Utah Jazz impose their will against the New Orleans Pelicans

The Utah Jazz vs New Orleans Pelicans rematch was a lot closer than their first matchup and some would say a lot more entertaining. Both teams got out to a pretty fast start offensively but the Pelicans blitzed the Jazz with 43 first quarter points led by Brandon Ingram. The Jazz clawed their way back in the second quarter to take the one point lead into halftime.

It was back and forth for the first part of the third quarter but a couple of minutes in, the Jazz turned up the defensive heat and seized momentum going into the fourth quarter. Donovan Mitchell looked every bit the superstar on both ends of the floor and everything was dropping for the Jazz.

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The Pelicans are not a team that are going to give up though. They made the Jazz sweat at the beginning of the fourth quarter by pulling within six points. But once again the Jazz tightened defensively and the Pelicans were not able to generate enough offensive firepower to overcome the deficit that they were faced with.

The Jazz are starting to play like a team that knows that they are good. It’s easy to overlook the fact that they overcame a 16 point deficit in this game because it’s felt like it never even happened. That’s the kind of confidence that we have not seen from Jazz teams in previous years. Hopefully they can continue to build that confidence and continue to learn how to have a killer mentality that championship caliber teams have to have.

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Fun fact: Donovan Mitchell became the fastest player ever to reach 600 three pointers…….so it’s pretty much confirmed that he is a better three pointer shooter than Steph Curry and Klay Thompson.