Lauri Markkanen scored 28 points, Keyonte George poured in 32 to pace the visiting Utah Jazz to a 123-112 win over the Cleveland Cavaliers at Rocket Arena. The Cavs were flattened in the first few minutes of the game, trailing by 17 in the first quarter, before rallying to take an eight-point lead into halftime.<\/p>\n
Everything unraveled after that.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey won the mental battle, and I guess I could do a better job of putting appropriate fear (into the team),\u201d Head Coach Kenny Atkinson said after the game. \u201cThis is the NBA.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI think it\u2019s the psychology of sports,\u201d Atkinson said when asked about what the biggest issue was with the Cavs. \u201cSometimes the psychology is the most important thing.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Jazz, who now have 14 wins on the season, have certainly been playing better than in years past. But the Cavs were 12.5-point favorites coming into the game, fresh off arguably their best win of the season over the Minnesota Timberwolves, and appeared to be gathering steam. But the Jazz put that fire out, despite coming off a 50-point loss at home to Charlotte.<\/p>\n
Once again, the Cavs had an incredibly uneven performance. They fell behind 19-4 in just a few minutes to start the game, came all the way back to take the lead, and then allowed 14-straight points to start the third quarter. They never recovered from that point, trailed heading into the fourth quarter, and could only stay within arm\u2019s reach until the final buzzer.<\/p>\n
Jarrett Allen finished with just eight points and four rebounds, and Evan Mobley had 15 points, nine rebounds, and eight assists (tied for a team-high). Jazz center Jusuf Nurkic out-rebounded the entire Cavs starting lineup by himself. The Cavs\u2019 bench kept them in the game, led by Nae\u2019Qwon Tomlin.<\/p>\n
Tomlin was the lone bright spot for Cleveland, bringing his patented energy and hustle that the rest of the team seems to forget about. Tomlin ended the night with 13 points, three rebounds, three assists, two blocks, and a steal in 19 minutes of action.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe plays really hard,\u201d Atkinson said about Tomlin post-game. \u201cHe\u2019s shooting the ball better, feels more confident. He\u2019s fitting into that perfect role player situation.\u201d<\/p>\n
Too often, the Cavs appeared to either be slack in getting back in transition, fighting on the glass (they were out-rebounded 50-30), or the offense looked completely flat. Possessions would end in contested jumpers, stonewalled drives to the rim, or turnovers. They simply were not good enough, consistently enough, to win.<\/p>\n
It doesn\u2019t help when you dig a huge hole before the first timeout, forcing the need for a comeback. Occasionally, you will find a way to win. But more often than not, it\u2019s insurmountable.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen we are in this position, we can\u2019t afford to make the little mistakes,\u201d Donovan Mitchell said post-game. \u201cSlow starts, a bad third quarter in Minnesota, or a bad second quarter against Detroit, we don\u2019t have the margin for error.\u201d Mitchell finished with 21 points (7\/18 shooting) and eight assists, while Darius Garland had a team-high 23 points on a similar level of shooting efficiency.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey were desperate, they were physical, they won the aggressive match,\u201d Atkinson added. \u201cWe just kind of played.\u201d<\/p>\n
At just about the halfway point of the season, the Cavs have to do more than just play. There has to be a sense of urgency from a team that didn\u2019t have just playoff aspirations; they had championship ones.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Lauri Markkanen scored 28 points, Keyonte George poured in 32 to pace the visiting Utah Jazz to a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":533628,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[3785],"tags":[7,52699,423,6,422,427,3972],"class_list":{"0":"post-533627","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-utah-jazz","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-cavs-scores","10":"tag-jazz","11":"tag-nba","12":"tag-utah","13":"tag-utah-jazz","14":"tag-utahjazz"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/115887188682038837","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/533627","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=533627"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/533627\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/533628"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=533627"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=533627"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=533627"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}