Utah Jazz continue road success with 101-91 victory over the Nets

After the breaking news that the Utah Jazz had traded for Kyle Korver, it was easy to forget they had an earlier east coast tipoff in Brooklyn tonight. The Jazz improved to 10-12 on the season after their hard-fought victory against the Brooklyn Nets tonight. It wasn’t pretty, but a W is a W.

The first half was ugly basketball. The good guys gave up 12 turnovers to the bad guys, and couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn with their shooting. The defense helped keep the game close, and thanks to Rudy Gobert’s double double before halftime, the Jazz went into the locker room with a 1 point lead.

Then the 3rd quarter happened. The defense fell apart and Spencer Dinwiddie did pretty much whatever he wanted. The Nets put up 36 points in the quarter and it looked like the Jazz might come up short yet again. A massive 4th quarter, particularly from Donovan Mitchell, not only brought Utah back into the game but gave them a comfortable 10 point victory.

Lines of the night

• Donovan Mitchell: 12/24, 29 points, 5 rebounds, and 4 steals

• Rudy Gobert: 10/14, 23 points, 16 rebounds, 4 blocks

Questions moving forward

• Can Royce O’Neale get back to the player he was last season? Tonight was his best game of the year, going 3/3 from 3 and scoring 13 points off the bench. It would be huge for the Jazz bench if he could get back to form.
• Is Raul Neto Utah’s best point guard right now? Neto provided more good minutes for Quin Snyder by going 4/8 from the field and scoring 11 points. He seems to be playing with more confidence than Ricky Rubio and Dante Exum combined.

Clearly this team still has some kinks to work out and issues to deal with, but tonight was a good step in the right direction. They rarely put together complete games right now, but even just a complete quarter or 2 can be enough like it was tonight. Now let’s see how Quin Snyder injects Kyle Korver into the rotation and what that does to Utah’s struggling offense!