Tbh Utah played amazing tonight. Really tough loss, OKC hit tough, tough shots late
k177777
From down 17, to losing by 5. For the entirety of the game, we were trailing and there was a hump we just couldn’t get over. Ggs to Okc. Sucks we couldn’t get it done but a wire to wire loss to the 2nd best in the West… 🤌🏻
seekay_salt
SGA with a master class Harden impression this game. OKC is legit
Aquanlqua
Anyone else felt KO was invisible today? And a lot of the times he had the ball he just looked lost.
brosephsmith21
**GOING ICE COLD IN THE FIRST QUARTER IS IN FACT, NOT IDEAL** :^/
16patterjo
I’m not taking anything away from OKC, that’s an incredible team, but holy hell they made some of the most BS shots I’ve ever seen
CBNDSGN
The Utah Jazz have lost their first game in the THT DNP-CD era.
MorphieJazz
That initial fourth quarter sequence really killed our momentum
Zeeron1
Thunder fan popping in to say fantastic crowd. You guys really brought the energy, that was awesome. Also, Sexton is a freaking DOG. We were calling him baby Russ lol.
What a fun game to watch. GG guys🤝
ReasonableOkra5930
56 / 44 / 86 splits for the Thunder. Hard to lose a game when you shoot that well. Jazz gotta do better than that on defense.
EC_Bot
Not mad about that. The Jazz played well overall. The Thunder hit tons of huge contested shots and the Jazz couldn’t convert a lot of easier looks. Lauri and Collin are such an incredible duo now!
Skararm
Proud of our guys. They have so much fight and never quit! We can hang with the best in the league. We should all be happy even though we lost
Dhylan18
SGA is so good, like unfair good.
Daryl-Sabara
OKC were clutch tonight but damn Sexton playing like he’s 7 foot tall at the end! Grabbing his own rebound and huge dunk over two guys! Loved seeing him go for it like that.
ShadowAgent41
Shai is a ridiculous foul merchant much worse than Luka
giantcorngames
“Utah plays 23 seconds of perfect defense, last second contested chuck by OKC, down the barrel”
Hopefully they bounce back. Still a good fight
Skararm
This is going to be the WCF matchup in a couple years!
Nils3971
I still say, we lost to that Collins inteference on that Lauri’s freethrow, and then we lost possession. But oh well. We will fuck up Rockets, and remember guys Lauri scored career high last year on Rockets in January.
SooperDew
If we hadn’t gone for 6 turnovers and 3 rebounds in the first 7 minutes and played everything else the same we would have won.
Still encouraging fight from them.
B-Y-O-Boa
If Walker gets more minutes we win. That bench run at the beginning of the 4th was brutal, and I’m fully convinced he could’ve slowed it down.
thehelpfulcamel
Jazz fans 30 games ago: ship off Sexton ASAP
Jazz fans now: I would sacrifice my firstborn for Sexton
Rayces
Love the fight. It’s crazy to see the true colors of this team come out and compete with the biggest and baddest in the NBA
JoeIngles
GAME NOTES:
We were never able to overcome a very very sloppy first quarter where OKC took the lead from the first bucket and never let it go. Kris Dunn had 3 fouls in the first 5.5 minutes, We had 7 turnovers in the first quarter, and were getting ran out of the building. Walker Kessler really was a game changer tonight. OKC scored 21 of their first 26 points in the paint, we just weren’t putting any pressure on them in the paint until Kessler came in.
Offensively, this was yet again another Collin Sexton led game. 31 points, 10-19 shooting, 4-7 from 3, 7-10 from the line, 7 assists, 2 turnovers tonight. [He had a monster slam to put us down 4 late that is incredible](https://x.com/UtahJazzClips/status/1748200250169229564?s=20) He was a big part of our second quarter offensive surge. Defensively, he didn’t really make much of an impact. A lot of his three’s are catch n shoot, which is impressive that this team is able to move the ball around to get him easier looks. He is a significantly better catch n shoot 3 point shooter than off the dribble, 46.4% from the catch, vs 23% off the dribble. It is a tough ask to guard SGA one-on-one, and he got burned a few times and a few of his fouls were him being in the air and SGA jumping into him. I think Sexton tried hard defensively, but not much you can do against a top 8 player in the league. He did draw a huge offensive foul on Jalen Williams which was MASSIVE with 20 seconds left.
