Utah Jazz: 3 takeaways from Game 4 vs. Thunder
By Mason McFee
Here’s a look at how the Utah Jazz were able to pick up their third win in the series, putting the Oklahoma City Thunder on the cusp of elimination.
Must-win. Can’t lose. Pivotal. All these words could be used to describe Game 4 between the Utah Jazz and Oklahoma City Thunder, but one that sums it all up is strange — at least to start.
At the half, the score was 58-52, but there wasn’t any one statistic or stat line that stood out.
It was the number of fouls, and the technical ones to be exact.
Early in the first quarter, Paul George picked up a technical foul talking to Joe Ingles as he was trying to inbound the ball, even though he pushed Joe Ingles to separate… as the inbounder:
That trend would continue. Here are the list of the people that picked up a technical before halftime:
- Joe Ingles
- Quin Snyder
- Steven Adams
While it’s rare to see so many technicals in a game, let alone a half, the strangest moment of the game came at the 3:42 mark of the first quarter:
Russell Westbrook drives into the lane, which is normal. Steven Adams is in the paint, also normal. Adams hits his own teammate (not normal), then Westbrook flops (somewhat normal). Westbrook gets free throws. (Abnormal.) Missed calls are a part of the game of basketball, but it’s clear that no Jazz player was close enough to Westbrook to even be in a position to foul him.
Still onboard the abnormal train, Russell Westbrook picked up his fourth foul at the 1:36 mark in the second quarter, to which Mitt Romney responded with taunting — yes, that Mitt Romney.
At halftime, only three players would be in double-digits in scoring, as both teams were shooting a nearly identical percentage from the floor – 43.9 percent for OKC, 42.9 percent for Utah.
The poor shooting trend would continue as the Thunder would finish the game shooting 39.3 percent as a team, and the Jazz only barely raised their field goal percentage to 45.1 percent.
There was one Aussie that came out these poor shooting efforts by both teams….