Vassell, Johnson help Spurs hold on to beat Jazz, 126-122

On Monday night, the San Antonio Spurs defeated the Utah Jazz 126-122 behind the efforts of Devin Vassell’s 24 points and Keldon Johnson’s 21 points in the last minutes of the game.

For the most part, we just hung out with each other. Johnson proudly said, “We persisted and emerged victorious.” They seem like a solid squad, and solid squads tend to go on scoring sprees, in my opinion. Because we were able to withstand that run, we ended up winning.

With 2 1/2 minutes left, the Spurs had a 121-110 lead. In a desperate comeback attempt, the Jazz scored seven points in 33 seconds but ultimately fell short.

For San Antonio, Jakob Poeltl scored 16 points.

Utah, which had previously won two in a row, was led by Lauri Markkanen’s 32 points and Jordan Clarkson’s 25.

Clarkson’s 3-pointer with 30.1 seconds left got Utah within 123-120, but San Antonio’s two-game losing streak ended when Tre Jones sank a floater.

Jazz head coach Will Hardy has remarked, “I believe we came into this year expecting that we were going to be in a lot of close games.” There was a need for “clutch” play since “we weren’t going to be a team necessarily that was built to blast people away.”

Jones, who scored 11 points overall, nailed the Spurs’ final two field goal attempts.

The Spurs claimed that “a possible security danger” delayed the start of the game by 40 minutes because it prevented certain spectators from entering the AT&T Center.