Rudy Gay played his first game of the season and scored 20 points in his Utah Jazz debut to help lead his new team to a 119-103 win over the Toronto Raptors in Salt Lake City on Thursday night.
Gay, who had offseason surgery to remove bone spurs from his heel, hit 7 of 8 shots and drained five 3-pointers off the bench. He signed with Utah in the offseason but was rehabilitating from surgery for the first month of the season.
Donovan Mitchell also scored 20 points for Utah, which won its second consecutive game.
Toronto, playing without OG Anunoby (hip), lost for the sixth time in seven outings. The defeat spoiled a great performance by Gary Trent Jr., who scored a game-high 31 points with five 3s.
Utah trailed 63-61 at halftime but turned it up a notch in the second half, outscoring the Raptors 31-17 in the third.
Rudy Gobert had another double-double, with 14 points and 11 rebounds, while fellow starter Royce O’Neale scored 16 points. Joe Ingles has a terrific all-around game with 10 points, eight assists and seven rebounds. Jordan Clarkson added 12 points and Hassan Whiteside scored 11.
Utah’s offensive attack was as efficient as it was balanced. The Jazz shot 55 percent and drained 19 of 46 3-pointers. Toronto shot just 41.5 percent from the field and 26.3 percent from beyond the arc.
The Jazz took control of the game with an 18-3 run spanning the end of the third quarter and the beginning of the fourth.
That spurt featured a lot of Rudy, with a couple of Gobert dunks and a couple of Gay buckets. The new Jazzman’s 3-pointer with 10:17 remaining put them up 98-80.
–Field Level Media
