Daniel Gibson has a regular-season career-high 29 points and is 7-for-8 on 3-pointers, but costly errors lead to the Cavaliers losing for the 11th time in their past 12 games.
CLEVELAND, Ohio — Cavaliers coach Byron Scott called it.
After his team's Monday morning shootaround at The Q, Scott was talking about the efficiency of the Utah Jazz.
"Any mistake you make defensively, they will burn you," Scott said.
The Cavs found out the hard way in a 101-90 loss to the Jazz on Monday.
"I thought every little mistake we made, we paid for it [with] either a wide-open 3 or a layup or a dunk," Scott said after his team lost for the 11th time in 12 games to fall to 8-20. "We knew going into this game that we had to be totally focused in on that end of the floor to beat this team.
"I thought our guys were focused. I thought we played hard. But there were still too many mistakes defensively, and they took advantage of pretty much every one of them."
Forward C.J. Miles led the Jazz with 22 points, while forward Paul Millsap and guard Raja Bell added 19 points apiece as Utah improved to 20-9. Center Al Jefferson had 16 points and 13 rebounds, while guard Deron Williams had 17 points and 10 assists. The Jazz had 28 assists on 39 baskets.
More important, it was the 1,210th victory of coach Jerry Sloan's career, and he moved into a tie for third place all-time in the NBA behind Don Nelson (1,335) and former Cavs coach Lenny Wilkens (1,332.)
"I don't have any thoughts on it," Sloan said. "That's not how I ever played or how I've ever coached."
Cavs guard Daniel Gibson made remarkably similar comments after scoring regular-season career highs in points (29) and 3-point field goals made (7-for-8.)
"I'm not real big on personal things," said Gibson, who rebounded nicely from a 4-for-20 showing against the New York Knicks on Saturday. "If that results in a win, then I'm excited about it. But if we're not winning, then I just want to figure out what we need to do in order to win the next game."
One would think that what they might not want to do is keep hoisting 3-pointers. Of the Cavs' 72 shots on Monday, more than one-third (28) were behind the arc.
But Scott's Princeton offense is predicated on taking what the defense gives you, and the Jazz don't give you much.
"The way they play, they plug that paint up and they want you to shoot jump shots," Scott said. "We took what the defense gave us. I thought, at times, maybe we could have made the one extra pass or taken one more dribble to the paint to force them in a little bit more.
"But, again, it wasn't the offense. It was the fact that they did a pretty good job of carving us up on the defensive end. It's a part of our game that we've got to continue to work on."
The Jazz's dominance inside resulted in 10 more rebounds, 14 more points in the paint and 12 more second-chance points than the Cavs managed. Utah also hit 10 of 23 3-pointers, including five by Bell and four by Miles.
"It's very tough against that team, because they execute so well and they set screens," Gibson said. "So the whole time you're fighting to get through screens and get back to your man, and then at the end of a possession, they'll make one. Or if we had possessions where we'd get a miss, they would get an offensive rebound and then we'd have to grind out another possession. That wears you down."
The Cavs trailed at halftime, 49-44, but shot 29.2 percent in the third quarter (7-of-24.) Utah hit 52.6 percent of its shots (10-of-19) and led by 20 points early in the fourth quarter.
"You have to limit your mistakes when you're playing against the better teams in the league because they execute every time that you don't, and they'll make you pay," Gibson said. "You want to put your best game out there every night. We can win games if we get stops."
To reach this Plain Dealer reporter: mschmitt@plaind.com, 216-999-4668