Paul George Caught Fire As The Thunder Took Down The Jazz In Game 1

Game 1 of Jazz-Thunder began poorly for the home team as Utah jumped out to a 16-4 lead on Oklahoma City in the opening minutes. From there, the Thunder turned it on, starting with some hot shooting from Carmelo Anthony before Paul George took the torch through the third quarter.

George lit up the Jazz from three-point range, drilling eight of his 11 shots from distance on the evening to help Oklahoma City pull away to a dominant win. The shooting performance from George was impressive under any circumstances, but especially given how poorly he’s shot the ball from deep since the All-Star break.

The Thunder star had recently said he felt something mechanical was wrong with his shot and that shooting the ball felt “funny,” which was concerning. He put those concerns to rest on Sunday with a 36-point performance to lead all scorers, knocking down shots in a variety of ways.

Despite George’s onslaught, and a big night from Russell Westbrook (29 points, 13 rebounds, 8 assists), Oklahoma City was never able to really pull away from Utah. They appeared on their way late, but even then the Jazz made it a bit of a sweat in the closing minute. A big reason Utah was able to hang around for much of the game was the play of rookie guard Donovan Mitchell who had 27 points and 10 rebounds in 35 minutes of action.

Unfortunately, Mitchell was forced out of the game with a foot injury late in the third quarter to go get x-rays. Those came back negative and he made a brief re-appearance before being pulled once the game appeared out of reach with Oklahoma City up 18.

Hopefully Mitchell will be able to fully recover and be back at 100 percent for Game 2, because in the time he was playing it was a thrilling game and showed why this was sneakily one of the best first round series on paper. Utah hanging around while Oklahoma City shot an incredible 48.3 percent from downtown would seem to bode well for the Jazz being able to make this a series moving forward, but with Westbrook and George both appearing to be in top form right now it’ll take Utah’s best to make that happen.