Getty Lauri Markkanen #23 of the Utah Jazz.
Given their choice of options, the Brooklyn Nets were more than happy to let Kelly Olynyk take the final shot for the Utah Jazz. It was a running mid-range look while falling away with two defenders near him that was lucky to hit the backboard.
“I didn’t want Talen [Horton-Tucker] or Lauri [Markkanen] taking the last shot,” Mikal Bridges said via the Nets’ YouTube channel on April 2. “So – you can’t control that – but just hoping they don’t you get an opportunity. But, I mean, it’s tough to go full-court, five seconds with the defense and stuff right there. I was just hoping for a stop.”
Markkanen tallied just six of his 23 points in the final frame, to Bridges point, getting up just three of his 21 shots in the quarter.
Horton-Tucker stepped up scoring 15 of his game-high 32 points in the final 12 minutes.
“You know going into the game, that No. 1 dude, he knows how to score,” head coach Jacque Vaughn said. He’s done it before probably, and he can probably continue to do it again. I take a little bit of a football aspect as you’re not going to be able to stop the run and the pass. So sometimes we go into a night and Trae Young is not going to get off or Lauri Markkanen is not going to go off. And we’re hoping that we can use the other guys on the floor, that if a secondary guy has a good game then we have to live with some of the consequences. I just think over the course of a game, there’s some dudes who are built to make shots, some aren’t. In the fourth quarter also, shots may look a little differently. Role players’ shots may look a little differently. Those dudes who bring it every night, they can bring it every night. So we want to get that ball out of their hands.”
The @utahjazz barely fall to the @BrooklynNets 111-110.
Kelly Olynyk misses the game-winner as the Jazz ALMOST erased a 23 point fourth quarter deficit.
But Horton-Tucker – who has been on a tear of late – was more than capable of answering the call. And, despite the outcome or Vaughn’s plans to funnel looks to the second option, Bridges wants stops.
Instead of continuing to let Horton-Tucker continue to light them up, Brooklyn surrounded Olynyk, cutting off with a trailing Horton-Tucker in position to hit a potential game-winner.
“I mean I don’t think we rely on none of that,” Bridges said.”They’ve just been playing well. We just got to be better. I mean yeah we just gotta be better…defensively; even No. 1 or No. 2 options because you know a lot of teams the No. 1 and 2 are both really good; even a 3 as well. So you just gotta be better. Defensively, I think we did a good job on Lauri but Talen had it going early. We just got to be mindful and not just one person but everybody else.”
Mikal Bridges Continues Nets Takeover
Bridges has been a revelation for Brooklyn ranking 12th in the NBA averaging 28 points with 4.5 rebounds and 2.7 assists. But he had to go about getting his latest 30-point effort in after shooting just 36% from the floor and going 1-for-8 from beyond the arc. Bridges went into attack mode.
Another day, another @mikal_bridges 30 piece.
“Free throws, earlier in the game, were a bit of an issue for us – fouling,” Jazz head coach Will Hardy noted during his postgame media availability via NBA.com. “Mikal Bridges obviously got away from us shooting 13 of them.”
Bridges noted that he had good examples of how to get to the line from defending some players and from learning alongside Devin Booker and Chris Paul with the Phoenix Suns.
“We want him to shoot double-digit free throws,” Vaughn said.
The 26-year-old swingman has more than doubled his previous career-high for free throws per game and is averaging 6.9 attempts per game as a Net.
Nets Clinch Playoff Spot
It must be said that the bulk of the work was done for the Nets before the trade deadline but they are in the playoff without nonetheless. And it’s not as though they coasted to their spot after trading both Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving. Brooklyn went 4-6 after Durant suffered an MCL injury but 4-2 in their last six games with Irving in the lineup.
They have gone 12-15 since then but are 4-1 in their last five outings.
This was a good first step but the Nets are still not out of the woods. They are currently the six-seed but can still fall into the Play-In Tournament but, with just four games to go, they can fall no further than ninth in the clustered lower rung of the Eastern Conference.