‘There will be nights like this’: Jazz explained the 34-point loss for the Pelicans

Estimated reading time: 3-4 minutes

NEW ORLEANS – Before Friday’s game, New Orleans coach Willie Green was asked why he thought the Utah Jazz had the best offensive line in the league this season.

“They don’t make a lot of mistakes,” Green said.

They probably don’t usually…

On Friday, though, things were tough – really tough.

The Jazz dropped by 18 points after the first quarter, fell by 27 at the end of the first half, and fell by as much as 37 in the second half, as Utah was completely flattened by the Pelicans 124-90 at Smoothie King center.

“Out of 82 nights, it’s going to be like this,” Jazz coach Quinn Snyder said.

The Jazz allowed easy points in the transition early on and struggled to break the paint and get into their attack against the Long Pelicans. That was a bad combination; This led New Orleans to a 20-point lead early in the second quarter. Bullets remained above that mark for the rest of the night.

The Jazz scored low points for the season and shot 34.8% from the field.

“We’ll spend nights like this…give credit where credit is due,” said Donovan Mitchell.

Utah didn’t play well — far from it — but for Mitchell, the game was more about swans than jazz. Herb Jones & Company forced Mitchell to let go of the ball, and Jazz forced to make two, three, or four more passes to get into the fairway. When jazz didn’t – and it was few and far between – it often led to spin and opportunity to go the other way.

Soon the bullets swelled and swelled.

“They made it hard and made it hard for 48 minutes,” Mitchell said. “I think that’s what made this performance for them so special.”

There have been a lot of matches this season as the jazz started slowly. To use just one example on Sunday, Utah found itself 14 points behind the Phoenix Suns in the opening minutes of the game before returning and winning.

Snyder even said that a 20-point lead in the NBA is nothing. This is usually the case. The way most teams can score, a single round can change anything. On Friday, though, the Jazz didn’t even threaten to return.

What is different?

“I can’t say we were experiencing it as a group,” Mitchell said.

That was obvious – no one played well.

Mitchell was kept under watch by the impressive rookie Jones (Mitchell even sat down after his press conference to make sure he was praising Jones), who finished with 14 points in a 5-for-18 shot.

Bojan Bogdanovic went 1 out of 11 from the field and scored only 5 points. Mike Conley and Jordan Clarkson both went 0 to 4 from a 3-point range. Even the end-of-match line-up of Nikel Alexander Walker, Juancho Hermongomes, Odoka Azubuike, Eric Paschal and Jared Butler edged out the points by eight in the final seven minutes.

Mitchell couldn’t point his finger at what exactly wasn’t in Utah—was it fatigue? Poor mentality? – But, frankly, with the way the pelicans were playing, it probably didn’t matter anyway.

“I don’t really want to tell us right now, I really want to give them credit because when you get to 30 in half and then you keep staying up 30, no matter what, (that’s hard),” Mitchell said. “We were going to hit a shot, run a little fast and they hit back. Save with a transition or a mid-range shot. That’s a skill in itself and you have to give credit when the credit is due and that’s really where I am. They played really good basketball tonight. We didn’t.”

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