Boston Celtics at Utah Jazz Game Recap: Jazz come up short 90-99

The highly anticipated showdown between your Utah Jazz and the Boston Celtics was quite the ugly display of basketball for much of the game, (especially for Jazz fans).

The first quarter was like watching some JV squads playing horse with both teams tied up at 17 a piece at the end of the 1st. To put that into perspective, Klay Thompson scored more in the 3rd quarter the other night compared to what both teams did in the first quarter this game.

Moving on to the 2nd quarter, the Jazz wanted to prove to the world that they could, in fact, do even worse in the second quarter, mustering only 14 points in the 2nd against the surprisingly suffocating Celtic defense.

In the first half, Rudy had an impressive, but commonplace-for-him, 3 blocks, 4 points, and 5 boards.

Other Jazz leaders from the first half included Favors and Kanter who both went into halftime with 8 points a piece.

What compounded the Jazz struggles in what was one of the worst quarters for the Jazz this season was that Boston was finding their shot en route to score 38 points in the 2nd quarter which led to a +24 point differential in favor of the men in green.

The Jazz's shooting percentages were at 36% overall, 13% from outside, and 44% from the line in the 1st half...yuck!

Meanwhile the Celtics were at 54% overall, 58% from outside, and 100% from the line.

Fast forward to the 2nd half where things couldn't have possibly gotten any worse and then....

The Jazz follow up one of their worst quarters all season with one of their inspiringly best!

The Jazz made shot after shot with an 18-0 run! 8 minutes into the 2nd half, the Jazz trimmed a 24 point deficit down to 4!

It was exciting to watch the chess match that Coach Q and Coach Stevens had going from the sidelines with each of them trying to get one step ahead of the other. This was also evident with the many extreme runs that went on in this bout.

The rest of the 3rd quarter was quite the exciting spectacle with both teams trading shot after shot, along with Hayward reaching 19 points and Kanter hitting the 18 point mark. Prince led the Celtics at the time off the bench with 16 of his own.

Jazz entered the final period down by 5, not bad at all considering the 24. That's what a glorious 35 point quarter can do for an offense!

The Celtics then started to come back to life getting themselves back up with a double digit lead of a cushion.

Then the entire 4th quarter seemingly felt like a 9 point game.

The Jazz had some lapses by getting simply outhustled by the Celtics while going ice cold from the field (and the free throw line) again at the end.

This game was especially frustrating due to how we got the glimpses of how the Jazz definitely had it in them to crush the Celtics but going in that 24 point hole at halftime was enough to negate any net positive that the Jazz's monstrous run in the 3rd would have had otherwise.

Tayshaun Prince was the Jazz killer of the night with 19 off the bench off of 10 shots.

Favors had a brilliant 4 by 4, finishing with 13, 8, 4, and 4. Hayward led all scorers with 26 points, with Kanter in 2nd with 20 points.

Burke was the offense off the bench (albeit inefficient) with 18 of the bench's 29 points.

Rudy had a nice 3 blocks (and several uncredited ones) along with 8 points and 10 rebounds.

The Jazz Aussies underperformed on Australia day combining for 2 points off of 8 shots in 56 minutes. Marvin Williams is proud to see someone fulfilling his former role here tonight.

Also of note, it could be said that the Jazz lost this one from the line as the Jazz missed 8 of their 19 attempts while the Celtics were very tidy only missing 2 of their 23 attempts.

I won't sugarcoat it for you, this was a tough loss to kick off an unforgiving 5-game stretch where the Jazz are not favored to win in any of them (just assuming without double checking here, let me know if I'm wrong).

But alas, this was a growing-pains type of game in the growing pains type of season for this Jazz core. Hopefully the team learns from their many mistakes this game and come out strong sooner rather than later. The Jazz core continues to show more and more glimpses of the potential they hold.

The Future is Bright

Until next time... Go Jazz!