Three thoughts on the Utah Jazz’s 117-96 win over the Portland Trail Blazers from Salt Lake Tribune beat writer Andy Larsen.
1. Rudy Gobert most impactful player again
Rudy Gobert had 18 points, 14 rebounds, and seven blocks on Christmas Day, the standout performer in the NBA’s showcase nightcap. Once again, he was phenomenal on the defensive end, limiting the Blazers to just 88 points per 100 possessions when he was in the game.
Gobert was named Defensive Player of the Year last year because of two abilities.
First, there’s his ability to force misses at the rim. Obviously, with the seven blocks, he did that exceptionally well, and the Blazers only shot 51 percent at the rim all night. This one wasn’t his hardest of the game, but was one of the most unique ones because he just put both hands up like a volleyball player and smothered Damian Lillard’s drive.
Then, there’s the fear he puts into his opponents, turning those layups into ugly mid-range stuff that they’re not very good at. Al-Farouq Aminu took a shot that the NBA play-by-play described as a “Driving Floating Bank Jump Shot." It was the first such shot he’s taken this season. It did not have a very good chance of going in. Jusuf Nurkic, after getting blocked a few times, was tired of that, and so took a “Floating Jump Shot” from eight feet. He is 3-16 on those shots this season. Those are good odds from a Jazz point of view.
What he’s really added to his game this season — and by season, I mean “in the last three weeks or so” — is the ability to defend the perimeter enough that the Jazz’s guards can get back in the play, then get back to the rim to defend there. Again, Gobert has both feet outside the 3-point line here, but once Zach Collins gets the ball, he hustle back enough with gigantic strides and ends up getting a punctuating block.
This is extraordinarily helpful when the Jazz are defending talented shooting guards. Once again, the Jazz limited the Lillard/McCollum combo to just 31 points — the same combined total as they had in their 30-point loss a week ago. That’s because with Gobert in their face, they have no room to shoot.
2. The Aussies playing with efficiency
Both Joe Ingles and Dante Exum scored 15 points on nine shots each tonight, leading the way in scoring efficiency once you get past Gobert’s dunking performance. They also both showed some aspects of their development as players, shots or situations they wouldn’t have been capable of when they entered the NBA.
For Joe Ingles, it’s this. With the shot clock running down, he passes the ball to Derrick Favors so that he can get it back with seconds to spare. Doing this, though, means he doesn’t have to shake Evan Turner with the ball in his hands, giving him more mobility. In the end, Turner gambles left, wildly recovers to the right, and in the end gets so turned around that Ingles has an open 3-point shot. Bang.
There’s just no way Ingles was capable of that ability to create his own shot a few years ago.
For Exum, it was his mid-range game. Exum has played three and a half seasons in the NBA, and has made eight total shots from between 10-16 feet, out of 1,046 total FGA attempts from everywhere. He added two more to that first total tonight, with two floaters like this:
These aren’t especially efficient shots in their own right, of course, but at the end of a shot clock, they’ll do. The good thing about these kind of floaters over a standard rise-and-fire jumper is that it puts Exum in position to get his own offensive rebound, something that he probably has the length to do on occasion.
3. Christmas Day spirit
It’s just really fun to play on Christmas. A late nationally-televised start felt perfect: for those of us in Salt Lake City, we got to still do many of the Christmas traditions of opening presents and whatnot, and then got to enjoy a great game of basketball at night. The crowd arrived well before tip-off, and stayed loud and boisterous throughout the game.
But that’s easy for me to say. For the traveling party with the Portland Trail Blazers, it probably wasn’t as much fun, spending Christmas Eve away from home, holding shootaround instead of gift-giving on Christmas morning. For Portland players, coaches, trainers, writers and commentators alike, it must have been a rough time, even without taking into account the lopsided result against them.
So I thought it was really cool that Kyle Korver began his pregame “Merry Christmas” message by giving a shoutout to the Blazers. This video only captures some of what Korver said, but essentially, he asked the heavily Utah-biased crowd to give thanks to Portland’s organization for sacrificing the best part of their holiday so that the game could happen.
The crowd didn’t really know how to react after being asked to cheer for the Blazers, but eventually they did. And then Korver went on to give a few more seconds about what the day meant to him. It was legitimately eloquent.
That’s been a lot of what I’ve experienced dealing with Korver in his short time back with the Jazz. Obviously, he was known as a good teammate in his first stint with Utah, but now the additional decade of experience in between has turned him into a thoughtful ambassador for the league, with good anecdotes and a unique perspective that is the perfect mix of thoughtfully distant yet engaged, enthusiastic yet wise.
