesses. That turned into a 42-20 fourth quarter that gave them a 123-110 win.
“It was sort of a back and forth game there for a bit, but the team hung in,” Jazz head coach Will Hardy said. “It’s a moment where the team has to really think as a group, and I thought our communication on both sides of the ball was at its best in the fourth quarter, and it allowed us to come out of here with a road win.”
It wasn’t easy for the Jazz to find their footing on Thursday night in Brooklyn. With Jusuf Nurkić sidelined with a rib contusion and Kevin Love resting on the first night of the back-to-back, the Jazz turned to Kyle Filipowski as their starting center.
That’s beneficial in that it allows the Jazz to play a more wholly switching style of defense, but it also requires more from the rest of the team in order to protect the rim.
While navigating the defensive differences, the Jazz also needed to figure out what kind of offense would work best against the Nets.
The answer: Crank up the pace and pressure the rim.
Lauri Markkanen, usually more of an off-ball player, took advantage of mismatches and his strength with the ball as he led the Jazz with 30 points and eight rebounds, including 10 points in the fourth quarter.
“He did a really good job of recognizing matchups and when he could play in a straight line,” Hardy said. “Lauri generally applies a lot of pressure to the basket as a cutter — not that he doesn’t drive, but a lot of times with our style of play he does a lot of cutting off the ball. Tonight with their switching, we did a little bit more on-ball, and I thought that Lauri did a good job of playing downhill."
Right alongside Markkanen was Keyonte George, who was decisive and laser focused as a playmaker, scoring 29 points to go with his 10 assists and just one turnover.
But there was another player who deserved particular praise on Thursday. Though he didn’t have the most eye-popping statline (eight points, five rebounds, three assists), and he struggled in the first half, Kyle Anderson was crucial in the Jazz’s fourth quarter comeback.
Early in the fourth, he scored six quick points and helped the team settle in before Markkanen and George caught fire and ran away with the lead.
Anderson, who grew up in New Jersey, joked that he had so many loved ones attending the game that he had to make sure they didn’t go home disappointed after his first-half performance.
“At halftime I was like, ‘I got all my family in the crowd, I can’t play this bad,’” he said with a laugh. “‘I gotta turn this around somehow, somewhere,’ and it worked.”
The Jazz improved to 8-13 on the season and will stay in New York to face the Knicks on Friday night at Madison Square Garden.