{"id":436775,"date":"2025-11-26T15:45:19","date_gmt":"2025-11-26T15:45:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/436775\/"},"modified":"2025-11-26T15:45:19","modified_gmt":"2025-11-26T15:45:19","slug":"northwest-notes-kessler-lillard-wolves-thunder","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/436775\/","title":{"rendered":"Northwest Notes: Kessler, Lillard, Wolves, Thunder"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Jazz lost Walker Kessler<\/a> to a season-ending shoulder injury<\/a> at the end of last month. It has greatly affected their defense, as Andy Larsen of the Salt Lake Tribune<\/a> details.<\/p>\n

Jusuf Nurkic<\/a> has been thrust into the starting center role and while he\u2019s a prolific rebounder, he\u2019s a subpar defender. Kevin Love<\/a>, 37, has been Nurkic\u2019s primary backup and the only other option is to move true power forwards into that spot. Utah has allowed 130 or more points in six of its last nine games.<\/p>\n

Kessler will be a restricted free agent at season\u2019s end, so if the Jazz keep struggling mightily on defense without him available, his representatives could use that point to generate some leverage during contract negotiations.<\/p>\n

We have more from the Northwest Division:<\/p>\n

The Trail Blazers defeated Milwaukee on Monday after losing seven of their previous nine games. Damian Lillard<\/a>, rehabbing this season from his Achilles injury he suffered during last season\u2019s playoffs, has been dispensing advice to his younger teammates during the rough patch, Jason Quick of The Athletic<\/a> writes. \u201cI told these dudes: this is the time when you find your true identity,\u201d Lillard said. \u201cIt\u2019s not when you win a couple games and everything feels good. It\u2019s in the moments when it would be easy to walk away \u2014 like now, we have some injuries, a rough patch, a tough schedule \u2014 but this is the time when you make a decision to march forward and up.\u201d
\nThe Timberwolves have collapsed in back-to-back late-game situations. After surrendering a nine-point lead with 50 seconds to play in Phoenix on Saturday, they gave away a 10-point lead in the final three minutes of regulation during a 117-112 overtime loss to the Kings on Monday. This has set off alarm bells amongst the team and its fans and The Athletic\u2019s Jon Krawczynski<\/a> examines some possible causes to their crunch-time woes. \u201cHopefully we learn,\u201d center Rudy Gobert<\/a> said. \u201cWe still have an amazing opportunity ahead of us, but we have to decide who we want to be.\u201d
\nHow good has the Thunder\u2019s defense been this season? The Athletic\u2019s Fred Katz (Twitter link<\/a>) notes that they are allowing 7.5 fewer points per 100 possessions than the second-ranked Mavericks are. That\u2019s the same difference as the gap between Dallas and the No. 22 ranked Bulls in that category.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Jazz lost Walker Kessler to a season-ending shoulder injury at the end of last month. It has…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":385687,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3785],"tags":[7,125,423,5088,1678,6,422,427,3972,1405],"class_list":{"0":"post-436775","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-utah-jazz","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-damian-lillard","10":"tag-jazz","11":"tag-jusuf-nurkic","12":"tag-kevin-love","13":"tag-nba","14":"tag-utah","15":"tag-utah-jazz","16":"tag-utahjazz","17":"tag-walker-kessler"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/115616777887091300","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/436775","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=436775"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/436775\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/385687"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=436775"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=436775"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=436775"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}