Summer League: Jazz are undefeated no more in Las Vegas

SALT LAKE CITY — The Utah Jazz's quest for the all-important (heavy sarcasm font), Las Vegas Summer League championship took a major hit on Wednesday.

Utah fell 80-74 to the Toronto Raptors, dropping the previously undefeated Jazz into a 15-team tie atop the standings with a 2-1 record.

Each team will play four games in order to determine the two squads that will play for the championship. Multi-team ties will be determined by point differential, which doesn't bode well for Utah. The Jazz have just a 0.3 point differential, good enough for 12th among the 15 teams. So yeah, barring a very big blowout against the Los Angeles Clippers on Friday, and other fortuitous results, the Jazz won't be leaving Vegas with a trophy.

Here are the notes from Wednesday's game.

More of the same for Leandro Bolmaro

It's starting to sound like a broken record when it comes to Leandro Bolmaro. The Argentinian wing the Jazz acquired as part of the Rudy Gobert trade, once again, did a lot of things that could get people pretty excited. He has some good vision, a good handle and really competes on defense. He has the look of a rotation player everywhere on the court — except when he tries to shoot it.

It doesn't matter if it's from 3-point land, midrange, or right at the bucket, he's really struggled to finish in Vegas. On Wednesday, he was 4 of 12 from the field and 1 of 5 from 3-point range. He's not good enough everywhere else to justify those types of numbers.

Still, it would have been a surprise for Bolmaro to suddenly learn how to shoot after a few days with the Jazz. Utah was excited to get him into its development program, and maybe that can do wonders before the season begins.

Jared Butler's better play

Butler's line still wasn't great — 5 of 16 for 12 points and six assists — but he was in much more control on Wednesday. And his teammates left him out to dry a bit, too, and specifically Bruno Caboclo. Caboclo goaltended a Butler 3-pointer that looked like it was going to go in, and then completely botched a dunk that Butler beautifully set up with an over-the-shoulder pass. Those two plays alone would have given Butler 15 points and seven assists on the night — that would have looked a bit better.

The final minutes of the game, as Utah tried to finish off a late rally, summed up Butler's Summer League overall.

He drove to the basket and settled for a contested one-footer floater that was blocked; he got the rebound but his follow came up very short. A couple minutes later, he broke down the defense to set up the Caboclo missed dunk.

Butler has been good at setting up offense this summer, but hasn't been able to finish over Summer League defenders. That's concerning for the second-year guard.

Props for Isaiah Miller

The microscope has been on Butler and Bolmaro in Vegas, and to a lesser extent Johnny Juzang. That's not a surprise — those are the players that stand the best chance of playing for the big league Jazz. But it was Isaiah Miller that sparked life into the Jazz late in Wednesday's game.

The former UNC Greensboro player finished with 8 points, four assists and four steals as he sparked a fourth quarter charge, and was the main catalyst that turned what was nearly a 20-point game into a competitive one at the end.

Just look at this sequence:

That wasn't all either. Miller got two steals that led to him getting transition dunks. It was an impressive surge from the 6-foot guard.

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