Jazz show some 'grit' in bounce-back win over Celtics
by Ryan Miller kslcom · KSL.comEstimated read time: 3-4 minutes
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- The Utah Jazz defeated the Boston Celtics 105-103, showcasing resilience.
- Keyonte George scored a season-high 31 points, leading the Jazz.
- Jaylen Brown criticized referees post-game over late non-call.
BOSTON — Celtics star Jaylen Brown pointed to the refs as the reason his team lost 105-103 to the Utah Jazz on Monday.
The Jazz? Well, they pointed to just about everyone who checked into the game as the reason they won.
Kyle Filipowski? He was the "X factor."
Elijah Harkless? He had "infectious energy."
Walter Clayton Jr? It was his "best game as a pro."
Keyonte George? The engine of it all.
The maligned bench? The reason the Jazz came back after falling down by 12 in the early minutes of the game.
Jusuf Nurkic? He scored the game-winning bucket off an offensive rebound.
After two consecutive ugly performances, the Jazz showed some resolve in Beantown.
"This is a hard place to play. It's a hard place to win," Jazz coach Will Hardy said. "I thought our team showed a ton of grit."
It was enough for injured forward Georges Niang to boldly proclaim, "We are so back!" in the locker room — followed by "revenge is a dish best served cold." Remember, Boston traded Niang before he ever got to play a game for his hometown Celtics.
He might not have been able to serve it up himself, but his team had his back.
George finished with a season-high 31 points, including 16 in a pivotal third quarter where the Jazz took the lead for the first time.
Filipowski, who had seen his role diminish over the previous two games, responded with a 13-point, eight-rebound effort off the bench. As the team gathered in the locker room after the game, veteran Kevin Love called him the "X-factor" of the night. The box score backed that up, too: Filipowski was a team-high +19 in his 19 minutes.
"We can address the elephant in the room, going from starting to coming off the bench. I feel like sometimes people's energy can waiver, and he stayed professional," George said of Filipowski. "Played with force, making big-time shots. I tell y'all all the time, that's the Flip I know."
Nurkic, who had 11 points and 11 rebounds, said that Filipowski was one of two players who changed the game for Utah.
The other? Harkless.
The two-way guard has started to carve out a spot in Hardy's rotation, seeing time now in three of the last four games. His number was called early and often on Monday, playing 21 minutes as the Jazz looked to him to guard the isolation-heavy Celtics.
"It's entertainment for us," Nurkic said of watching Harkless's defensive intensity. "Great push. It kind of gives us the boost that we need. Sometimes that can change the whole game dynamic."
It did on Monday, as he helped erase a slow start from the starters and got the Jazz back in the game. Oh, and finish it, too.
It was Harkless who drew an offensive foul on Brown with less than a second left in the game to secure Utah's win. But that wasn't the call Brown was fuming about after the game.
That came with 47 seconds left when George slipped while trying to defend Brown, and looked to have tripped up the Boston star, but no foul was called. The officials ruled that both players slipped before contact was made.
"That was unacceptable," Brown said afterward, between some more colorful language.
The no-call led to a fast break for the Jazz, which was finished by Lauri Markkkanen, who had a relatively quiet 20-point, nine-rebound game, and helped set up a wild finish.
After Boston tied the game with a free throw, Nurkic made a putback layup off a George miss to give Utah the lead with 0.6 seconds left.
"I think all of us took pride today," George said. "We all realize we're all young, and there's no reason why our energy level should be as low as it was last game. We felt like we just shot ourselves in the foot (on Sunday)."
They did the exact opposite in Boston — even with an assist from a non-call.
The Key Takeaways for this article were generated with the assistance of large language models and reviewed by our editorial team. The article, itself, is solely human-written.
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Ryan Miller
KSL.com Utah Jazz reporter