Utah Jazz’s Kris Dunn reacts to a call during the second half of an NBA basketball game against the Boston Celtics, Friday, March 31, 2023, in Boston. | Michael Dwyer, AP Photo
BOSTON — In the Utah Jazz’s 77th game of the season, on the last day of March, with hopes of the postseason dwindling away, emotions were high in their 122-114 loss to the Boston Celtics Friday.
There were four technical fouls called — two on each team, one Flagrant 1 foul called on the Celtics and Jazz guard Kris Dunn was ejected from the game.
Dunn got ejected after getting into it with Blake Griffin and not letting it go. He got one technical foul, and then after a timeout was called he kept chirping and got ejected. This came after multiple other chippy altercations.
Griffin and Talen Horton-Tucker were in each other’s faces a couple times, Simone Fontecchio and Jayson Tatum were pushing each other, and it all got to a point where the officials made a declaration to both teams that any more shenanigans would result in technical fouls without warning.
Why were things so heated?
Related
The Jazz players talked about the environment at TD Garden and said that contributed, but I don’t think I’m buying that as the main reason.
It feels like the reality of the season nearly being over is finally starting to wear on the Jazz players. April 9 is fast approaching, and the Jazz will likely be one of the teams that will be at home watching the playoffs go on without them, and that’s a tough pill to swallow.
It doesn’t matter if the Jazz tried their best to ignore outside noise all season or how short-handed the roster has been lately.
There are players on this team who really, truly wanted to be in the postseason, or at least the play-in to have a shot. Seeing that slip away is difficult.
Turnovers
All of those feelings are not at all helped when you are playing sloppy basketball. That probably fueled the Jazz’s anger a little bit.
They finished the night with 18 turnovers that led to 19 points for the Celtics. I went back and watched all of the turnovers (except for a double-dribble call on Dunn, which the NBA did not have replay…
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Author : Deseret News
Publish date : 2023-04-01 04:51:59
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