Recap: Utah Jazz 98 Charlotte Hornets 104

Oh what a difference having an All-Star point guard makes. The Utah Jazz fell to the Charlotte Hornets 98-104 after leading for the first 3 quarters. Gordon Hayward had another 20+ point game finishing with 2 points, rebounds, and assists. The Utah Jazz got out to 10 point lead in the first half with big quarters from Gordon Hayward and Derrick Favors. Unfortunately, the Utah Jazz could not sustain that effort in the 2nd half.

It was evident that the Charlotte Hornets made some serious adjustments at halftime. Utah’s offense struggled to get going in the 3rd quarter after scoring 32 in the 1st and 26 in the 2nd. The Hornet then clamped down and held the Jazz to 20 points in the 3rd and 20 points in the 4th.

The real struggles for Utah came at the point guard position where Shelvin Mack and Dante Exum combined for only 12 points (2 of those points were in the last 2 seconds of garbage time) and 10 assists in 47 combined minutes.

The big hero of this game for Charlotte was Frank Kaminsky. In the 3rd quarter he simply was everywhere. His effort led him to 13 points in only 20 minutes with 5 rebounds. Once Frank got going, Kemba got back in rhythm. After that it was game over. By the 4th quarter, Kemba was rolling and taking advantage of George Hill’s absence. Kemba finished 21 points, 6 assists, 5 rebounds, and 4 steals.

Highlights

The Utah Jazz took 34 threes and only made 8 of them finishing 23.5% from three.

When Charlotte retook the lead in the 4th quarter Quin Snyder tried subbing Dante Exum into the game for Shelvin Mack to get a spark. It didn’t work. Kemba was rolling, the crowd got into it, and the Jazz struggled. Quin Snyder looked like he was missing George Hill tonight.