The Utah Jazz were extremely successful in their tank lost to the Dallas Mavericks for the second time in a row 120-138.<\/p>\n
In the Mavericks\u2019 meaningless win, they showed that their depth is overall stronger than that of the Utah Jazz. Their reward? They jump two spots in the lottery standings and are closer to the play-in than they are to a top draft pick. Dallas now finds itself in a three-way tie with Milwaukee and Memphis, and is close to falling to 11th.<\/p>\n
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For Utah, they are now just two games up on the Brooklyn Nets and Sacramento Kings. The Kings, who have won four games in a row, are on their way to passing up Utah with Domantas Sabonis coming back soon. Brooklyn is winning more than they want behind the play of Michael Porter Jr., and we\u2019re also seeing Indiana win some more games. Finally, the New Orleans Pelicans have no reason to tank because they don\u2019t own their pick and are definitely going to win some games this season, they don\u2019t want to. Utah would be exceptionally successful if it lost all three of its upcoming games against the Pelicans.<\/p>\n
But how about the game that they played today?<\/p>\n
Utah lost for a few reasons. One, they have one of the youngest rosters in history playing, and they\u2019re also in the midst of a brutal road trip. It\u2019s not surprising they struggled, and that\u2019s perfectly fine. Games like this show who is worth investing in and who may not have what it takes, for now.<\/p>\n
Keyonte George continues to show that he\u2019s a future star for the Jazz. In the third quarter, he was 6\/6 and exploded to finish with 29 points and 6 assists. George is proving to be a core part of the future and a player you can depend on to finish games. What\u2019s exciting is that he will likely continue to improve. And what happens when the Jazz add even more talent? Does that open up even more room for him? He has a chance to be really special next year as the Jazz will be going for the playoffs.<\/p>\n
We\u2019re also seeing some exciting stuff from Cody Williams, who is turning into a legitimate rotation player and potential starter for Utah. Williams had 11 points (5\/8 FG, 1\/2 3PT), 4 rebounds, 2 assists, and 1 steal in 27 minutes. The difference in Cody Williams is night and day from last season and even from a month or two ago. He plays with force on the offensive end and provides great length and athleticism on the defensive end. He\u2019s also shooting the ball well from three recently, which is a great sign, even if it is on a small sample size. It\u2019s something to watch as the season goes along, but Utah is looking like they drafted a good one in Cody Williams.<\/p>\n
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Brice Sensabaugh continued his latest scoring flurry with 25. He only shot 1\/7 from three, but was 10\/20 from the field. It\u2019s nice that Sensabaugh can get this type of scoring when the Jazz need it, but it\u2019s not translating to wins. Somehow, Sensabaugh has to figure out how to involve his teammates more and not just end up shooting it, no matter what is happening in the possession. That said, this scoring is a nice sign for the future, even if that future is a potential bucket getter off the bench.<\/p>\n
Jazz fans have to be excited about the incremental steps that Ace Bailey is making. He had 18 points in this one with 8 rebounds and 1 assist. He is playing within the flow of the game and getting these points regularly. At some point in his career, he\u2019s going to figure out his driving gam,e and it\u2019s going to take him to another level. For now, we can be excited about all the small things he does, including the defense and the ball movement. Ace Bailey was a great pick.<\/p>\n
It continues to be a little bit of a problem with what we\u2019re seeing from Taylor Hendricks and Kyle Filipowski but for different reasons. Filipowski continues to be a pretty terrible defender and is allowing an insane rate of scoring at the rim. He does put up numbers, but it\u2019s fair to ask if what he does on the offensive end outweighs what\u2019s given up on defense. Taylor Hendricks is looking extremely slow. It\u2019s probably related to the injury, and he needs grace, but it doesn\u2019t look good right now. He doesn\u2019t have the same quickness he had before and you can only hope it comes back. Right now, each minute is good because it must help his recovery, but it doesn\u2019t help with winning games. It makes things tough for Will Hardy, who likely wants to allow some development, but things aren\u2019t going very well while he\u2019s on the floor. Let\u2019s hope we start seeing him make steps towards becoming a rotation player. The benefit of what the Jazz are doing now is that it allows him to do that.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Utah Jazz were extremely successful in their tank lost to the Dallas Mavericks for the second time…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":544300,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3785],"tags":[224,7,10511,247,1082,149,4672,113,423,955,1251,562,102,6,470,477,4884,5592,3207,422,427,3972],"class_list":{"0":"post-544299","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-utah-jazz","8":"tag-ace-bailey","9":"tag-basketball","10":"tag-brice-sensabaugh","11":"tag-brooklyn-nets","12":"tag-cody-williams","13":"tag-dallas-mavericks","14":"tag-domantas-sabonis","15":"tag-indiana","16":"tag-jazz","17":"tag-keyonte-george","18":"tag-kyle-filipowski","19":"tag-michael-porter-jr","20":"tag-milwaukee","21":"tag-nba","22":"tag-new-orleans-pelicans","23":"tag-sacramento-kings","24":"tag-taylor-hendricks","25":"tag-the-jazz","26":"tag-the-kings","27":"tag-utah","28":"tag-utah-jazz","29":"tag-utahjazz"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/115914894466095067","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/544299","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=544299"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/544299\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/544300"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=544299"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=544299"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=544299"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}