John Collins also had a really good game. Although he was 1-5 from 3, he was a perfect 6-6 from inside the arc which is impressive considering that Chet Holmgren had the assignment on him. He struggled to make an impact on the boards, just 4 rebounds to go with 1 assist & 1 block. He did have 5 fouls, which didn’t hurt his minutes, but it hurt his defensive impact, especially considering that he is our interior defense when Kessler is on the bench. He was also a game low -19 tonight, but I think that the majority of those came in the early first & fourth quarters where we struggled to get stops (lack of rim protection).
Markkanen wasn’t nearly as involved in the offense as I’d like. 7-13 shooting, 2-4 from 3, 10-11 from the line, 9 rebounds, 4 assists, 1 steal for 26 points. It’s crazy that he can put up that stat line while having a quiet night. It just didn’t feel like our gameplan was to get him involved. I couldn’t tell if it was OKC disrupting our gameplan, but just from the eye test we weren’t running as many pin downs for him that we usually do. It felt like we stuck Lauri at the break, and let Sexton or Clarkson take charge. Lauri didn’t have a shot attempt in the fourth until the 6 minute mark, which is terrible for our best player to be shunned like that when we need a spark. He was fouled a lot in the fourth which helped his totals.
It is a damn shame that Kessler didn’t play more than 24 minutes. Our interior defense suffered terribly when wasn’t on the court. The reason OKC made big runs in the first & fourth quarters is because Collins & Lauri were our only defensive pressure. I was getting shades of our defense back in like 2021 when Rudy was off the court. We just didn’t look like we cared to stop anybody until Kessler was playing. Kessler was a perfect 3-3 from the floor for 6 points, snagged 5 offensive rebounds (unreal!) and 6 defensive rebounds, had 1 assist, 1 steal, 3 blocks, and 1 foul. He was +15, which was a solid +10 higher than the next jazzman which was Sexton.
Jordan Clarkson didn’t have the best shooting night, 7-17, 3-5 from 3, 18 points, 5 assists, and 1 turnover. He had a big 3 with 40 seconds left to put us down by 4. He just has big moments. I pointed it out last game, but the thing that surprises me about his game recently is that even when he isn’t shooting the best, he is still making plays for others. He’s averaging a career high in assists this season which has gone largely unnoticed in my opinion. Importantly, he’s keeping his turnovers down. Just 9 turnovers in his last 6 games. He’s also had 31 assists in the last 6 games.
Keyonte struggled heavily tonight. 1-5 shooting, 1-2 from 3, 3 points, 1 rebound, 2 assists, 2 turnovers. -9 in 13 minutes. It is interesting, Keyonte actually does better off the dribble from 3, where he shoots 40.2%, vs catch n shoots he’s at 26.9%. Another trend of his that I’m not too keen on is his playmaking and assists numbers. Excluding the 4 games we played in October, his assist numbers have gone from 5.4 a night in November, 4.8 a night in December, and so far just 3.3 a night in January. His minutes have dropped as well, going from 27.1 to 25.8 to 23.0, but it shouldn’t have as drastic of an effect on his numbers as it does. Hopefully it’s just a conditioning thing. He’s already played a full NCAAB season, and we are only halfway through the NBA season. Hopefully he adjusts to it.
Ochai Agbaji also needs to get more involved. I know he does a lot defensively, but he went from averaging almost 7 shots a game in December to almost 4 a game in December. His PPG went from 8.2 to 2.9. I think he just isn’t playing with confidence right now, which hurts the team. He’s shooting an atrocious 28.6% from the field, and an even worse 13% from 3 in January. Compare that to 47.4% in December and 34.7% from 3. Tonight, 1-1 from the field, 2-3 from the free throw line, 1 rebound, 1 assist, 2 steals, 2 turnovers, 1 foul, 4 points. It’s frustrating for me to watch him defer consistently, not even taking catch n shoot corner 3’s.
Fontecchio plays defensively so well while in our zone defense. He recovers quickly, is great on help defense, and knows his place well. Offensively, he had a fairly good game, 12 points, 4-8 from the field, 2-6 from 3, 2-2 from the lin3, 5 rebounds, 2 assists, 1 steal. He was tasked with guarding SGA in the clutch which is a tall order, but I thought he did good. SGA just is too good man
Olynyk didn’t do anything too crazy, but I want to point out that he did a better job of taking care of the ball tonight than he has recently. 7 points, 2 rebounds, 4 assists, 1 turnover tonight in 17 minutes. I wish an additional shot or two fell for him, but not much more you can ask of Kelly.
Kris Dunn had 3 of his first 4 fouls in the first 5.5 minutes of play, but he still found a way to make an impact. 6 assists to just 1 turnover tonight. His defense wasn’t as sharp tonight, but I’m glad he was still able to make some plays happen.
