Given what's happened over the past four years, it's a new feeling when the Utah Jazz lose on Opening night when their true intention was to win. Not only did they lose to the Memphis Grizzlies, but they lost because Ty Jerome went full Stephen Curry on the Jazz.
Look, Jerome is an excellent player who no one had paid much attention to coming into this season because of an injury-prone campaign. However, the guy went off for 45 points, a career-high for him. When someone like Shai Gilgeous-Alexander does that, well, it's par for the course for him because he does that. Jerome doesn't typically do that.
Maybe he's in for a breakout season, but even if he is, he's not going to put up 45 points on the regular. Therein lies a harsh lesson about this season: even as Utah tries to win as many games as possible, there's going to be those spontaenous magnet balls from time to time that get in their way, no matter who it comes from.
Jerome would not have been anyone's pick to go off like that, but he still did it, and there wasn't really much Utah could do. He had the hot hand, and it put the Grizzlies in the drivers' seat from pretty much the second quarter onward.
The question will be how they handle magnet balls going forward
While spontaneous, what made it even more frustrating is that as he was going off, the Grizzlies didn't just win the game, but basically blew the Jazz out. It shows that even if Memphis primarily won because Jerome was a flamethrower, Utah still could have balanced it out on the other end.
That will be the key question for when these kind of thermonuclear performances happen. Teams have dealt with their opponents having someone going off, whether it be an SGA or a Jerome type. The question will be how the Jazz keep the game within their sights when that happens.
This is where we are going to see what the likes of Lauri Markkanen, Keyonte George, Jaren Jackson Jr., Darryn Peterson, and even Ace Bailey are going to do when presented with this problem. The Jazz have the personnel to match up with just about anyone in the league, so when they face this conundrum again, they need to find a Jerome of their own to speak to fight fire with fire.
The season is still young, and it won't happen every game. That much is for sure, but when they do, it will be the perfect test of how the Jazz can withstand when an avalanche of buckets are thrown right at them.
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