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SALT LAKE CITY — The Utah Jazz needed someone — anyone — to take some shots on Wednesday.
Talen Horton-Tucker was happy to fill the void.
Horton-Tucker had a career-high 41 points and added five assists to lead the Utah Jazz to a 128-117 win over the San Antonio Spurs on Wednesday at AT&T Center to snap the team's four-game losing skid. He was 15-of-25 from the field and 6-of-11 from 3-point range on his career night.
Horton-Tucker has taken his share of criticism this season: After Wednesday, he now has 10 games of four or more turnovers (he had four against the Spurs) since being pushed into the starting lineup in February. Combine that with his tendency to over dribble and take some ill-advised step-back shots, and, well, there can be some frustrating moments
Was there some of that in his career-high night? Yes, but sometimes you stomach the bad in order to get some genius as well.
He attacked relentlessly with 12 of his shots coming in the paint (he also shot six free throws), and he had it going from deep. Horton-Tucker came into Wednesday shooting 27.5% from 3-point range, but shot over 50% on 11 attempts in San Antonio.
"Seeing the shot start falling early gave my confidence a big boost," Horton-Tucker said.
Horton-Tucker made his first four shots of the night and had 10 points before the game was even four minutes old. At that point, it was already clear that Horton-Tucker was in takeover mode.
And if there was ever a night the Jazz needed someone to try and do that, it was Wednesday night.
Utah was without Lauri Markkanen, Kelly Oylynk, Jordan Clarkson and Collin Sexton — also known as four of its preferred five starters. That's a lot of production to make up; Horton-Tucker more or less tried to do it himself, and he mostly succeeded.
He scored 16 points in the first quarter and had 27 at the half.
"When you start getting rolling, defenses are going to start to collapse more toward you, they're going to react more towards your drives, and that helps to come a little bit earlier," Jazz coach Will Hardy said.
"It's a balancing act. The best scorers in the league do such a good job of scoring in a burst, and when you overreact to help them, they do a good job of setting up their teammates to get some easy ones and it loosens the defense back up for them to continue to be aggressive," he continued. "I think he's still finding his way in that."
That's not to say he didn't have a special night; just that it can be used as a learning experience, as well. Over the last five weeks, Horton-Tucker has been asked to be the main ball handler for a team for the first time in his career. That means he has to make a lot more in-game decisions than ever before. Have they all been the right ones? Nope, but Hardy wants to give him enough freedom to play to his strengths.
Horton-Tucker has a unique blend of size and skill, has handles to get to the lane, and has the strength to finish over bigger defenders. He also can make some pretty nifty passes — he had two long lobs to Udoka Azubuike for dunks — and when it looked like he was about to take a turning fadeaway jumper, he fired a quick pass to a cutting Damian Jones for an easy bucket.
Is he a true point guard? Heavens no, and he might not ever be that, but there aren't a lot of guards who are in today's NBA. There aren't many, either, who can hang 40 points on any given night.
"Just trying to keep the defense guessing, trying to stay consistent in all three levels and just being aggressive," Horton-Tucker said. "I feel like I come out and do that and do all those three things. I feel like I'll be successful."
He was that and more on Wednesday.
