The Utah Jazz went down in an upset to the Washington Wizards but Aussie Joe Ingles had a blinder.
Ingles scored a career-high 34 points, in the 131-122 loss to the lowly placed Wizards who won their first game against the Western Conference leaders in their last nine clashes.
Ingles surpassed his previous best with 12/17 from the field and 8/10 from three in 33 minutes.
He also had two assists and five rebounds.
https://twitter.com/Davefox2/status/1372735866708361220?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
The Jazz have been the surprise packet of the year on top of the standings with their three-point shooting and defence keeping them abreast of the rest of the field. However the loss was their fourth in their last six outings, which means the Jazz are now 29-11.
Ingles showed more aggression in the absence of Mike Conley, with the Australian playing a major supporting role to superstar Donovan Mitchell who shot a team high 42 points along with six assists.
Ingles came into the match averaging 16.4 points, 3.8 rebounds, 5.4 assists and 3.4 steals in 30.7 minutes per game. Although he was more concerned about his side's slip-up after the match.
"We need to play like we want to win a championship, like we want to not get knocked out in the first round," he said.
"We need to come out aggressive like we did when we were a f—ing good team.
"It started in transition. We knew coming in they played fast, they push the ball. And we were jogging back.
"That was a massive part of it. We didn't get stops all night. You can write a nice, long list of what we didn't do."
The Jazz looked off from the outset and were down by 11 points at the end of the first quarter and then 18 at the main break.
Bradley Beal top scored for the Wizards with 43, while Russell Westbrook had a triple-double with 35 points, 13 assists and 15 rebounds.
For a daily dose of the best of the breaking news and exclusive content from Wide World of Sports, subscribe to our newsletter by clicking here!
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.