Damn. Kessler really needed to play more than just the final 7 minutes. Our team and defense was night and day with him on the court. Super deflating loss, but OKC is a very, very good team. We just couldn’t stop Jalen Williams or SGA who dropped a combined 58 on us. Sexton & Lauri tried their best, dropping 57 combined, but the supporting cast wasn’t strong enough.
Some positives on this game, we were able to hang with the second best team in the west. We had just 8 turnovers the final 3 quarters of play. We had 33 assists on 43 made buckets. We got to the free throw line 36 times. We had 11 offensive rebounds. All of which are very impressive.
Some negatives on this game, we allowed OKC to shoot 34-54 from inside the arc, and score a massive 56 points in the paint. Our 7 first quarter turnovers resulted in 10 points for OKC. We allowed Josh Giddey (ew), SGA, & Jalen Williams to put up 78 on us on 45 shots. We allowed SGA to shoot 17 free throws. We came out extremely slow on both ends of the floor to start the game, and to start the fourth quarter. Definitely not ideal.
22-21. Our win streak had to end at some point, it just sucks that it ended on such a tough game where we were so close, yet so far the entire time. Credit to the boys for fighting tough to overcome slow starts in the first and last quarters.
user_python
The guys played really hard. That OKC team is really special and the game was really entertaining to watch, just two young teams going toe-to-toe with each other. I see these two teams going at each other in the playoffs in the years to come.
And honestly, I didn’t expect to lose by just 5 after being down by 19 in a really cold first quarter. The game could have been won if they had a better performance in the first.
BuddhistMonk72
Very winnable, more frustrating than it should be since we played a pretty sloppy game. On to the next
menghis_khan08
Said this in the r/nba thread but really good game. Think we looked good, minus the 17 points we spotted okc with the laziest most porous defense in the first quarter with the starters. Can’t spot a good team 17 points
OKC played well too, didn’t look like we caught em on an “off night.”
Couple the early mistakes with some missed shots by key and olynyk and it just didn’t go our way
Philipthesquid
Someone post Collin Sexton’s dunk on r/nba
fakeaccount787
The future is so bright. Need to clean up some areas and mist play hard all game. The thunder are solid and fun to watch, they move the ball so well. Excited for Saturday, let’s crush the rockets.
Nils3971
Quiet-ish game for Lauri, still beat all of his season averages, i dont dare to imagine what he can do with another star. Sexton is good but we NEED another star who knows to pass when needed.
29 Comments
Tbh Utah played amazing tonight. Really tough loss, OKC hit tough, tough shots late
From down 17, to losing by 5. For the entirety of the game, we were trailing and there was a hump we just couldn’t get over. Ggs to Okc. Sucks we couldn’t get it done but a wire to wire loss to the 2nd best in the West… 🤌🏻
SGA with a master class Harden impression this game. OKC is legit
Anyone else felt KO was invisible today? And a lot of the times he had the ball he just looked lost.
**GOING ICE COLD IN THE FIRST QUARTER IS IN FACT, NOT IDEAL** :^/
I’m not taking anything away from OKC, that’s an incredible team, but holy hell they made some of the most BS shots I’ve ever seen
The Utah Jazz have lost their first game in the THT DNP-CD era.
That initial fourth quarter sequence really killed our momentum
Thunder fan popping in to say fantastic crowd. You guys really brought the energy, that was awesome. Also, Sexton is a freaking DOG. We were calling him baby Russ lol.
What a fun game to watch. GG guys🤝
56 / 44 / 86 splits for the Thunder. Hard to lose a game when you shoot that well. Jazz gotta do better than that on defense.
Not mad about that. The Jazz played well overall. The Thunder hit tons of huge contested shots and the Jazz couldn’t convert a lot of easier looks. Lauri and Collin are such an incredible duo now!
Proud of our guys. They have so much fight and never quit! We can hang with the best in the league. We should all be happy even though we lost
SGA is so good, like unfair good.
OKC were clutch tonight but damn Sexton playing like he’s 7 foot tall at the end! Grabbing his own rebound and huge dunk over two guys! Loved seeing him go for it like that.
Shai is a ridiculous foul merchant much worse than Luka
“Utah plays 23 seconds of perfect defense, last second contested chuck by OKC, down the barrel”
Hopefully they bounce back. Still a good fight
This is going to be the WCF matchup in a couple years!
I still say, we lost to that Collins inteference on that Lauri’s freethrow, and then we lost possession. But oh well. We will fuck up Rockets, and remember guys Lauri scored career high last year on Rockets in January.
