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Game 59: Utah Jazz 103 @ Houston Rockets 91
Houston's butt kicked? Check. Another win? Check. Five more to go.
I love it when our team plays like a team, and wins a big game. Down to just a skeleton crew due to all the injuries, the Jazz pulled off a very solid ROAD victory against a current NBA Western Conference playoff team. And did I mention it was on the road? And it was the Rockets? Sure, they were down Kevin Martin -- but the Jazz were down quite a bit as well (starters: Josh Howard and Raja Bell, along with Earl Watson, C.J. Miles, and Jeremy Evans).
I wanted Al Jefferson to have a Big Al type of game -- but he finished with only 15, 8, with 3 blocks and an assist. (ONLY) These were the numbers we would have died for him to have at the beginning of last season. And these are Mehmet Okur's averages in a Jazz uniform (except replace the blocks with threes). The guys who really brought the house down were Paul Millsap (21/7/4/3/1) and Gordon Hayward (29/6/2/2 with 4/5 from downtown). They combined go to 18/33, which is pretty awesome. It's 55 fg%. That kind of makes up for Big Al's less than 50% shooting for at least one night.
DeMarre Carroll added 10 and 7, and a lot of high enery plays (2 steals, 1 block). Off the bench Derrick Favors got our own double double on the team with 10 and 11 boards, with 2 assists and 3 blocks of his own. Alec Burks only played 10 minutes, but is shooting better than he was during his slump, and went 1/2 from downtown. Enes Kanter played 6 minutes and had 5 rebounds. So yeah. There's that.
As a team the Jazz shot 51.3 fg%, went 6/14 from downtown (42.9 3pt%), and were able to overcome Houston going 25/29 from their Free throw line. For the bad guys they were paced by Goran Dragic who finished with 19 and 7, and missed all 5 of his threes. Chase Budinger went 1/7 from downtown. Kyle Lowry went 1/3. Over all, I'll take it.
Next game is a "we better win" game @ New Orleans Hornets, and then we have a back to back, and road trip match up @ Memphis Grizzlies to finish off the week.
Woo!!
Jazz vs Rockets coverage