Utah Jazz vs Boston Celtics: recap and final score

There is a lot of familiarity and mutual respect between the Boston Celtics and the Utah Jazz. With the Jazz poaching executives and some coaches from Boston, Utah hopes to replicate the success of the Celtics sooner rather than later. But tonight, Utah got a lesson in what the finished product looks like. It’s no secret that the Jazz have been using this year to focus on development, but the Celtics made the Jazz look like a G-League team that is further away from contention than they would like to think. Of course, one game is not an indictment of an entire rebuild, but Utah looked like a JV team almost the whole game

It was a pretty pedestrian game for Celtics star Jason Tatum, by his standards, but he still had 26 pts, 6 r and 6 assts and made one back-breaking shot after another. His co-star Kristaps Porzingis led the Celtics with 27 pts, 10 r, and 6 Assts. Boston has played together for long enough that they make their dominance look easy sometimes, but one way they frustrate teams is their defensive hustle and scrapping for every loose ball. It seemed that almost every 50/50 ball went the Celtics way tonight, that is usually not an accident but rather good coaching and team chemistry.

For as inferior as the Jazz looked tonight, they did show some grit at times during the game. Even after falling behind early on, they were able to and hang with the Celtics for much of the first half. Utah trailed by only 9 entering the break. The Jazz were able to pull within two about halfway through the third quarter before a combination of mistakes and poor shooting allowed the Celtics to pull away for good. Utah was without star Lauri Markkanen tonight and didn’t have a lot of depth, but the play of Collin Sexton and Keyonte George was a lone bright spot, with George shooting 5-9 from three and dishing out 7 assists from off the bench.

We know the mission for the Jazz this year is not to win games, but we have seen other games where the development looks a little bit further along. That being said, there is not a lot to take from a game where 60% of your starters are out and you are purposely trying to jockey for the worst record in the league. One would hope that at this time next year that Utah’s rebuild is over and we are jockeying for a good playoff spot instead, GO JAZZ!!