Not going as planned for the Jazz against the Timberwolves

SALT LAKE CITY — Waking up Saturday morning the Utah Jazz had to be feeling confident. They had just demolished the Detroit Pistons, almost stole a victory in San Antonio and had a big win against the Denver Nuggets all without their leading scorer Gordon Hayward.

The Jazz had played .500 ball for the last month and a half and it seemed like they were about to turn a corner and were ready to start stealing an extra game or two here or there.

Wednesday morning, however, the Jazz are scratching their heads trying to figure out what went wrong — twice — against the Minnesota Timberwolves.

Saturday evening the T-Wolves blew out the Jazz in Minnesota. This wasn't shocking because the Jazz were playing their third road game in four nights and it was the second game in as many nights. Those have traditionally been very bad for the Jazz.

Tuesday night in a revenge game, the Jazz battled the Timberwolves at home with Hayward back in the lineup and the same result came as the Jazz lost 112-97.

This game was slightly different. While Hayward was back, defensive stalwart Derrick Favors was out. That proved costly against the giant front court of Kevin Love and Nikola Pekovic. Utah coach Tyrone Corbin had a plan, but to use an old boxing adage, a game plan goes out the window when you get punched in the mouth.

Normally coming home means a team will start with energy, get all the calls and in the Jazz's case win more often than not.

None of those happened.

“It's typical of teams getting close to the all-star break to start to decompress a little bit, but you've got games to play,” Corbin said. “We can't afford to do that. We'll figure something out.”

The Wolves ran the Jazz off the court in the first quarter and led 34-16.

The Jazz actually won the last three quarters, outscoring the Timberwolves 81-78. It was that first quarter, the quarter the rested home team should own, that was the difference in the game.

“It's not going to just happen because we're home we got to go out and make it happen,” Corbin said. “They came out as the aggressor early and made some shots and we got ourselves in the hole and we couldn't get out of it.”

The Jazz weren't getting to the free-throw line either. The Jazz actually shot better from the field than Minnesota, but had 12 fewer free-throw attempts. Hayward and Alec Burks were the only two Jazz players to shoot free throws.

Home teams normally get some home calls, but this wasn't the case. However, Hayward said it wasn't the refs, but rather the way the Wolves played defense.

“It's kind of the way they guard it,” Hayward said. “They went under on almost every single pick-and-roll and they are giving you that little mid-range jump shot, which we just got to take and knock down. They are also big down low and they are able to hold it down without fouling.”

Without Favors the Jazz started Enes Kanter. He is a big body who has shown flashes of brilliance and youth this year. The Jazz are now 1-18 when Kanter starts. Of course most of those are before Trey Burke played when the Jazz went 1-14.

In the three games before the Jazz-Timberwolves mini-series, Kanter scored 11, 25 and 18 while shooting well over 50 percent and grabbing over seven rebounds per game. In the two games against the Wolves, Kanter scored eight points and grabbed seven rebounds combined.

Kanter plays off the confidence his teammates. In games where the team is rolling he normally has pretty good games. When they are getting blown out he usually struggles.

In the second game, things got so bad that Corbin had to go away from Kanter late in the first half and play rookie Rudy Gobert.

Gobert (27 minutes) and Jeremy Evans (29 minutes) each played more than half the game.

Here is where the loss of Favors really hurt the Jazz because Gobert gave up a listed 40 pounds (it looked like a lot more than that), and Evans gave up more than 50 pounds to Pekovic and Love.

“That's why we have backup guys,” Evans said. “We are all supposed be able to come in and play a big role and try to help because some guys are going to get injured.”

This is no slight to Gobert or Evans, both of those guys played a relatively good game. Evans was one of three players to score in double figures along with Hayward and Burks. Gobert scored eight, grabbed six rebounds and blocked three shots in a game he wasn't sure whether he would play in when he woke up.

“This morning I didn't know if he was going to play me or Andris (Biedrins),” Gobert said. “This afternoon Andris talked to me. He told me 'they were going to play you so be ready, just do what you can.' They told Andris to tell me, so I knew before the game.”

In the end sometimes there is just nothing that works out. Burke has never had consecutive single-digit point totals since he became the starter, but that happened against the Wolves when he scored nine points in each of those games.

The Jazz hadn't lost consecutive games in over a month, but that happened as well. Eventually the young Jazz are going to turn the corner and become a talented team playing together.

It will still happen eventually, just not this time against the Timberwolves.

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