Paul Millsap powers Utah Jazz to 105 – 84 win over New Jersey Nets – NBA Recap
On Monday night Utah Jazz proved that they will fight hard to secure a position for the playoffs. Even though they stepped inside the arena fatigued, after playing 4 games in 6 nights, they still managed to trounce New Jersey Nets
105-84 at the Prudential Center.
Once again their front court played a pivotal role as forward Paul Millsap tallied a game high 24 points and 13 boards while Al Jefferson poured in 19 points for Jazz. Alec Burks collected 15 coming off the bench and CJ Miles had
10 points in his team’s 27th victory.
"We're resilient, you know? We learn from mistakes”. Said Jazz point guard Devin Harris who had 9 points. “Today I think was more of a mental thing than a physical thing. Obviously we're tired, but to be able to go through and
still get a win, playing the way we did -- came out aggressive, came out right away -- just shows you where this team is going."
Gerald Green scored a team high 20 for Nets while Deron Williams tallied 17 points to go with 11 assists. Forward Gerald Wallace had 14 and Jordan Williams collected 13 coming off the bench. MarShon Brooks recorded 10 points in
New Jersey’s 35th defeat of this season.
After a slow start Jazz managed to claim a 15-9 lead late in the opening frame but Nets changed hands, 17-15 after reeling 8 unanswered points by the end of opening frame.
Jazz opened the 2nd with a 12-2 spurt and claimed a 27-19 advantage, they ballooned their advantage to 34-23 midway through the frame. Utah left the hosts startled as they capped off the segment after claiming a mammoth
49-32 lead.
Utah cruised through the 3rd and with 04:15 in hand they were leading the scores 67-52 but Nets refused to go down and shaved off the huge deficit to 70-65 with a 13-3 spurt late into the stanza. Jazz were leading 72-65
as the game entered into its last 12 minutes.
Nets reduced the gap to 72-69 early in the last frame with a 4-nothing but Utah augmented their lead to 90-73 with an 18-4 spurt. They widened the gap to 105-82 conveniently. Baffled, Nets could only reduce the margin of their
defeat to 105-84 by the end of 4th quarter.
Nets coach Avery Johnson was not pleased by the futile effort of his team especially the way it ended.
"I didn't like the way that we finished the game. ... We didn't show quite the professionalism and character that I would have liked."
Jazz will be at logger heads with Boston Celtics on Wednesday, they will need the impetus gathered by this victory to secure a place in the playoffs as for now they are being closely followed by Houston Rockets and Denver Nuggets.
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