From heartbreak to history: Lauri Markkanen’s 51 leads Jazz over Suns in OT

SALT LAKE CITY — Lauri Markkanen stepped into the Utah Jazz huddle late Monday with blood seeping from his lip and a scratch on his arm.

Hey, you don’t make history without a few battle scars.

“I told him today, ‘You should have a thousand points tonight, bro,'” Keyonte George said.

He was a little off — but prophetic nonetheless.

Markkanen scored a career-high 51 points — the first regular-season 50-point game by a Jazz player since Karl Malone in 1998 — to lift Utah to a 138-134 overtime win over the Phoenix Suns at the Delta Center.

“You try to be as effective as you can for the team, and you never know if it’s going to happen or not, but I’m glad it did,” Markkanen said. “I always credit my teammates; they put me in great positions. I just knocked down some shots and stayed aggressive.”

Aggressive might be underselling it.

He drilled threes — including an off-balance one in overtime — slashed through the paint, punished defenders at the rim, and buried midrange jumpers like he was clocking into work. When he came off a pin-down late and passed up an open look to instead barrel into Suns center Mark Williams for a foul, it said everything about his mindset.

That relentless approach has him averaging 34.7 points through three games — and, more importantly, has started to give Utah an identity.

“He’s not complaining to officials; he’s not looking around, asking for help. He sets the tone for us,” head coach Will Hardy said. “He doesn’t have to be a vocal leader. He’s become one in the locker room, but it’s his presence on the court that stands out.”

That presence carried the Jazz when things went sideways.

With 23.7 seconds left in regulation, Markkanen’s free throw put the Jazz up by seven; it should have been over.

Except it wasn’t.

Devin Booker buried two deep 3-pointers, Royce O’Neale tied up Markkanen — then won the jump ball — and the Suns intentionally missed a free throw and tipped it in to force overtime.

On Friday, Utah lost on a missed rebound. This felt like deja vu. Twice in the final seconds, the Jazz could have secured loose balls that would’ve iced the game. They didn’t.

“After the shock of the end of the fourth quarter, it would’ve been very human for our team to freeze,” Hardy said. “I think they showed a ton of character in overtime.”

George, who played all but 92 seconds after halftime, finished with 26 points and 10 assists — including one of the night’s biggest buckets. With the Suns overloading on Markkanen, George slipped inside for a layup with 40 seconds left in overtime to break a tie game and give Utah the lead for good.

Walker Kessler added 25 points and 11 rebounds — and his final board was a little poetic. After fumbling a potential game-clincher against Sacramento, he grabbed a late offensive rebound that sealed Monday’s win.

“That rebound to get it back definitely felt nice,” Kessler said.

It also set up Markkanen’s final points.

As the Finnish star stepped to the line late in overtime, a sold-out Delta Center serenaded him with “MVP” chants. He hit both to reach 51 — and to seal the win.

“That was special,” forward Ace Bailey said. “I mean, hearing the crowd chant … I felt excited for him. It was crazy.”

Markkanen said it was a moment he never imagined — not as a kid and not even early in his career. But when he had 44 at the end of regulation, he admitted the thought started to creep in.

Turns out, there was a silver lining to the Suns’ near comeback.

“I mean, I was trying to end the game in regulation — the legs are tired at that point, but couldn’t get it done,” Markkanen said. “But I guess it was an opportunity for this.”

And in a way, maybe that’s fitting. The Jazz have spent the early part of this season learning to live through chaos, to find something steady when everything starts spinning.

On Monday night, their calm came from a 7-footer with blood on his lip and a soft shooting touch — the quiet star who turned a near-collapse into a career masterpiece.

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.