Two far-fetched players unexpectedly are illuminating the scoreboard for the Utah Jazz and Brooklyn Nets entering their confrontation on Sunday evening in New York.
Unexpectedly, the Nets’ Mikal Bridges (42-35) and the Jazz’s Talen Horton-Tucker (36-41) have transformed into scoring machines for their respective teams.
Bridges scored 42 points in Friday’s 124-107 victory over the Atlanta Hawks, filling the void left by the Kevin Durant trade.
For Brooklyn, Bridges has now scored at least 40 points three times, twice in each of the last three games.
It’s interesting to note that Bridges finished the month of March with the second most points (461) in Nets history. In November of last year, Durant set the standard with 471 points.
Spans is averaging 27.5 focuses in 22 games with Brooklyn in the wake of scoring 17.2 per game in Phoenix for the initial 56 rounds of the time preceding the exchange.
With his play, Brooklyn has won three of its last four games and is close to securing a playoff spot in the Eastern Conference.
In the meantime, trades and injuries have allowed Horton-Tucker to take advantage of more offensive touches.
Horton-Tucker’s offensive outbursts have compensated for Utah’s absence of its four leading scorers in recent games.
In Utah’s 128-117 victory over the Spurs on the road, Horton-Tucker scored 41 points by making 15 of 25 shots, including six 3-pointers. In Friday’s 122-114 defeat at Boston, he added a team-high 28 points, eight rebounds, and seven assists.
Hardy stated that the Jazz aren’t deliberately holding out key cogs like Jordan Clarkson and Collin Sexton, despite the fact that top players haven’t been playing much lately.
The Jazz are still in the running for a play-in spot with five regular-season games remaining. As of Saturday, Utah was one game behind the Dallas Mavericks and one game behind the 10th-place Oklahoma City Thunder.