If we hadn’t gone for 6 turnovers and 3 rebounds in the first 7 minutes and played everything else the same we would have won.
Still encouraging fight from them.
If Walker gets more minutes we win. That bench run at the beginning of the 4th was brutal, and I’m fully convinced he could’ve slowed it down.
Jazz fans 30 games ago: ship off Sexton ASAP
Jazz fans now: I would sacrifice my firstborn for Sexton
Love the fight. It’s crazy to see the true colors of this team come out and compete with the biggest and baddest in the NBA
GAME NOTES:
We were never able to overcome a very very sloppy first quarter where OKC took the lead from the first bucket and never let it go. Kris Dunn had 3 fouls in the first 5.5 minutes, We had 7 turnovers in the first quarter, and were getting ran out of the building. Walker Kessler really was a game changer tonight. OKC scored 21 of their first 26 points in the paint, we just weren’t putting any pressure on them in the paint until Kessler came in.
Offensively, this was yet again another Collin Sexton led game. 31 points, 10-19 shooting, 4-7 from 3, 7-10 from the line, 7 assists, 2 turnovers tonight. [He had a monster slam to put us down 4 late that is incredible](https://x.com/UtahJazzClips/status/1748200250169229564?s=20) He was a big part of our second quarter offensive surge. Defensively, he didn’t really make much of an impact. A lot of his three’s are catch n shoot, which is impressive that this team is able to move the ball around to get him easier looks. He is a significantly better catch n shoot 3 point shooter than off the dribble, 46.4% from the catch, vs 23% off the dribble. It is a tough ask to guard SGA one-on-one, and he got burned a few times and a few of his fouls were him being in the air and SGA jumping into him. I think Sexton tried hard defensively, but not much you can do against a top 8 player in the league. He did draw a huge offensive foul on Jalen Williams which was MASSIVE with 20 seconds left.
John Collins also had a really good game. Although he was 1-5 from 3, he was a perfect 6-6 from inside the arc which is impressive considering that Chet Holmgren had the assignment on him. He struggled to make an impact on the boards, just 4 rebounds to go with 1 assist & 1 block. He did have 5 fouls, which didn’t hurt his minutes, but it hurt his defensive impact, especially considering that he is our interior defense when Kessler is on the bench. He was also a game low -19 tonight, but I think that the majority of those came in the early first & fourth quarters where we struggled to get stops (lack of rim protection).
Markkanen wasn’t nearly as involved in the offense as I’d like. 7-13 shooting, 2-4 from 3, 10-11 from the line, 9 rebounds, 4 assists, 1 steal for 26 points. It’s crazy that he can put up that stat line while having a quiet night. It just didn’t feel like our gameplan was to get him involved. I couldn’t tell if it was OKC disrupting our gameplan, but just from the eye test we weren’t running as many pin downs for him that we usually do. It felt like we stuck Lauri at the break, and let Sexton or Clarkson take charge. Lauri didn’t have a shot attempt in the fourth until the 6 minute mark, which is terrible for our best player to be shunned like that when we need a spark. He was fouled a lot in the fourth which helped his totals.
It is a damn shame that Kessler didn’t play more than 24 minutes. Our interior defense suffered terribly when wasn’t on the court. The reason OKC made big runs in the first & fourth quarters is because Collins & Lauri were our only defensive pressure. I was getting shades of our defense back in like 2021 when Rudy was off the court. We just didn’t look like we cared to stop anybody until Kessler was playing. Kessler was a perfect 3-3 from the floor for 6 points, snagged 5 offensive rebounds (unreal!) and 6 defensive rebounds, had 1 assist, 1 steal, 3 blocks, and 1 foul. He was +15, which was a solid +10 higher than the next jazzman which was Sexton.
Jordan Clarkson didn’t have the best shooting night, 7-17, 3-5 from 3, 18 points, 5 assists, and 1 turnover. He had a big 3 with 40 seconds left to put us down by 4. He just has big moments. I pointed it out last game, but the thing that surprises me about his game recently is that even when he isn’t shooting the best, he is still making plays for others. He’s averaging a career high in assists this season which has gone largely unnoticed in my opinion. Importantly, he’s keeping his turnovers down. Just 9 turnovers in his last 6 games. He’s also had 31 assists in the last 6 games.
