Now into their second game day at Las Vegas Summer League, the Utah Jazz summer squad celebrated their first win, defeating the New Orleans Pelicans 79-72.
Trey Lyles and Dionte Christmas both missed the game due to rest, but that didn’t stop the Jazz from pulling out the victory. Joel Bolomboy was given the opportunity to start in place of Lyles and made the most of it with 13 points, 11 rebounds, and one monstrous dunk that shook the rim in Cox Pavilion.
"We didn't have Trey to do all the scoring so we had to come together as a team and rely on each other to get the ball movement going," Bolomboy said postgame.
The Jazz led after the first quarter 16-14 with help from Tyrone Wallace’s back to back three’s. He finished with a team-high 15 points. He was helped by Quincy Ford, who had a scoring flurry in the second quarter. At one point, he scored 10 of the Jazz’s 12 points.
In the second half, Wallace hit another three and Tibor Piless followed suit right after him bumping Utah’s lead to 43-37. Spencer Butterfield also had a strong third quarter, hitting a couple of 3-pointers to push his game total to 11 points. The Jazz again led at the close of the third quarter, 59-52, winning each of the first three quarters.
In the fourth quarter, Marcus Paige made a beautiful dump-off pass a to Bolomboy for a fast dunk in the fourth. And every bit of scoring was needed to withstand an onslaught of Buddy Hield 3-pointers, as the Pelicans closed the gap. They cut the Jazz lead from 14 points down to one.
Hield finished with 21 points on 7-of-20 shooting and was 5-of-14 from 3-point range. But his scoring wasn’t enough to take down Utah. Bolomboy scored five points in the final minute to secure the win.
"We really moved the ball to the second side on offense, we had better ball movement than we've had, guys got open looks. Defensivly we had very good defense transition defense, we got multiple guys back and for the most part, we kind of controlled the pace of the game" coach Mike Wells said.
The Jazz had six different players score in double figures.
With an off day on Monday, the Jazz will face the Portland Trailblazers on Tuesday at Thomas & Mack Center at 1:30pm local time.