NBA Regular Season: Final Score Utah Jazz 84, Phoenix Suns 99

NBA Regular Season 2012-2013, Game 24:

Utah Jazz 84 at Phoenix Suns 99

#UTAatPHX Game Stream -- Bright Side Of The Sun -- Jazz vs Suns coverage

Jazz lose, Phoenix evens the series 1-1

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Quick Recap:

• Who: The "Bad" Utah Jazz, that we usually see on the road
  
• What: Failed to stop dribble penetration
  
• When: During a decisive 16-4 first quarter run
  
• Where: and gave up the paint, which then led to giving up open outside jumpers
  
• Why: because the "Bad" Utah Jazz showed up tonight.

More realistically it was that quintessential "trap game", the Suns came into this game 2-8 in their Last 10 with horrible defensive stats. They had the last laugh by holding the Jazz to 84 points. Total. As a team we shot 40.2 fg% and an unfamiliar (for this season) 27.3 3pt%. If I wanted to point fingers I would point it at Randy Foye who went 3/13 overall, and 1/4 from downtown. He's starting because he makes shots -- not for anything else. (And really, in 32 minutes he had 2 rebounds and 1 assist; if he's not hitting shots he's not doing anything else on the floor) But I'm not going to point fingers here, the team wins games and the team loses games. No one does it by themselves.

Al Jefferson had a similarly uncharacteristically poor shooting night (after starting the game off hitting all kinds of crazy shot) -- 6/16, and 14 points off of 16 shots isn't a good look. Marvin Williams and Paul Millsap combined to go 10 / 15 and scored 23 points. They did well, but despite scoring 84 total points it was really our defense that was the problem; not the offense.

Phoenix scored 48 points in the paint, went 46.% from downtown, and Jared Dudley, Markieff Morris, Michael Beasley, and Sebastian Telfair went 6/8 from outside. We gave it up early and often to those guys and the timemachine game Jermaine O'Neal brought (7 points, 3 rebounds in 15 minutes). Marcin Gortat only had 1 point and 8 rebounds back in November in Utah. Tonight he had 12 and 14, with 3 assists and 2 blocks. Quite the redemption game.

It was all pretty much started by Goran Dragic though. Dribble penetration. It's a problem.

But we need to shrug off this loss and prepare for tomorrow's game at home against the Memphis Grizzlies. Sports are entertainment. While this game wasn't entertaining for us, in the big picture a Friday night Utah Jazz road loss isn't the end of the world.

Go Jazz Go!

PS. Turn overs suck -- and so does losing to a Michael Beasley team.

PPS. No Post Game Video tonight