The preseason opener for the Utah Jazz against an outmatched Sydney Kings team went about as expected on Monday night at Vivint Smart Arena.
Utah pulled away in the second half, won handily 108-83, and did so in pleasing fashion, with plenty of Rudy Gobert dunks, Rodney Hood 3-pointers and fancy Ricky Rubio passes.
Except, Quin Snyder wasn’t pleased.
The Jazz coach was blunt in the moments following, calling Utah’s defense “awful,” especially in a second quarter stretch when the Kings made a game of it, trimming a 20-point deficit to eight. Snyder bemoaned what was sloppy play, and lamented a lack of execution on that end, considering the level of competition.
“Defense is like anything, especially something you want to be good at. If you aren’t attentive to it, you won’t be good at it. They got a couple of open looks and a couple of offensive rebounds. Before you know it, they started hitting tougher shots, and this is a team that can shoot. I thought we gave them some confidence. We jumped out in the first quarter, but we didn’t maintain.”
Some of Snyder’s displeasure was borne from a coach that knows his team has a tougher road ahead. But a lot was legitimate. The Jazz surrendered 31 points in the second quarter. They failed to close out on Sydney’s big men, who began making perimeter shots. The Kings were able to secure offensive rebounds, which led to points. And a 43-23 lead early in the second quarter was sliced to 58-47 at halftime.
“We didn’t rebound and we didn’t do the little things,” Gobert said. “It’s something we can fix, but we weren’t playing well at the time.”
To their credit, the Jazz turned in a dominant second half, pulling away for good early in the third quarter, which led to deep bench minutes in the fourth. But, the second quarter for the Jazz felt like a struggle they simply didn’t have to go through.
“We definitely need to clean some things up,” Hood said.
More than anything, Monday was the first preseason game in a lot of ways. There were missed shots, missed passes, a few missed dunks and missed assignments. At the same time, there were multiple positives for the Jazz.
Hood looked comfortable in his new role as a primary scorer, dropping in a team-high 20 points, including 4 of 6 from 3-point range. Gobert was dominant on both ends of the floor. Rookie Donovan Mitchell, Dante Exum and Thabo Sefolosha were all good off the bench, with Mitchell scoring 11 points in his preseason debut. Alec Burks was very good in fourth quarter minutes.
“It was a great experience,” Exum said. “We had a few ups and downs during the game, but we kind of found our feet again, but that’s what preseason’s for. We’ll just go back in and keep working, so we can do it again for 48 minutes.”