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Brooklyn • With Monday night's 101-89 win over the Brooklyn Nets at the Barclay's Center, the Utah Jazz have officially become one of the hottest teams in the Western Conference.
The victory was the fourth straight for the Jazz. Utah is now by itself as the fourth-place team in the West, and the Jazz are becoming particularly adept at putting teams away down the stretch.
And yet, the Jazz aren't completely happy. For a fourth straight game, they struggled against an inferior opponent.
Gordon Hayward's 30 points carried the Jazz, but the offense was in trouble for stretches he wasn't on the floor. And the Nets were able to build a 65-57 lead deep in the third quarter because the Jazz found themselves in mud offensively.
"I don't think we are playing that well overall," Utah coach Quin Snyder said. "Some of it's just us not being disciplined. Some of it's not thinking. But I felt like we came out in the second half and we were much more focused. Fortunately, we were able to clean it up."
Ultimately, the Jazz simply had more pieces on the chess board than Brooklyn did.
When the Nets hurt Utah from the power forward spot with former Jazzman Trevor Booker, Snyder countered by going small with Joe Johnson, and the veteran made a significant impact with his defense and a big 3-pointer down the stretch that put the game away.
Brooklyn tried to go to its best player — Brook Lopez. Unfortunately for the Nets, Rudy Gobert was dominant in the middle for the Jazz, scoring 15 points, grabbing 16 rebounds and blocking three shots. Gobert harassed Lopez into a 6-of-16 shooting night, and Lopez picked up five fouls on the other end trying to deal with Gobert's overall activity.
"Brook is a great player, so I knew I had to work hard tonight,"Gobert said. "He's shooting threes now, so he tried to pull me away from the basket. He's a tough matchup. I tried to limit him and get rebounds and get my teammates open."
As in three previous wins, Monday night's fourth quarter belonged to the Jazz. Utah was able to take a 70-70 tie and turn it into a double-digit advantage late. Rodney Hood stepped up and provided offense down the stretch. The Jazz defense turned up a few notches. Shelvin Mack — playing for the injured George Hill — scored 15 points on a variety of floaters and jumpers and finishes in the paint at the basket.
No, the Jazz aren't completely happy with their play. But they are happy considering the alternative, which would be a bad loss.
If anything, they know they have built a margin for error this season for themselves. It's enabled them to figure out rotations and negotiate through injuries — and keep winning basketball games.
"We're not as crisp as we think we should be," Hayward said. "That's on everybody, not just one person. But that being said, when we guard and give ourselves a chance, we're down six or seven, instead of 15 or 20 when we go through scoring droughts. We made a big-time run in the fourth so we didn't have to deal with the crowd or anything closing the game. So I'm really proud of that."
Twitter: @tribjazz