Collin Sexton scores 30, Utah Jazz lose to Golden State Warriors – Deseret News

Going into Golden State knowing that Stephen Curry and Draymond Green are going to be watching from the sidelines would probably boost the spirit of any opponent.

Well, unless you’re the Utah Jazz and you know you’ll be without Lauri Markkanen, John Collins, Walker Kessler, Jordan Clarkson, Johnny Juzang and Cody Williams.

Of course, the Jazz do have one player who has confidence and belief that can’t be tamped down. There is one player on the Jazz roster who probably believes that he could lift the team to a win over just about anybody, that he could carry the weight of 10 basketball teams on his shoulders — Collin Sexton.

And on Tuesday night he nearly did it.

Sexton scored 30 points, on 63.1% shooting, while dishing out four assists and grabbing two steals. He helped to bring the Jazz within one point of the Warriors midway through the fourth quarter, but it ultimately wasn’t enough.

The Jazz guard’s exuberant confidence and incredible performance wasn’t enough to push the Jazz past the Warriors as Utah dropped its seventh straight game and fell to 10-35 on the season with a 114-103 loss to the Warriors.

“I felt like our inability to generate quality 3s tonight hurt us,” Jazz head coach Will Hardy said. “Their switching, they did a good job of trying to take some of that away, and when we did drive, I thought our reads to see the weakside corner weren’t quite as crisp as they’ve been lately, and then they obviously won the possession game.”

The Jazz’s interior defense was pretty good despite not having Kessler on the court (shoutout to Drew Eubanks and Micah Potter) and the team managed to score 56 points in the paint and shoot 51.3% overall.

But those pesky Warriors, even without Curry, are always really good at finding ways to beat teams from long range. Golden State hit 17-of-49 from beyond the arc while the Jazz made good on just 8-of-26.

That volume from deep is what ultimately hurt the Jazz the most (outside of not having enough talent on the court).

“The ball is always moving, guys are always screening for one another,” Sexton said of the Warriors. “That’s a really good team, and you can just tell they’re all selfless.

“It may not be your shot, but I’m going to screen and make sure that you get the shot, or if I cut back door really hard, then the next person might get the shot. I feel like they just do little things like that and it allows everybody to eat, and also it’s fun, because the ball is always popping in there. A really tough team.”

But there was also some late-game execution that highlighted the inexperience of the Jazz compared to some of the players on the Warriors roster.

To be fair, the Warriors were also playing quite a few young players on Tuesday night, but they were flanked by Dennis Schroeder, who led the team with 23 points, Andrew Wiggins, who had 19 and even Kyle Anderson, who didn’t play much but had some important plays down the stretch.

“We’re starting to feel, in multiple instances, that you can play a really good or a good enough 42-to-44 minutes to be in the game, and then at the end, everything has to be tight,” Hardy said.

“I continue to be optimistic about the group as a whole and the growth that we’re showing, the competitiveness that we’re showing, the connectivity that we’re showing, but 48 minutes is a long time. The sustained focus it takes to win is critical, and I’m glad that our group’s getting to feel that.”