Memphis Grizzlies guard Garrett Temple (17) and Utah Jazz center Rudy Gobert (27) miss the rebound during an NBA basketball game at the Vivint Smart Home Arena in Salt Lake City on Monday, Oct. 22, 2018.
SALT LAKE CITY — The last time the Utah Jazz played at home — on Oct. 22 before embarking on a four-game road trip — they were beaten by the Memphis Grizzlies 92-84 in an ugly contest, which has been the hallmark characteristic of the two teams’ meetings over the last several years.
On Friday night as the Jazz return to Vivint Arena, they’ll again face a Grizzlies team that many figured would be lottery bound this season but is off to a 4-2 start, a half game up on 4-3 Utah, which lost to the shorthanded Minnesota Timberwolves 128-125 on Wednesday night to prevent it from going a perfect 4-0 on the road trip.
Certainly the main storyline for the Jazz entering Friday is the fact that Donovan Mitchell will miss the game with right hamstring soreness. The second-year guard who leads Utah in minutes and points per game exited Wednesday's game with 4:22 remaining and the score tied at 116.
" We’ve got to start better. "
Jazz center Rudy Gobert
The team announced Thursday evening that Mitchell underwent an MRI, and while it came back negative, he'll sit out Friday. Dante Exum, Alec Burks and Grayson Allen are the reserve guards on the Jazz's roster who have seen playing time this season.
Although the Jazz on Wednesday lost by just three as multiple open 3-point tries in the final seconds didn’t go down to force overtime, head coach Quin Snyder and players felt it was how the team played at the beginning of the night that really cost them.
Utah trailed 32-25 after the first quarter. The Jazz and their opponents had played to an even 164 score in the opening frame through the first six games of the season to that point for an average of 27.3 points.
“I thought the first part of the game we were really inefficient,” Snyder said afterward. “Gave them easy shots and we turned the ball over. They took advantage of it … we had some breakdowns, a little bit of everything.”
“We’ve got to start better," Rudy Gobert said. "I think we can look at the last quarter, we can look at the last minute, but we gave them confidence in the first quarter and then we were trailing the whole game. It’s hard to win a basketball game against a team that has a lot of confidence because you gave them confidence.”
For the night, the Timberwolves wound up shooting over 58 percent from the field compared to 49 percent for Utah.
“When we start a game the right way, usually it ends the right way,” Gobert said. “We are a defensive-minded team, and we should never forget that. It doesn’t matter who we play, we should never give an opponent 128 points.”
Added Snyder: “We have to compete collectively. You can’t compete with individuals. That’s where you see breakdowns. We need to be better than that. We talked about wanting to make a mark with our defense, and tonight was an opportunity to do that. We weren’t able to get stops and that’s what cost us the game.”
While high scoring outputs like the one the Jazz and Timberwolves produced Wednesday have been the norm thus far this season (Utah’s 114.3 points per game is 12th in the NBA but would have been first by 0.8 points last season), history indicates that Friday’s game will be much more of a defensive slog.
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In the last 25 meetings between the Jazz and Grizzlies (including Oct. 22) dating back to the 2011-2012 season, there have been no games in which both teams got to 100 points. In 18 of them, neither team reached the century mark. In five of them, neither team got to 90.
To put that in some perspective, Utah played in 26 regular-season games last season in which both teams reached at least 100 points.
Friday’s game will be a key one for Utah, as it faces 6-1 Denver Saturday night on the road and Eastern Conference powers Toronto and Boston next week, with a contest against Dallas sandwiched in between.
All three of next week’s games will be at Vivint Arena before the team begins a five-game road trip with another matchup against both Memphis and Dallas.
