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BOSTON — The Utah Jazz got a dose of reality on Friday.
And it came at them fast.
Before three minutes had even gone off the clock, the Jazz were down by 10 points. A minute into the second quarter, the deficit had grown to 20. And before the first half had even ended, Utah was down by as many as 36 points.
The good news: It didn't get much worse than that.
The bad: It never got any better, either.
The Boston Celtics made easy work of the Jazz to the tune of a 126-97 win Friday at TD Garden.
On the first possession of the game, the Jazz got a deflection and a steal leading to a transition chance for Kris Dunn. His layup attempt was blocked from behind, so was Simone Fontecchio's putback attempt.
Thus began a troubling trend for Utah Friday night.
"We just looked timid around the basket early in the game," Jazz coach Will Hardy said. "We shot under 50% in the paint tonight."
Those misses led to leak-out chances for Boston, and the Jazz could never get settled — at least not until the game was well out of reach.
Jayson Tatum scored 23 of his 30 points in the first half — and was outscoring the Jazz himself well into the second quarter — to lead six Celtics who reached double figures.
Lauri Marrkanen led the Jazz with 17 points and 11 rebounds
Utah had won six of its last seven games, and nine of its last 12 entering Friday night, but the team knew things were about to get much tougher.
The game in Boston began a murderer's row stretch against the upper echelon in the league. Utah will be at Philadelphia Saturday and at Milwaukee Monday (the Celtics, Bucks, and 76ers have the three best records in the league) before heading back to Salt Lake CIty for a game against the defending champion Denver Nuggets.
It's brutal run, and it couldn't have started any worse.
"I appreciate the nightmare fuel with the four teams in a row," Hardy said before Friday's game. "I think playing really good teams always tests you. We've been playing good basketball of late but to go on the road and play high-level opponents in great, hard atmospheres is going to be really good for our group. It's going to test us both on the court from a physical standpoint, it's going to test our emotional and mental stability."
The Jazz didn't pass the first test.
Boston jumped out to a 10-0 lead in a blink — a run the Jazz never fully recovered from. The Celtics then removed all doubt with a 24-2 flurry in the second quarter.
Boston's defense was suffocating to start the game, holding the Jazz to just 15 first-quarter points. Utah shot 5-of-27 and 1-of-12 from 3-point range in the first 12 minutes.
Early on the Jazz were missing chances at the rim or open 3-point shots. As things went on, though, Utah settled for isolation attacking — dribbling into crowds and forcing up bad shots. That's when things truly got out of hand.
"The games against the really good teams, they test your ability to recognize what's real and what's not and what was a missed shot on a good execution play versus what was a bad possession," Hardy said. "And I thought early in the game we were doing pretty well with our execution, and I just thought it slipped."
Boston made the Jazz pay for that slippage — over and over and over again.
While back-to-back sets are usually loathed, the Jazz are looking forward to getting back on the court quickly.
"Especially just to wash this one down the drain and just continue to push," Collin Sexton said about playing Saturday in Philadelphia. "I feel like the one tomorrow it's gonna be big and it's gonna be a good one."
It would be hard to be worse.
