On a cold night in Salt Lake City, Utah, the Los Angeles Clippers began one of the most important stretches of their regular season by eking out a fairly dramatic win over one of the NBA's younger teams, the Utah Jazz.

For the first three quarters of the game in EnergySolutions Arena, the Clippers and the Jazz went back and forth with each other, with neither team leading by more than six during the first half.

Every Jazz starter played at least 30 minutes, besides Dante Exum, who once again struggled offensively Wednesday night, shooting 1-for-6 from the field and recording a plus/minus rating of minus-8. Even so, Trey Burke, a second year point guard who, like Exum, is a primary ball handler for Utah, struggled as well. Burke heaved up 15 shots and only made four, and he now has a shoddy field goal percentage of 37 percent on the season.

Meanwhile, in the frontcourt, Enes Kanter continues to quietly become one of the NBA's best young big men. The Turkish center is playing for a lottery team, so going unnoticed is understandable, but Kanter put up 20-plus points for the fourth time in five games and recorded his third double-double in five games. Additionally, Kanter's power forward partner, Derrick Favors, put up 18 points and nine rebounds in 31 minutes.

Even with multiple positive performances by the Jazz, including the energizing, circus shot expert Trevor Booker's eight points and nine rebounds in just 19 minutes, the Jazz couldn't hold on towards the end.

What decided this matchup was each team's execution during the final four minutes of the fourth quarter. Utah was sloppy, seemingly lazy, and certainly inefficient. Meanwhile, the Clippers were the complete opposite down the stretch. Up three with 1:44 left to play, Blake Griffin buried an isolation pull up jumper from 18 feet out for two of his 17 points. After that jumper, a facet of his game that Griffin has improved upon beautifully over his career, DeAndre "DJ" Jordan came up with two blocks to seal the deal for the Clips. This was a big win for the Clippers, and their sixth win in a row, but with their road trip containing games against the San Antonio Spurs, Cleveland Cavaliers, Toronto Raptors, Oklahoma City Thunder, and Dallas Mavericks, Lob City is going to have to keep it going if they want to spring their way up to the top half of the Western Conference.

Notes:

Only seven Clippers played double-digit minutes. Because of this, Jamal Crawford played 40 minutes in a game for the first time since April 16, 2014, and just the fourth time since the 2008-09 season, when Crawford made crazy, wild, step back jumpers for the Golden State Warriors.