Walker Kessler had 22 points and nine rebounds, Lauri Markkanen scored 20 and the Utah Jazz beat the Los Angeles Clippers 129-108 on Wednesday night.<\/p>\n
Brice Sensabaugh added 20 points off the bench for Utah, which set a team record for points in a season opener. <\/p>\n
Kessler, the longest-tenured member of the Jazz, went 7 for 7 from the field. He blocked four shots and finished with four assists. <\/p>\n
The new-look Clippers appeared confused on the court at times in a disappointing debut for a team with lofty aspirations. Ivica Zubac led Los Angeles with 19 points and seven rebounds. James Harden and Brook Lopez each scored 15. Kawhi Leonard had 10 points on 3-of-9 shooting.<\/p>\n
It was Los Angeles’ most lopsided season-opening loss in 17 years.<\/p>\n
Utah made its first 19 shots in the paint, as crisp passing and precise ball movement led to layups and dunks.<\/p>\n
Widely expected to finish near the bottom of the NBA this season, the Jazz had 38 assists on 48 baskets and shot 55% from the field. Keyonte George led Utah with nine assists to go with his 16 points.<\/p>\n
Ace Bailey, the No. 5 pick in this year’s draft, has been ill and was limited to 20 minutes for the Jazz. He scored two points. <\/p>\n
Bradley Beal was also on a minutes restriction in his Clippers debut and had five points.<\/p>\n
Taylor Hendricks, who sustained a gruesome broken leg in the third game last season, returned to the court and looked bouncy coming off the bench for Utah. He finished with 13 points and five rebounds.<\/p>\n
The Jazz led 78-47 at halftime after shooting 71.8% from the floor. The Clippers gave up 78 points in a half only once last season, while the Jazz hadn’t scored that many in a first half since the 2023-24 season.<\/p>\n
Utah was 12 for 12 on 2-point field goals and added four 3s in the first quarter.<\/p>\n
Up next<\/p>\n
Clippers: Host the Phoenix Suns on Friday.<\/p>\n
Jazz: Visit the Sacramento Kings on Friday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Walker Kessler had 22 points and nine rebounds, Lauri Markkanen scored 20 and the Utah Jazz beat the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":19197,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[8695,48,52,51,47,716,50,49,129,127,15965],"class_list":{"0":"post-19196","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-los-angeles","8":"tag-james-harden","9":"tag-la","10":"tag-la-headlines","11":"tag-la-news","12":"tag-los-angeles","13":"tag-los-angeles-clippers","14":"tag-los-angeles-headlines","15":"tag-los-angeles-news","16":"tag-nba","17":"tag-sports","18":"tag-utah-jazz"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19196","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19196"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19196\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19197"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19196"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19196"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19196"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}