SALT LAKE CITY – Donovan Mitchell, who played in Friday’s game while in the league’s concussion protocol, posted a message on Twitter in the third quarter that sounded awful as a warning to the rest of the NBA.
“Uh oh Bojan !!!” Mitchell said, with some eye emoji added in.
As if the league needed another reason to fear Jazz.
Utah won its 11th straight game, with a 120-101 victory over Dallas at Vivint Arena on Friday. Ten of the 11 victories came with double digits.
According to Glass Cleaning, which eliminates time and garbage, Utah has the league’s best net rating, second best defense and third best offense; and Jazz is number 1 in all, on a mile of country, in the long series of victories – a stretch that now represents over half of the season.
All statistics say that Jazz is currently the best team in the league, and the eye test confirmed this on Friday.
Utah had a 25-point lead after the end of the first quarter due to the fact that it hit eight three during that period and kept Dallas at just 3-of-5 shooting. Utah led by up to 30 points in the game and had six players reach double figures. And all this without their main scorer (Mitchell) or Derrick Favors.
Utah is currently a freight train that levels everything in its path. And that train just got more fuel on Friday thanks to the kindness of Bojan Bogdanovic.
What happens when the best shooter in Utah joins the 3-point wave? Maybe Mitchell said it best, “Uh oh.”
Bogdanovic, who has hit just 27 percent of three in the last four games, scored 32 points on a 7-of-11 shot from behind the arc. He had 17 points only in the third quarter, as Utah (15-4) remained in the league standings.
“We had a discussion this morning,” Bogdnaovic said. “Everyone wants me to shoot more, to be aggressive, but sometimes it’s hard when you fight; when you don’t see the ball passing through the net “.
Bogdanovic shot just three times in Utah’s victory over Dallas on Wednesday. For head coach Quin Snyder and the rest of Jazz, that number was unacceptable. Yes, he has fought sometimes this year, but he is coming out of the best season of his career. And the only way to get back to that level is to keep shooting.
“The way they play and the way we play fit perfectly,” Snyder said. “He hasn’t played that long. And he just goes back to where he was, and that sometimes takes time.
“The biggest thing I want to do is just keep attacking, keep shooting, keep competing.”
For Bogdanovic, Friday’s game started like many others this season: a few missed shots. Snyder developed a few pieces to involve him, but he could not convert. While the Jazz finished with a huge early advantage, Bogdanovic went 1-for-3 from deep.
With Utah’s love story with the three balls, Snyder made it clear that no matter how many were missed, everyone has to keep shooting. This is how Utah pitched nine straight games, with at least 15 girls in three (one off the league record) and hit 20 girls in a game seven times this season (more than they had in franchise history entering the year).
It’s simple: if you’re open, shoot the ball.
With the Mavericks trying to stop the paint a bit more after Rudy Gobert dropped 29 points on Wednesday (Gobert had another 17 points and 12 rebounds in Friday’s win), which meant less pressure on the perimeter and that meant that Bogdanovic was open. In the third, he did not hesitate, connecting to all four 3-point attempts.
With each blow, confidence seemed to increase. His decisions were faster, his release faster – it seemed that Bogdanovic Jazz fans met last season.
“Tonight he was himself and he makes us much better when he’s aggressive like that,” said Mike Conley, who had 22 points and nine assists.
After winning 11 consecutive games with an average of 15.6 points, do some teams have to think about how well Jazz can get?
And all this gain helped Bogdanovic cope with a slower start than expected.
“I would be very upset if I play the way I play now and we lose, but we win. The team plays great,” he said. “So no one cares about their own statistics or percentages or whatever you are looking for. So it’s great for me to win, even if I’m fighting now. “
He didn’t fight on Friday. It could be “uh oh” for the rest of the league.
Ryan Miller