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SALT LAKE CITY — Welp …
After stunning the second-place teams in the respective conferences, the Utah Jazz faced the mighty Portland Trail Blazers, losers of six in a row on Wednesday.
So it was an easy victory, right? As if anything about this Jazz season would stick to the expected script.
Portland had four players score 20 or more points and beat the Jazz 127-115 at Vivint Arena. The loss dropped Utah to 35-37 on the season and out of play-in position. Utah is now in 11th and sits a half game out of ninth place and a full game out of seventh place.
Damian Lillard scored 30 points and had 12 assists, Shaedon Sharpe added 24 points, Trendon Watford had 21 points, and Jusuf Nurkic finished with 20 points in the win. And most of the damage came in the paint where the Blazers scored 62 points and took advantage of Utah's aggressive double teams.
It was a similar strategy that worked to limit Boston's Jayson Tatum; it just wasn't as effective against Lillard. The former Weber State guard was quick to get off the ball, which led to the Jazz's defense scrambling all night.
"Dame did a great job of getting off the ball quickly," Jazz coach Will Hardy said. "I talk about decision making with our team, getting off it early like he did puts the defense in a tough spot. So you know he gets a lot of credit for making those early plays to get the ball into the middle of the floor."
And once the ball was there, the Jazz's bigs were tasked to guard the basket as well as the corner. That proved a bit too much.
"It's tough to blitz a guard and be able to cover backside and that roll man, but it's no excuse," Walker Kessler said, who looked distraught over how he personally played.
Hardy said the team overreacted to some 3-point shots — Portland shot 32% from deep — and gave up some looks in the paint as a result. There were tactical issues, yes, but it was also just a game where Utah seemed off. For a team that has relied so much on extraordinary effort, the intensity and energy didn't reach normal levels
"This is the NBA; there's nights where your team can be kind of a step behind, a step slow," Hardy said. "We went to some different lineups to see if we could find a spark, but we were just a little bit late defensively."
And try as he did, Lauri Markkanen wasn't able to save the Jazz on offense. It was the Markkanen show for the Jazz on offense; he just didn't have much of a supporting cast.
Markkanen had 40 points and 12 rebounds on the night — and had 37 points through three quarters — but some of his slow fourth quarter could be explained by a fall he occurred late in the third quarter.
He went down hard on a driving layup attempt and stayed on the court as he held his left hand. He was later seen flexing it and shaking it throughout the rest of the game, especially when he was sent to the court again on a hard foul in the fourth quarter.
Markkanen said he didn't think the injury impacted him late in the game, but conceded a "maybe" in response.
"I definitely didn't want to fall down again. I felt like one 3 in the corner I missed, I could have driven it, but I felt like I had a look for a shot," Markkanen said. "Maybe I settled for that one; but other than that, I don't think it did."
Markkanen said his postgame X-ray was clean and he'll know more when he gets tested on Thursday.
With him clearly laboring during the game, though, the Jazz offense stalled out late.
Utah came back from down by 15 points in the third quarter to tie the game 93-93 with 11:04 left, but Portland responded with a 19-6 run to all but end the game.
And to send the Jazz back — for the time being, at least — into the lottery.
