The Utah Jazz wasted no time benefiting from an absent Luka Dončić, defeating the Dallas Mavericks 99-93 in Sport 1 of their first-round collection.
Regardless of a sluggish begin, Donovan Mitchell led all scorers with 32 factors and chipped in six rebounds and 6 assists within the win.
“I got here out somewhat too passive,” Mitchell said after the sport.
Bojan Bogdanović had 20 factors within the first half, whereas Mitchell scored simply two because the Jazz held onto a 45-43 lead.
“Bojan had it going, so I obtained to go on the market and make the fitting performs. The photographs weren’t falling, so it’s all good, so come out within the second half, be able to go, and be in assault mode,” mentioned Mitchell.
The three-time All-Star got here out firing after intermission, and the Jazz survived a Dallas run to flee with the street win.
“We didn’t actually shoot nicely on the finish of the night time however we cleaned it up on the boards,” mentioned Mitchell of Utah’s 53-34 rebound benefit.
“Simply rebound. Everyone has to get again, get in there, and ship 5 guys to the board against their two or three,” mentioned Spencer Dinwiddie. “We all know Royce [O’Neale] goes to crash within the corners, Bojan could crash, and clearly, [Rudy] Gobert and [Hassan] Whiteside are going to be in there. We simply should ship all 5 and ensure we get the defensive rebound.”
Regardless of the loss, the Mavs had been optimistic.
“They had been nice this afternoon. Offensively, they discovered guys [and] obtained photographs, however our protection gave us the prospect to win this sport,” mentioned Mavs coach Jason Kidd. “The seems to be that we obtained coming down the stretch, we’d usually make these. That’s simply the sport of basketball; generally they go in, generally they don’t. However I assumed total, we slowed the sport down and gave ourselves an opportunity to win with out Luka [Dončić], and that basically simply reveals the signal of workforce.”
The Jazz and Mavs play Sport 2 Monday with no phrase on Dončić’s availability.
