If there’s one thing that’s been consistent about the 2025-2026 Utah Jazz, it’s their inconsistent stretches of competent play. One could say that the Jazz are consistently inconsistent. After an embarrassing loss on Sunday to a dominant Houston Rockets team, the Utah Jazz returned home and edged out the Durant-led team and showed some striking resilience down the stretch. The final score ended up 133-125 in favor of a Utah team that BARELY eclipsed 100 points the night before.
The key to the first half was clearly the offense off the bench. A 68 point first half was supplemented by many of the guys in the second unit, including Kyle Filipowski, Walter Clayton Jr, and the ageless wonder Kevin Love. Lauri and Keyonte led the starters in the first half as well, with 16 points for Lauri and some fantastic defense. Key looks to have put last game’s historical awfulness behind him and had a number of highlight players in the 2nd quarter…one driving dunk and an alley-oop slam assisted by Flip. He still looks a little tired, but his legs seem to be back under him.
Keyonte continued to look great in the 2nd half with some shocking defensive moments in the 4th quarter. The Rockets made a game of it as the 4th quarter wore on…trying to wear the Jazz defense down with physical play and LOTS of fouls. Seriously, the 4th quarter was just a bunch of free throws and play stoppage.
In the end, Keyonte had a HUGE bounce-back throwing up 28 points, 8 assists, and 4 rebounds. Lauri was unstoppable as well, showing out with another 29 points and further padding to an All-Star season. We also saw some nice moments from Ace Bailey in this one, with a couple of big shots early and THREE blocks.
On the Houston side of the ball, we struggled to stay in front of KD, as most do. Although he only had 10 points in the first half, he was key to the Rockets 2nd half comeback and ended the game on a 32 points night complete with plenty of free throws. Alperen Sengun is great at basketball as well and flailed his way to 31 points and a game high 14 assists.
The Jazz definitely stole this win in the end as they definitely seemed to do their best to let Houston back into it, but I’ll argue that the Utah locker room needed some good karma ending out the year and a win. This team is better than last year’s and showing some fight and learning how to make the small plays that lead to wins. I like what I’m seeing from most of the young guys, but definitely would love to start seeing more of guys like Cody Williams and Taylor Hendricks in place of Kevin Love and Kyle Anderson.
**The Jazz now embark on a quick two game road trip back east and will play the Brooklyn Nets on Thursday. It’ll be a battle of youth as Brooklyn is not currently a serious basketball team.**