A late scratch before the start of the game, Cam Payne was ruled out with right knee pain, giving Aaron Holiday primary ball handling off the bench, but it didn’t matter.
Despite trailing as much as 17 in the fourth quarter, the Phoenix Suns pulled off one of their best wins of the season.
The Suns outplayed the Jazz 36-13 in the fourth quarter, a complete reversal from the struggles of the first three quarters.
The Suns now have a team-record 64 wins and 32 road wins. The 32 road wins also set a league record for road wins in a season.
First half:
The game started in rather ugly fashion with five straight misses before Chris Paul ended the goal drought with a wide-open elbow jumper. But the scoring drought wasn’t going to end quite so easily for the Jazz, as they missed every one of their first eight shots and also committed two turnovers in that span.
The quarter wasn’t even half over and it looked like a Suns route as they led 11-0.
But when Bogdanovic unbalanced Utah’s first basket of the game with a hook shot, the Jazz came alive. Over the next four minutes, the Jazz scored 18 points on seven for ten shots (four threes) to make it a six-point game.
Phoenix finished the quarter with a six lead and they were quite lucky to have that much lead at all. Utah missed a couple of wide-open threes and was unable to capitalize on its five offensive rebounds during that period due to Jordan Clarkson’s haywire isolations.
Momentum stayed with Utah in the second as they opened the quarter with back-to-back dunks from Hernangomez and Gobert, followed by a fast break layup from Danuel House to keep the game at 30 points.
The second quarter felt like the polar opposite of the first as Phoenix were the team that couldn’t make a basket. Her first make of the quarter came almost five minutes into the half after an open dunk by Deandre Ayton.
A big key for Jazz in the first half was the bench game. Utah had 26 bank points compared to the Suns’ 4.
Devin Booker took over with three minutes to go with a 51-41 lead. Book scored 11 points on four straight makes to give the Suns their first lead since the beginning of the quarter.
In the half, Utah led Phoenix 57-54.
Second half:
After those first few minutes to open the game, the Jazz never looked back. They started the second half hot, opening the quarter with a 15-6 run to once again extend their lead into double digits against Mitchell and Bogdanovic.
The Suns’ troubles were illustrated by a 3-for-no fastbreak that somehow turned into a turnover when a misguided pass from Chris Paul ricocheted off Booker’s hands just out of bounds.
It was nine minutes before Booker scored his first basket of the second half, cutting the Jazz lead to eight.
Late in the third quarter, Booker drew for a shot and Utah’s Danuel House was called for a shooting foul, but after head coach Quin Snyder challenged the call, not only was it reversed, but the foul has now been assessed against Booker for his legs kicked out.
That was a huge four-point swing for Utah, who at that point already had a 12-point lead.
To say the third quarter was miserable for Phoenix would be a gross understatement. Everything that could go wrong went wrong.
On the last play of the quarter, the Suns forced a Mike Conley floater to miss, only to end with a one-on-one putback for Rudy Gobert. But then, when his free throw went wide, Utah secured the rebound and it turned into a Jordan Clarkson three-pointer.
Somehow, forcing a miss increased the Suns’ lead from 12 to 17 and the game was all but over.
Or was it?
Obviously, Phoenix can’t (and don’t want to) understand the concept of losing games as they opened the fourth with a 10-3 run to put the game within 10.
Midway through the quarter it was only an eight-point game and Booker hadn’t even seen the floor.
After an 11-0 run by the Suns, Utah led by just two points with four minutes remaining and the game was open to all. Phoenix didn’t have any stakes in that game, but they still played like their lives were on the line in the playoffs.
After being almost invisible for most of the game, Mikal Bridges took the ball off the three-point line and made a nifty up and under layup by three-time Defensive Player of the Year Gobert to level the game at 98. The Suns had Meteor Momentum on their side.
With less than two minutes left, the Suns took the lead by less than 90 seconds over Bridges’ flush.
The nail in the coffin for Utah came once more from the No. 25 when Bridges got an and-one layup to give the Suns a two-possession lead and the game was over.
The Jazz Twitter account even preemptively prepared for that inevitable collapse.
In a meaningless game that Phoenix could have surrendered, they played their starters and took the upset road win. The Suns proved tonight of all nights that they are ready for the playoffs because they always take their opponents seriously, even when they shouldn’t.
final score: Suns 111 – Jazz 105