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DETROIT — No bell rang, but Jordan Clarkson and Ron Holland looked like they wouldn’t have minded hearing one.
Clarkson and Holland were in the center of a scuffle during the third period when both squared up like they were about to take part in a title bout. No punches were thrown — things actually got separated pretty quickly (though, both players were ejected) — but that, alone, highlighted the physical nature of Thursday’s game.
And after a no-show earlier this week in Los Angeles, the Jazz showed they had some fight in them — both figuratively and literally. The Jazz rode a season-best first quarter to a 126-119 win over the Detroit Pistons, snapping a three-game losing streak.
“It was super physical, chippy, ugly, nasty. There are turnovers, there are fouls, there are fights, there’s a level of tension in the game, and in the arena that we really haven’t seen this year,” Jazz coach Will Hardy said.
Or since he took over the Jazz job.
Hardy said he’s not sure he’s seen a game like Thursday’s in the last five years; it had a bit of everything. Extracurricular bumps and taunting, some hard fouls and multiple stoppages for blood. Keyonte George got into it with a fan courtside and Paul Reed bumped Clarkson twice after a play, which led to a fake fight at center court.
In all, there were seven technical fouls called on Thursday.
“We talked to the group like this is good. This is the good part. The chaos is good, the height and emotion is good,” Hardy said. “This is a situation that’s good for us. Let’s reframe it in our brain. There’s nothing to panic about. I wish every game was a little bit chaotic and disruptive like that. I don’t wish that everybody was bleeding. I don’t wish that we would fight every game— that’ll be taken out of context for sure — but the tension in the building, I think, was just good for our group.”
John Collins said it was one of the most physical games he’s played this season, and thought it was good to see the team stick together through it.
“We didn’t really care how physical the game got and just understood that if we played basketball together, we’d come out tonight victorious and we did that,” he said.
Early on, though, it didn’t look like the game would be close enough for things to even get heated.
The Jazz scored 48 points in the first quarter off some lights-out shooting. Utah was 15-of-23 from the field in the quarter and 9-of-13 from 3-point range to take a 29-point lead after 12 minutes. The 48 points were just one off the franchise record for points in a quarter.
So game over, right? Not exactly. Detroit cut the Utah lead down to 6 in the second quarter.
If Utah’s 48-point quarter was eyebrow-raising, so, too, was its 27 turnovers. The Jazz committed 10 of those in the second quarter to help the Pistons back into the game, and that allowed the tension to build in the game.
Especially with how Detroit was defending. The Pistons blew up on-ball and off-ball actions. They picked up the Jazz full-court, really causing problems for the Utah guards. They kept a body on Lauri Markkanen as he tried to navigate the perimeter. Walker Kessler had a hard time finding space to screen.
“They were physical with everybody,” Hardy said.
Paced by big nights from Collin Sexton (30 points, seven assists, six rebounds), Keyonte George (28 points on 7-of-13 from 3-point land) and Markkanen (27 points and 14 rebounds), the Jazz still held off the Pistons.
“I think the best part about that game was there were moments of high emotion for our group that come with the territory of playing in a game like that, but it didn’t fracture us,” Hardy said. “We were in those moments together, and I thought the team communicated really well throughout a lot of those moments.”
He saw that as a sign of growth for his team. On the road against a team that wanted to muck things up a bit, the Jazz found ways to respond.
Now, shooting definitely helped that. Utah was 20-of-40 from 3-point range and made six in the fourth quarter, including a dagger by George with 58 seconds remaining. That’s the blueprint to overcoming 27 giveaways. If those shots aren’t falling at such a high clip, maybe the Pistons’ aggressiveness may have been harder to overcome.
“Obviously, takes a toll, but something you got to deal with it, and something that comes with winning — winning does hurt a little bit,” Collins said.
But a bit less than losing.