Keyonte struggled heavily tonight. 1-5 shooting, 1-2 from 3, 3 points, 1 rebound, 2 assists, 2 turnovers. -9 in 13 minutes. It is interesting, Keyonte actually does better off the dribble from 3, where he shoots 40.2%, vs catch n shoots he’s at 26.9%. Another trend of his that I’m not too keen on is his playmaking and assists numbers. Excluding the 4 games we played in October, his assist numbers have gone from 5.4 a night in November, 4.8 a night in December, and so far just 3.3 a night in January. His minutes have dropped as well, going from 27.1 to 25.8 to 23.0, but it shouldn’t have as drastic of an effect on his numbers as it does. Hopefully it’s just a conditioning thing. He’s already played a full NCAAB season, and we are only halfway through the NBA season. Hopefully he adjusts to it.
Ochai Agbaji also needs to get more involved. I know he does a lot defensively, but he went from averaging almost 7 shots a game in December to almost 4 a game in December. His PPG went from 8.2 to 2.9. I think he just isn’t playing with confidence right now, which hurts the team. He’s shooting an atrocious 28.6% from the field, and an even worse 13% from 3 in January. Compare that to 47.4% in December and 34.7% from 3. Tonight, 1-1 from the field, 2-3 from the free throw line, 1 rebound, 1 assist, 2 steals, 2 turnovers, 1 foul, 4 points. It’s frustrating for me to watch him defer consistently, not even taking catch n shoot corner 3’s.
Fontecchio plays defensively so well while in our zone defense. He recovers quickly, is great on help defense, and knows his place well. Offensively, he had a fairly good game, 12 points, 4-8 from the field, 2-6 from 3, 2-2 from the lin3, 5 rebounds, 2 assists, 1 steal. He was tasked with guarding SGA in the clutch which is a tall order, but I thought he did good. SGA just is too good man
Olynyk didn’t do anything too crazy, but I want to point out that he did a better job of taking care of the ball tonight than he has recently. 7 points, 2 rebounds, 4 assists, 1 turnover tonight in 17 minutes. I wish an additional shot or two fell for him, but not much more you can ask of Kelly.
Kris Dunn had 3 of his first 4 fouls in the first 5.5 minutes of play, but he still found a way to make an impact. 6 assists to just 1 turnover tonight. His defense wasn’t as sharp tonight, but I’m glad he was still able to make some plays happen.
Damn. Kessler really needed to play more than just the final 7 minutes. Our team and defense was night and day with him on the court. Super deflating loss, but OKC is a very, very good team. We just couldn’t stop Jalen Williams or SGA who dropped a combined 58 on us. Sexton & Lauri tried their best, dropping 57 combined, but the supporting cast wasn’t strong enough.
Some positives on this game, we were able to hang with the second best team in the west. We had just 8 turnovers the final 3 quarters of play. We had 33 assists on 43 made buckets. We got to the free throw line 36 times. We had 11 offensive rebounds. All of which are very impressive.
Some negatives on this game, we allowed OKC to shoot 34-54 from inside the arc, and score a massive 56 points in the paint. Our 7 first quarter turnovers resulted in 10 points for OKC. We allowed Josh Giddey (ew), SGA, & Jalen Williams to put up 78 on us on 45 shots. We allowed SGA to shoot 17 free throws. We came out extremely slow on both ends of the floor to start the game, and to start the fourth quarter. Definitely not ideal.
22-21. Our win streak had to end at some point, it just sucks that it ended on such a tough game where we were so close, yet so far the entire time. Credit to the boys for fighting tough to overcome slow starts in the first and last quarters.
The guys played really hard. That OKC team is really special and the game was really entertaining to watch, just two young teams going toe-to-toe with each other. I see these two teams going at each other in the playoffs in the years to come.
And honestly, I didn’t expect to lose by just 5 after being down by 19 in a really cold first quarter. The game could have been won if they had a better performance in the first.
Very winnable, more frustrating than it should be since we played a pretty sloppy game. On to the next
Said this in the r/nba thread but really good game. Think we looked good, minus the 17 points we spotted okc with the laziest most porous defense in the first quarter with the starters. Can’t spot a good team 17 points
OKC played well too, didn’t look like we caught em on an “off night.”
Couple the early mistakes with some missed shots by key and olynyk and it just didn’t go our way
Someone post Collin Sexton’s dunk on r/nba
The future is so bright. Need to clean up some areas and mist play hard all game. The thunder are solid and fun to watch, they move the ball so well. Excited for Saturday, let’s crush the rockets.
Quiet-ish game for Lauri, still beat all of his season averages, i dont dare to imagine what he can do with another star. Sexton is good but we NEED another star who knows to pass when needed.