Estimated read time: 3-4 minutes
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SALT LAKE CITY — As the Utah Jazz watched the film from Game 3, they saw everything that had made a fan base just about turn against them.
The Mavericks had wide-open lanes to the basket for layups and got wide-open 3-pointers from every spot on the court. The Jazz, meanwhile, had just one offensive rebound.
In a playoff game in front of their own fans, they put on an embarrassing performance.
"The way that we lost the last game, playing really bad without any kind of energy, letting them lay the ball inside and having wide open shots, kinda hit us pretty bad," Bojan Bogdanovic said.
They talked through the mistakes and the communication errors, but more importantly they found a new resolve: They aren't going to go out playing like that.
"That's not who we are," Bogdanovic said. "We got to at least have energy and show that we want to win."
When Bogdanovic picked up Luka Doncic 94 feet from the basket on Saturday, he showed just that — and sparked a defensive performance in Utah's 100-99 win in Game 4 the Jazz have been searching for since, well, the beginning of the season
"If you saw the first three games, we couldn't keep the ball out of the paint. We felt like size could help and strength," Quin Snyder said.
It sure did.
Dallas shot 43% from the field and 34% from deep and had to fight for everything. The walks to the lane the Mavs got through the first three games of the series were suddenly filled with bodies. The wide-open looks from the corner were met by closing defenders. In the first half, Bogdanovic even dove for a backdoor pass that hadn't even been thrown.
That type of effort didn't go unnoticed.
"Honestly, when you've got a guy like him, making it a commitment from the beginning of the game ... you don't want to let that person down," Donovan Mitchell said. "It kind of trickles down. That really sparked the whole game. The crowd felt it; we felt it."
The Vivint Arena crowd had zero buzz to start the game; and with the memory of Game 3 still fresh in the minds of the 18,000-plus fans, they were waiting for the Jazz to give them something to cheer about.
And Bogdanovic did.
By the end of the half, chants of "Bo-gey" were echoing through the arena. It had nothing to do with his offense — he scored 10 of his 12 points in the first half — but because of his effort guarding one of the world's best players.
"We gave everything we had," Rudy Gobert said. "It started with Bojan pressuring the ball and then it became all of us — Jordan (Clarkson), Don, Mike (Conley), everyone — everyone that came to the game was playing with intensity, defensively. We can feel it. Regardless of what happens at the end of the game, if you play that way, you deserve to win."
Due to that defense, the Jazz are back in the series as it moves back to Dallas; and a season was close to the brink has a new life.
"I think that it's a great W for us because we won the game with our defense," Bogdanovic said. "That's who we are, that's what we have to do every single night. And I mean great win. ... Our rotations and our energy, defensively, were really good."
That will make rewatching Game 4 a bit more fun than the last film session.
