Toronto, Dec 24 : Utah Jazz guard Jordan Clarkson scored 16 of his 30 points in the fourth quarter to help overcome a 17-point deficit in a 126-119 win over the Toronto Raptors.<\/p>\n
The game took place on Saturday evening.<\/p>\n
Jazz All-Star Lauri Markkanen also finished with 30 points, including nine in the final frame.<\/p>\n
Utah outscored Toronto 41-21 in the fourth quarter as part of a 71-48 second half where they upped the intensity on both ends.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was happiest about us playing really hard early in the second half,\u201d said Jazz head coach Will Hardy after the game. \u201cI think our team did a much better job guarding the ball with more physicality.\u201d<\/p>\n
In the first half, the Raptors shot 53.8 percent from the field and hit 9-of-19 on 3-pointers, while in the second half, the Jazz\u2019s defensive adjustments kicked in and resulted in Toronto\u2019s 40.5 and 30.8 percent, respectively.<\/p>\n
Utah shot 57.4 percent from the floor in the second half, including a blistering 60.9 percent in the fourth quarter alone.<\/p>\n
31-year-old Clarkson, who returned to action after missing six games due to a right thigh injury, came up big in the second half, connecting on 8-of-15 shots for 23 points and dishing out five assists with the top plus-minus rating of +22.<\/p>\n
\u201cJordan is a big part of our team on the floor, a big part of the personality of our team, and a big part of the personality of our organisation,\u201d praised Hardy. \u201cIt didn\u2019t feel like he\u2019d been gone for a while with the way he was playing.\u201d<\/p>\n
With the win, Hardy\u2019s squad improves to 12-18 on the season and has won five of their last seven games.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Utah Jazz guard Jordan Clarkson scored 16 of his 30 points in the fourth quarter to help overcome a 17-point deficit in a 126-119 win over the Toronto Raptors.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":245,"featured_media":38637,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[3183,2866],"class_list":["post-17895","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-nba","tag-jordan-clarkson","tag-utah-jazz"],"reading_time":"2 min read","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17895","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/245"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17895"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17895\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/38637"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17895"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17895"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17895"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}