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SALT LAKE CITY — Orlando Magic head coach Steve Clifford had a simple explanation for what happened at the end of the Utah Jazz’s 109-102 win over the Magic on Tuesday at Vivint Arena.
“Donovan Mitchell just took over,” Clifford said.
The Magic looked like they had the game won. They had gone on a 32-8 run to erase what was an 18-point Jazz lead, and they were leading by 7 points with 4:44 left in the game. They had the lead. They had all the momentum.
But they didn’t have Mitchell.
The Jazz shooting guard made a quick crossover to get into the paint and then rose up high and slammed it over Nikola Vucevic. The play sparked the crowd (which had been booing moments earlier), it sparked his team, and it even sparked Mitchell.
The Jazz (16-11) finished the game on a 19-5 run to claim their third-straight victory.
“I think that definitely shifted the momentum,” Rudy Gobert said of the dunk. “We were like, ‘Okay, let's go. Let's win this game.’”
Mitchell scored 10 of his 30 points in the final quarter. In the final minute, he made two consecutive teardrop floaters at the rim to help seal the win.
“It's great when he's aggressive and when he attacks the rim,” Gobert said. “He has a great ability to attack in space, and also is very athletic so he can finish over the top of pretty much anyone. And when he plays that way, (he) puts a lot of pressure on the defense.”
Clifford wasn’t wrong, Mitchell took over. But so too did Bojan Bogdanovic. The Jazz went to a two-man game with Mitchell and Bogdanovic down the stretch — and it worked beautifully.
Either Mitchell was driving in for buckets or Bogdanovic was getting open looks.
“I mean, just at the end of the game we were trying to make it easier for him (Mitchell) because he is our best player,” Bogdanovic said. “He is trying to make plays for all of us and prove, once again, that he is one of the best players in the league.”
Bogdanovic and Mitchell combined to score 17 of the Jazz’s final 19 points. Before that run, which started with Mitchell’s thundering dunk, Utah had scored just 8 points in the first seven-plus minutes of the fourth.
Bogdanovic had 12 points in the final quarter and finished with 30 in the game. He and Mitchell were the first Jazz pair to both score 30 in a game since March 28, 2008, when Deron Williams and Carlos Boozer accomplished it.
The end was superb — and a little surprising considering what had transpired leading up to it.
The Jazz had dominated for much of the game. They had an 11-point lead at halftime; they had a two-minute run in the third quarter, which might have been their best stretch of the season, to take an 18-point lead; and they looked like they were going to coast to an easy victory.
Then the wheels came off.
The bench unit (once again) surrendered a lead, and this time a big one. Utah started missing shots and turning the ball over. By the 6:27 mark in the fourth quarter, the Jazz’s lead was gone.
“The guys in the huddle and in the game kept the focus,” Utah head coach Quin Snyder said. “There was no hanging your head, or ‘this happened’ or ‘that happened.’ There was a couple mistakes and we didn't let those mistakes move us apart as much as bring us together. And that's what the game reflected.”
The Jazz stayed together — and it didn’t hurt that they had Mitchell and Bogdanovic catch fire, too.
“I mean, we know that the NBA is a game of runs,” Gobert said. “Some teams are gonna make runs, somebody's going to get hot, we're gonna miss shots, we're going to turn it over. We know that at the end of the day the last six minutes is really what matters.”
The Jazz made those last few minutes count.
