NEW YORK _ Kyrie Irving followed one spectacular game with another, but it still wasn't enough. The Nets lost to the Jazz, 118-107, starting their hellacious five-game stretch with a loss at home.
Irving scored 32 points on 12-of-19 shooting from the field. He led the game with 11 assists and didn't look a step slow in his second game back after missing 26 straight with a right shoulder impingement.
His performance was everything the Nets and their fans missed: star power in the form of highlight-reel finishes and tough shots at varying degrees of difficulty. If only his teammates received the memo.
Three other Nets players scored in double figures, but only Spencer Dinwiddie made an impact before the fourth quarter. Caris LeVert scored 11 points but shot 5 of 13 to get there. Taurean Prince's up-and-down season continued with another cold game: just six points, missing all four of his 3-point attempts. Joe Harris also went cold from 3, connecting on just one of his five attempts from downtown.
By the third quarter, the Jazz had built a 20-point lead the Nets couldn't gun themselves out of.
The Jazz have been one of the league's best defensive teams for the better part of the past five years thanks to head coach Quin Snyder and two-time reigning NBA Defensive Player of the Year Rudy Gobert. In the first half, Utah succeeded at running Brooklyn off the 3-point line, hamstringing a Nets team that ranks sixth in triples attempted per game.
The Jazz limited the Nets to just nine 3s attempted in the first half and only 19 points in the second quarter as they carried a 14-point lead into halftime.
The improved Nets defense couldn't hold the Jazz to near or below 100 points. Gobert (22), Donovan Mitchell (25) and Joe Ingles (27) each scored at least 22 points, and Jordan Clarkson, who Utah acquired in a trade with Cleveland, came off the bench and scored 13 points.
For Brooklyn, there are rotation questions that must be answered. Head coach Kenny Atkinson ran Irving, Dinwiddie and LeVert on the court together to start the second quarter, but that lineup was unable to outscore a Jazz lineup of Mitchell plus four Utah reserves.
After the Irving-Dinwiddie tandem succeeded against the Atlanta Hawks, it wasn't enough for a win against the Utah Jazz.
The win for the Jazz marked their 10th in a row and 15th in their last 16 games. Brooklyn's loss may have illuminated some bigger issues: Atkinson will need to find how best to put Irving, Dinwiddie and LeVert in positions to succeed while on the floor together. If the Nets can't play this season's three best players on the floor together, that will be a problem that stretches well beyond this year.
