The Jazz missed shots, made mistakes and never showed mental resolve against the Celtics

BOSTON — The Utah Jazz knew that they were going to be facing a juggernaut on Friday night. They knew that they were up against the winningest team in the league and they knew the Boston Celtics were not going to let them get anything easy.

Jazz head coach Will Hardy anticipated an aggressive hit from the Celtics and prior to the game he was hoping that his team would respond well to the competition.

“The thing I’m probably most focused on over these next couple of games is like, can we keep our heads when it doesn’t go well?” Hardy said. “Can we withstand that and kind of stick to what we’re trying to do and not go rogue?”

Well, I’ve got bad news. The answer to all of the above was a resounding ‘no’ on Friday.

The Celtics hit first, they hit hard and they did not relent. That would be fine if, as Hardy hoped, the Jazz had stayed the course and really stuck to the game plan. The Jazz could live with a loss had they still played hard and executed well, even if the results weren’t great.

But because the Jazz could not score they strayed away from all the good things that have made them a competitive team as of late and went into iso-heavy, lackadaisical offense that translated into bad defense, they turned in a first half that was impossible to come back from.

And when I say the Jazz couldn’t score, I mean it. Had the baskets at TD Garden been the size of an ocean, the Jazz still would have probably struggled to hit shots.

The Jazz opened the game with a 15-point first quarter in which they shot an abysmal 18.5% overall and 8.3% from deep. Again, that would have been acceptable — it’s a make or miss league — if the Jazz hadn’t been completely deflated by the situation.

“We started to rush a little bit, we played far too much one-on-one,” Hardy said. “This game was decided the first half.”

The Jazz went into halftime trailing by 31 points and though they played the Celtics pretty evenly in the third quarter before sitting their starters and emptying the bench for the fourth, they were too far behind to make any real adjustments.

While the Jazz are actually looking forward to the fact that they can put this game in he rearview mirror because have another game tomorrow, the competition is not going to get any easier.

This is a brutal stretch of the schedule that starts with a back-to-back on the road. First it was the league-leading Celtics, who clobbered the Jazz, 126-97, and next the Jazz will be in Philadelphia on Saturday to face a 76ers team that is second in the Eastern Conference and coming off their own bad loss against the New York Knicks on Friday night.

Then, the Jazz head to Milwaukee to face the No. 3 team in the East before returning home to host the reigning champion Denver Nuggets. It’s a stretch that Hardy referred to as ‘nightmare fuel,’ and it’s one that is going to take a lot more resolve than what the Jazz showed against Boston.

“Playing really good teams always tests you,” Hardy said. “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, and it’s going to test our emotional and mental stability.”

Against the Celtics, once the Jazz continued to miss shots and felt the lead growing, they started to lose their focus on the parts of the game that could have kept them confident and more connected.

Deflated, they stopped communicating, they got selfish, they weren’t setting good screens, they weren’t playing with physicality on either side of the ball and they let the Celtics walk all over them.

Things are not going to get easier for the Jazz in these upcoming games. They’re likely to find themselves in the same situation again — needing to stick to the plan and play hard despite the tenacity and success of the opponent.

“That’s probably some of the hardest basketball to play,” John Collins said. “Those are the moments that truly build character for us on the court.”

If that’s the case, the Jazz will need to show more character in the days to come.