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SALT LAKE CITY — When Jordan Clarkson got to the arena on Saturday, Mike Conley had a suggestion for him.
"Bro, you know what I haven't seen you do this year?" Conley asked him. "Get 40."
Flash forward to late in the first quarter. Clarkson dribbled around a screen and pulled up for a deep 3-pointer. He didn't follow through after the shot; instead, he dropped his hands down to his sides as he hopped backward. He was that confident it was going in.
"That's probably the best my shot's felt all season," he said after the game.
It was at that moment when Donovan Mitchell knew Clarkson was in for a big night. A player doesn't shoot like that — a high-arching shot that hit nothing but the bottom of the net with no follow through — if he's not in a special kind of groove.
"As a shooter and you shoot like that early, you have a sense (of what's coming)," Mitchell said.
Conley, who sat out on Saturday to rest, should tell more of his teammates to score 40 more often — apparently, that's all it takes. Clarkson scored a career-high 45 points to lead the Jazz to a 134-125 win over the Sacramento Kings.
"I don't know, it just got in my head and shots started falling," Clarkson said of Conley's query.
Clarkson was 15 of 21 from the field, including 7 of 13 from the 3-point line, in an extremely efficient 45-point night. To coach Quin Snyder, though, there was a bit more to the performance than simply Conley saying to do it.
Snyder said it was the culmination of Clarkson's work over the last few months. It's no secret Clarkson has struggled with his shot as of late; he's hit 31% from the 3-point range, and a career-low 40% from the field, but Snyder hasn't seen his work ethic budge. Actually, he's seen it increase.
"He wasn't making shots and he's not going to be on the first team of the defensive team, and he'll probably admit to that, but he just cares about winning and about competing," Snyder said. "I think, really, the last month or so he's been very deliberate in his work.
"He puts in the time and he knows he knows his game. ... He's one of those guys that can get cooking, as they say."
On Saturday, he got cooking.
Without Conley, Rudy Gobert and Trent Forrest in the lineup, the Jazz needed some added production from everyone. Still, Snyder said he didn't want anyone to play outside themselves. He didn't want Bojan Bogdanovic to turn into a point guard or Clarkson to try and turn into a center.
Nothing about Clarkson's games on Saturday felt abnormal, though; he just played his game at an extremely high level.
Clarkson drained four 3-pointers in the first quarter to help the Jazz keep pace with an equally hot De'Aaron Fox, who scored 20 of his 41 points in the opening 12 minutes. But as Fox cooled off, Clarkson kept, as Snyder put it, cooking.
Clarkson scored 15 points in the fourth quarter to eclipse his previous career high and lead the Jazz to a win.
"It feels good," Clarkson said. "It's just staying the course — not changing anything, not thinking about stuff too much, just coming in and working."
He admitted that with his shooting woes this season, there was some relief that came from how he was able to shoot the ball against Sacramento. And he's hoping it's a sign of things to come.
"Last season, I started off hot and then played like (crap) for a few months leading up to the playoffs," Clarkson said. "This year, it's figuring out how to play the best basketball at the end of the year. It's all part of the process, all part of the work."
Maybe it's as simple as having Conley tell him to do it.
