Lauri Markkanen erupts for career-high 51 points in the Jazz’s victory over the Suns on Monday.<\/p>\n
SALT LAKE CITY (AP) \u2014 The Utah Jazz played 2,155 regular season games since Karl Malone scored 56 points in a win over Golden State on April 7, 1998.<\/p>\n
No Jazz player had topped the 50-point mark until Lauri Markkanen scored a career-high 51 in a\u00a0<\/a>138-134<\/a> win over the Phoenix Suns\u00a0on Monday night. He became the 97th player to score 50 points in NBA history.<\/p>\n The Jazz needed all of them, including the Finnish star\u2019s two free throws with 1.9 left in overtime, to clinch the win.<\/p>\n Markkanen played 45 minutes and became the focus of the Suns\u2019 defensive efforts but said he wasn\u2019t tired as he headed to the free-throw line.<\/p>\n \u201cAs long as you\u2019re mentally not tired, and kind of force yourself out of that mindset that you\u2019re tired, and then you can push through whatever you need to,\u201d Markkanen said.<\/p>\n It\u2019s that mental aspect that Markkanen has improved steadily through his nine-year career and believes he\u2019s never played better.<\/p>\n \u201cThe game is slower now,\u201d Markkanen said. \u201cYou get hungrier as it happens, so hopefully it\u2019s not the last.\u201d<\/p>\n Markkanen made six 3s and went 17-for-17 from the line in achieving a mark he\u2019d never planned to reach. \u201cI never think about, I\u2019m going to go for 50 but obviously, when it\u2019s overtime, and you\u2019re at 47 and they start fouling, you start think there\u2019s a there\u2019s a good chance that it\u2019s going to happen,\u201d said Markkanen, who also grabbed 14 rebounds.<\/p>\n Keyonte George, who added 26 points and 10 assists, knew Markkanen had it going and was looking for his teammate whenever he could.<\/p>\n \u201cJust wanted to get it to Lauri in space. Just putting the ball in our play makers\u2019 hands and let them be themselves,\u201d George said. \u201cWe are empowering him more.\u201d<\/p>\n Markkanen was happy with his achievement, but said he wished he would have made his baseline jumper at the end of regulation that rimmed out (and would have given him 46 points).<\/p>\n In either case, Markannen was the difference for this young Jazz team.<\/p>\n \u201cHe showed a tremendous amount of heart. He was really physical tonight and made a lot of big baskets,\u201d Utah coach Will Hardy said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Lauri Markkanen erupts for career-high 51 points in the Jazz’s victory over the Suns on Monday. SALT LAKE…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":246792,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[574],"tags":[64,63,726,146587,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-246791","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-basketball","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-basketball","11":"tag-lauri-markkanen-51-points","12":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/246791","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=246791"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/246791\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/246792"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=246791"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=246791"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=246791"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}