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SALT LAKE CITY — There was Collin Sexton's fantastic fourth quarter and Walker Kessler's promising return. And there was Keyonte George's late 3-pointer and Utah's 37-point fourth quarter.
But the real reason the Jazz snapped a four-game losing streak with a 105-100 victory over the New Orleans Pelicans Saturday at the Delta Center was its defense.
That doesn't happen often.
"A very gritty team win," Jazz coach Will Hardy said. "Our offense came alive in the fourth quarter, turnovers went down, we finally made a few shots from the perimeter, but this is for sure the first game this year that we've won because of our defense."
That defensive performance allowed the Jazz to overcome a game without its two leading scorers, Lauri Markkanen (hamstring soreness) and Jordan Clarkson (illness), some bad first-half play, and turning the ball over 15 times before halftime.
"Our defense kept us in the game and allowed us to kind of hang around," Hardy said.
The strong defense wasn't the only unique thing about the Jazz's win Saturday, either. Hardy, who had made pointed remarks about his team's effort over the previous two games, made surprising changes to the starting lineup.
Markkanen and Clarkson were not available, but Hardy reached into his rotation to find their replacements against the Pelicans. Hardy started George, Kris Dunn, Omer Yurtseven, Simone Fontechhio and John Collins.
The result was an 11-3 start for the Jazz.
That unit's energy on the defensive end set the tone for the rest of the evening. The Jazz had a defensive rating of 100 — about 20 points per 100 possessions better than their season average.
Utah's defense has been awful this season — bottom five in the league in most categories. They caught the Pelicans on the second night of a back-to-back and without Zion Williamson, but making that big of a jump defensively was worth celebrating for the team.
"I thought that every player that took the court tonight really competed on that end of the floor," Hardy said.
And when the shooting finally came around late, they were close enough that it mattered.
But no one's shot came around like Sexton's.
Sexton missed six of his first seven shots of the game. Fortunately for the Jazz, he kept shooting — and passing, too. He had 10 points and five assists in the fourth quarter to bring the Jazz back from down 13 points.
His final points on the night came on a 3-pointer that gave the Jazz a 3-point lead. His final assist came on an inside-out strike to George for another triple to give the Jazz a 6-point advantage.
That proved good enough for Utah, as it forced a New Orleans turnover with 9.9 seconds left to clinch the game. On this night, it was appropriate a defensive stand was the final meaningful play.
"Collin was the beneficiary of it from a scoring standpoint, because he got to shoot the ball, but it wasn't like he just dribbled up the court and shot it himself every time. I think his teammates did a good job of finding him," Hardy said.
It wasn't Sexton taking the ball and hunting for his own looks, either. He took them in the flow of the offense, and he generated more points with assists (13) than he did with his shots.
"That stretch of play was an example of what we want to be as a team," Hardy said. "It's not about one person. We may run actions for somebody to try to create an advantage but that doesn't mean that we want that person to shoot it every single time. We're trying to generate good shots as a team and Colin did a good job in the fourth quarter of picking his spots."
Sexton summed it up this way: "We helped one another a whole lot more than we have been."
Sexton finished with a team-high 16 points and six assists; George had 15 points, six rebounds and five assists; and Walker Kessler had 11 points and 11 rebounds in his first game back from an elbow strain.
