1. Jazz just demolish the Knicks inside
70-26.
That’s how much the Jazz won the points in the paint battle by tonight. And if you restrict the fight to just the immediate rim area, it was 60-14.
From a Knicks perspective: yikes. I mean, maybe we shouldn’t be surprised. The Knicks are starting Luke Kornet at center, of all people, and you’re definitely not getting rim protection from him or inside scoring, either. Meanwhile, the Jazz are starting the best rim protector in the league and perhaps its best rim roller.
“It’s about vertical spacing,” Knicks head coach David Fizdale explained. “I mean, Rudy Gobert can go to the top of the backboard. So even if they can’t get him the lob, if they just get it up to the glass and our big is engaged in the pick and roll, now it’s a jumping contest on the glass. He’s a special player that way. He puts a lot of pressure on the rim on one end, and he really protects it on the other.”
It’s very true, Gobert is a unique weapon on both ends of the floor. But also, Knicks, this is the first possession of the game, and the Jazz just run a pick and roll with Dante Exum and Gobert, and you give this up so easily? This should have been the number one play at the top of the scouting report!
The Jazz executed well, but this was just a shellacking the likes of which shouldn’t happen at the NBA level. I mean, my immediate thought was that it was similar to the Jazz’s first preseason game against the Perth Wildcats, who started a poor 6-foot-9 guy named Tom Pervis and told him to guard Gobert. Gobert dominated from the start. Kornet is 7-foot-1, but his lack of lateral mobility and verticality really means its about the same.
2. Dante Exum’s first double-double
It was the first double-double of his career, as the young Australian scored 13 points and added 13 assists — a career-high — against the Knicks.
12 of those assists came in the first half. The aforementioned connection with Gobert led to five of those assists, but some of Exum’s most impressive plays came when he read that the defense was actually guarding Gobert at the rim this time to find the open player cutting at the rim or getting open for three.
The Knicks tried a lot of different defenses before finding one that worked. They started the game with standard drop-big defense, which led to the dunk you saw above. Then they started having Derrick Favors' man help on Gobert, which meant Favors was open to start getting dunks:
They even switched to a zone, which was then hilariously countered by Kyle Korver finding the space in the zone for wide-open threes.
Then they started to push Vonleh higher, which led to more Gobert dunks.
It’s impressive that Exum was able to correctly read all of these changes in the defense and still make the right play. One style of defense did end up getting to him, though, and it was when the Knicks started just trapping the pick and roll, forcing Exum to pass out of it. But because Exum picked up the ball and then took a longer time to pass out of it, the Knicks were able to recover before any damage from the double-team was done.
If teams defend him like that — and I don’t suspect many will, it was sheer desperation that the Knicks tried this — Exum has to coyly welcome the double team with an outlet pass in mind. That will start the 4-on-3 elsewhere on the floor that the Jazz should be able to take advantage of.
But still, it was an excellent performance by Exum, though made easier by substandard Knicks defense.
“The last few games I think has been the best stretch of his career from what I’ve seen," Gobert said. "He’s been really aggressive, but making the right play. He’s been good defensively, so it’s fun to watch.”
3. Raul Neto vs. Trey Burke
In the final minutes of a blowout like that, I’m always looking for ways to stay entertained.
For example, the Jazz had a 46-point lead at one point, could they stretch it to 50? (No, they ended up only winning by 32.)
The Jazz had six players in double-figures, could they get a seventh or even an eighth? (No, Raul Neto finished with nine points and Ekpe Udoh and Royce O’Neale both finished with eight.)
Could Tony Bradley impress in his first NBA minutes of the season? (No, he went 0-3 and added a turnover in eight minutes.)
So thank goodness for the fun battle between Raul Neto and Trey Burke, one of our only on-court looks at the off-court playing time competition that the two players had leading throughout the the 2015-16 Jazz season. That is, until the Jazz acquired Shelvin Mack and it was pretty clear right away that Mack was better than both.
Neto took the early lead with four made shotsand three assists in the first 42 minutes of the game, and of course, had the advantage of actually playing before garbage time. He made some good moves, like this hesitation move that caught Enes Kanter:
But Trey Burke, once he was inserted into the game in garbage time, could not have been more excited to make his mark. He scored 11 points in the game’s final 4:07, hitting his signature pull-up jumper and then going to the rack and finishing through contact. It was an impressive scoring display! It really seemed like Burke was trying to send a message, though it’s not clear if it was about his matchup with Neto or about his coach not playing him.
Nothing could have been better, though, than the way the game ended. With 10 seconds left, Georges Niang missed a three. Noah Vonleh got the rebound, but Trey Burke got the pass and immediately attacked the retreating Jazz defense, with just a couple of seconds left. While some players may have dribbled out the clock with a 32-point deficit, Burke unleashed some crafty dribbles and rose to beat the buzzer with a 26-foot contested 3-point shot. It wasn’t even close, missing the rim by a couple of feet.
I know that people criticize Ricky Rubio and Exum’s performance sometimes, and rightfully so. But just remember: the Jazz’s point guard situation used to be much, much worse.
