Cleveland, Ohio • LeBron James notched the 60th triple-double of his career on Saturday night against the Utah Jazz, moving into sixth place all-time in that category. He had 10 assists, 11 rebounds and scored 29 points, 10 of those in a deciding fourth quarter as he carried his team to a 109-100 victory at Quicken Loans Arena.
But that wasn’t the reason the Jazz lost. Utah went into Saturday night knowing the MVP candidate was going to have a great game. After all, James is the best player in the league, and an impossible matchup for almost anyone in the NBA.
The Jazz lost because of Cedi Osman, Kyle Korver and Jeff Green. Utah’s inability to contain Cleveland’s bench is what doomed the Jazz in a game that was winnable down the stretch.
“We knew that LeBron was going to get his,” Jazz forward Joe Johnson said. “But we didn’t do a great job against some of the other guys. They had that one play they ran over and over (down screen action for Kyle Korver), and they scored six-to-nine points off of that. So those were the plays and the shots that really hurt us.”
In the second night of a back-to-back, Utah put itself in position to pull a surprise. Rookie guard Donovan Mitchell scored 19 of his team-high 26 points in the second half, shooting 11 of 16 from the field. Royce O’Neale and Rodney Hood hit seven 3-pointers between them. Thabo Sefolosha came off the bench to score 12 points, and the Jazz defended and rebounded well enough to stay competitive without the presence of big men Rudy Gobert and Derrick Favors, both lost to injury.
But Cleveland is one of the most experienced teams in the NBA. And down the stretch, the Cavaliers made enough clutch shots and stops defensively when it mattered.
“It was a weird game,” Rodney Hood said. “We didn’t have a lot of rim protection, Ekpe [Udoh, who had six blocked shots] did a good job, but Ekpe couldn’t play the whole game. They spread us out and Korver hit some timely shots. We didn’t play well in spurts offensively, and they made us pay for it.”
The Jazz did play well enough to win. They made 17 3-pointers and shot 45 percent from the field. They limited their turnovers, started the game on a 10-2 run and hung close throughout.
But the Cavaliers have been playing great basketball after a rough start to the season. They are 17-1 after Nov. 11, the best record in the NBA during that stretch. To beat this Cavaliers team, the Jazz needed to play almost perfect basketball.
Without Gobert and Favors, that may have been too much to ask.
“We did compete,” Utah coach Quin Snyder said. “There’s always things you want to do better, but the game kind of went the way a lot of Cavaliers games have gone. I thought guarding Kyle Korver in those pin-downs late, there’s not a lot you can do when you’re with him, he’s rising up. I thought, overall, we did a good job of trying to hang in there.”
The Jazz — in the middle of their toughest schedule stretch of the season — fall to 14-16 overall and have lost five of their past six games, and three of their four games on the current road trip.
Follow @Tjonessltrib