Donovan Mitchell shines as pesky Kings push Jazz to the edge

The Utah Jazz dug deep on Tuesday night to snatch the 119-113 win vs the Sacramento Kings. Utah improves to 6-1 on the season while Sacramento falls to 3-4. Utah had a tough shooting night overall missed a lot of shots that normally go down. Credit to the Kings though for making a game of it and not letting up on the final game of their 4 game road trip.

The Kings are a tough team with a lot of talented young players. They returned every punch that the Jazz threw at them for the whole game and were not going away quietly tonight. The fact that they lead by 1 at the half with their 2nd leading scorer, De’Aaron Fox, held scoreless is a testament to their underrated depth. The Kings leading scorer tonight was Harrison Barnes with 20 points and 6 rebounds and they finished their 4 game road trip with a 2-2 mark.

The Jazz were lucky to be in this game after the kind of first half that they had. They shot about as poorly as you can from the three point line(4/25) and couldn’t seem to stop the Kings from getting whatever they wanted. Granted the Kings didn’t shoot great either and the Jazz did a decent job of scoring in the paint but when the three point shot isn’t falling it would be nice to see more of an emphasis on trying to score more points in the paint. Even though the Jazz entered halftime down by one, it felt like the Jazz never lost control of the game at any point. Donovan had what was probably his first signature performance this season with 36 points, 8 Rebounds and 6 assists. But the ultimate x-factor in this game was Mike Conley with 30 points and a game high 6 three’s.

Photo by Melissa Majchrzak/NBAE via Getty Images

Even though it wasn’t pretty, it was still another notch in W column for the Jazz as they continue to roll through the early part of their season. The team is finding ways to win even as they integrate new role players onto the team which bodes well for how they might play when they work out all the kinks & really start to play well. We’ll see another early season test this week as the Jazz embark on another three game Eastern conference road trip.

Tidbits:

Jazz - For the Jazz it was the first time this season that their starting backcourt of Mike Conley and Donovan Mitchell both scored 30 points, hopefully there will be much more of that.

Kings - It was the first time De’Aaron Fox has been held scoreless in a half since December of 2019.