Since we decided to break down Utah's season-opening loss with a notebook-style reaction post, it seems only right to do so again after the Jazz earned their first win, holding on against the frisky Pelicans for a 120-119 victory in their home opener.

Jaren Jackson Jr. logged his first Jazz double double (24 and 10), including nine fourth-quarter points. Keyonte George chipped in with 19-and-10 double double, and Jaxson Hayes made big plays off the bench on his way to 17 points.

Here are some more random thoughts, in no particular order.

Jackson and George were the clutch heroes, but Darryn Peterson scored the winning points. Trip drew a foul on a drive and made both free throws, then cut for a floater, then bagged a corner three before hitting two more free throws. He had an unfortunate turnover but made up for it by chasing Zion Williamson down for a stuff.

Key also got fouled in the penalty. Then he hit a pull-up three, assisted a Hayes bucket and scored himself off the glass to give Utah its biggest fourth-quarter lead (+7).

But then George had three consecutive empty possessions: he forced a contested long two early in the shot clock, turned the ball over leading to a breakaway dunk, and missed a pull-up 3-pointer. So on the next couple of trips, the Jazz decided to put the ball in Peterson's hands.

It's kind of astounding that they put the rookie in charge of the clutch offense at all. Peterson ran a high pick-and-roll with Jackson that he engineered into the winning points. Watch as he cross away from the screen, gets a shoulder in front of the defender and then goes up so as to ensure arm contact.

That's a savvy move. It's even a bigger deal that the Jazz trusted him at all to run the show in the final minute of a game, down one. Neither team would score again after this, so these are technically the winning points.

The win came down to defensive stops, which is ironic since the Jazz struggled all game to protect the paint. The Pels outscored them 24-4 in paint points in the third quarter alone.

But after Peterson's free throws, the Jazz successfully prevented an answer. George had probably the defensive play of the game on the ensuing possession, sliding to stay in front of Dejounte Murray, and then taking a charge when Williamson tried to attack from an angle.

Hayes then guarded Murray on a switch for the final attempt, contesting his angle jumper and forcing a higher arc, which made him miss long. Jackson kept the ball out of Williamson's hands on the backside, and time expired.

Hayes was really important too, after a lineup change that I suspect had more to do with the overall big man rotation than with getting him out of the starting lineup or moving Ace Bailey into it.

Based on how the rotation worked — with Jackson and Lauri Markkanen both subbing out early and then coming back one at a time to play next to Hayes — I think the idea was the lineup change was to buy a few minutes for Kyle Filipowski but having him play along a true big. Flip's two stints were each under four minutes, and every minute of that was alongside Hayes.

Whatever the reasons, Hayes found himself coming off the Utah bench, and his energy was much better in this one. The 17 points are the most obvious indicator, but he had a lot of really alert plays. For example, he's the one who saved a possession late when a pass almost got away from George. Hayes grabbed it and got it to Markkanen, who flipped it to JJJ for the aforementioned corner three.

He had a 4-for-5 fourth quarter, scoring nine of his 17 in the final period.

It didn't need to be that close, but the Jazz once again struggled with pressure. The Jazz had 19 assists and just four turnovers at halftime, and then all hell broke loose. Especially in the third quarter, they were just throwing the ball all over the place, which is why Will Hardy said that the run they allowed to the Pels was "self-inflicted."

Here are just the live-ball TOs that resulted in scores or fouls, from just the third quarter. Warning: there are a lot, and some of them are wild.

At one point the Pels scored on 10 straight possessions and it's not hard to see why: the Jazz were basically starting their transition for them.

Collier probably deserves more credit for getting the Jazz back on track. When he checked in for his third quarter stint, the Jazz had fully surrendered their 15-point lead, but Collier allowed them to get back to some simpler playmaking and avoid chucking the ball straight to the Pelicans.

The visitors were completely backing off of Collier even with the ball, so he would punish them by just driving straight into that empty space and generating downhill momentum to either score or dish:

The Jazz are getting meaningful stuff from their 20-and-under lottery talents. The free-throw trip described above produced Peterson's 14th and 15th points. He also drew a pair of offensive fouls in the final seven minutes, and assisted Jackson's paint floater. It's really cool for him to get reps on both ends in a game like this one.

I still think Peterson is mostly kind of running through scripted actions without always having a really solid idea what they're supposed to yield. That's pretty typical at this point. Here, the Jazz run a pretty familiar Lauri flare action, but DP doesn't really even look at Markkanen until the window has closed. The play dead ends instead.

It will be interesting to see how setups like this one feel in 10 games, or two months, or after the All-Star break. Once Peterson understands not just what he's running, but why and what these actions can create, then he and Markkanen (in this case) can really start to magnify each other.

Starting Bailey gives the Jazz a plus perimeter defender from the start, something that their starting five without him lacks. Bailey struggled with his shot against New Orleans, but had another solid rebounding night (7) and his defense is just way more solid than I anticipated it being when he's still not quite 80 games into his NBA career. Watch him prevent a Zion attack by showing like he's going to bring top help, but both times the ball comes back out to Trey Murphy, he closes out with discipline. He essentially neuters the two-man action, so Murphy eventually has to dump the ball on a teammate for a long three.

His shot will be fine. He's playing with such a lot of engagement right now. He also had an absolute missile of a 1-handed pass to Peterson for an emphatic, contested dunk.

Brice Sensabaugh was more solid in this one — not just on shooting (3-for-6), but also was more noticeable as a passer, defender and just overall basketball player.

I'm still not seeing anything from Filipowski that tells me he's definitely going to have minutes when Jusuf Nurkic is healthy, but it's early, and his camp and preseason were abbreviated by a back injury, so let's grant him some patience.

After struggling on the glass on Wednesday, the Jazz had a +5 rebounding advantage, won the second-change points battle 18-14, and won the game when a Jackson deflection prevented a NOP offensive board. Jackson needed to be huge in this area after getting moved to the five in a lineup change (more on that soon), and he was: it was his highest rebounding total as a Jazzman by double over his next closest.

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Dan Clayton

Dan Clayton has been covering the Jazz for several different outlets since 2003, including as a contributor to Salt City Hoops since 2013. Dan enjoys sharing his cap knowledge, X-and-O insights and big picture takes, both at Salt City Hoops and on social media. You can find him on X/Twitter and Bluesky as @danclayt0n (that’s a zero in there). Dan and his family are back in the Salt Lake City area after living in Brooklyn for several years.

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