The San Antonio Spurs dropped the second of a back-to-back to the Utah Jazz.
The San Antonio Spurs fell to the Utah Jazz in Salt Lake City on Thursday night, 100-89. Both teams were coming off of games on Wednesday night. The Spurs must have used all their energy in Portland on Wednesday, unlike the Jazz who were able to bounce back from a loss against OKC with a win tonight.
Both teams were missing several key players. San Antonio was without Danny Green, Pau Gasol, and Manu Ginobili. Utah was forced to play without Rookie of the Year candidate Donovan Mitchell as well as Rudy Gobert.
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The Spurs simply couldn’t get anything to fall throughout most of the game. They only managed to score 17 points in the first quarter and went into halftime trailing 50-38. If we want to look at the silver lining, six players finished in double figures. That figure is a lot less encouraging when you see that the team leader was Bryn Forbes with 12 points.
Joffrey Lauvergne got his first start of the season with Gasol out but wasn’t able to do much. His frontcourt partner struggled equally, both LaMarcus and Joffery shot 4-11 for the game. Aldridge played phenomenally in Portland on Wednesday night and we can attribute tonight’s performance to the hard-fought battle against Portland that likely tired the big man out.
YES KYLE! pic.twitter.com/SKXkFAbIA8
— San Antonio Spurs (@spurs) December 22, 2017
It is so nice to have Kyle Anderson back. Both he and Patty Mills were responsible for a resurgence in the third quarter. They contributed to and 11-1 run to open up the second half. The Silver and Black outscored the Jazz by ten in the third quarter but were ultimately unable to complete the comeback.
HAVE A QUARTER, BALA, HAVE A QUARTER! pic.twitter.com/Y6bc9j3m0s
— San Antonio Spurs (@spurs) December 22, 2017
The Jazz were able to keep the Spurs at bay thanks to some very stingy defense, excellent free throw shooting (20-24), and a heck of a game from Rodney Hood. With their leading scorer out Hood was able to shine, scoring 29 points for Utah. A 6’7 shooting guard, Hood was able to routinely elevate over the Spurs shorter guards in order to get clean looks at the basket. Since his days at Duke, he’s been a shooter and he proved that again tonight.
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Both Utah and San Antonio get some much need rest following their back-to-backs. Both teams play again on Saturday night, with Utah taking on Oklahoma City and the Spurs visiting the Kings.