Jazz Coast to Win Against Visiting Knicks

January 9th, 2020 | by Tyler Crandall

The Jazz won big against Mudiay’s former club. (Melissa Majchrzak vía espn.com)



The Jazz easily held off the struggling New York Knicks in Salt Lake City on Wednesday night, 128-104. 

Sometimes, there are those games where there isn’t much to take away from the experience. This can happen in losses, where the team just wants to move on and forget what happened. And there are those wins, where things click, the other team is on a back-to-back in a long road trip, and they are already a bad team. This game was the latter.

After taking an early lead, the Jazz bench mob let the lead dwindle, a recurring storyline of late. But after the Knicks cut it to three, the Jazz went on a tear in the latter part of the second quarter and the game was basically over by halftime, with the Jazz up 72-53. The Jazz cruised the rest of the way. No Jazz starter had to play more than 29 minutes. 

Emmanuel Mudiay and Bojan Bogdanovic each scored 20 against the former’s last team, and Rudy Gobert added 16 points, 16 boards and four assists  

However handily the Jazz won this game, let’s still try to find something to glean from the win. One thing to note that was pointed out by Salt City Hoops’ own Dan Clayton, Jordan Clarkson was the first off the bench in the game, rather than Mudiay: 

 

What does this mean? Well, Jordan Clarkson has provided a huge spark off the bench. The Jazz are now unbeaten in his tenure of 7 games, which is the longest win streak of Clarkson’s career. The confusing bit, which perhaps has changed somewhat after the recent game(s), but Jordan Clarkson’s on/off numbers aren’t exactly great. 

Of course, there’s some small sample size happening here. But it’s still pretty strange to see such negative numbers when the Jazz have also won all of his games!

Despite that, the Jazz offense has been on fire lately. Since adding Clarkson, the Jazz offense has become elite. Perhaps showing how poor the Jazz bench was previously. 

But perhaps the Clarkson effect is overstated and it’s simply a matter of the “easier schedule”.  Whatever the case, the good news is that the Jazz still have a slate of “easy” games ahead of them. The next big challenge will likely be playing against the Pacers on January 20, who seem to have the Jazz’ number. Until then, the Jazz need to remain engaged and not become complacent as they complete a stretch of games against sub-.500 opponents. 

 

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