Minneapolis • Three thoughts on the Jazz’s 125-111 win over the Minnesota Timberwolves from Salt Lake Tribune beat writer Andy Larsen.
1. Jazz offense flips the switch to make 23 of their last 30 shots
I was curious coming into this game: with the teams playing each other twice in a row, would the extra familiarity help the offenses or defenses more?
The answer came in the second half — the offense won out. The Jazz scored 125 points tonight in only 96 possessions, including 72 in the second half. After the 7-minute mark of the third quarter, they made 23 of their last 30 shots and scored 61 points in those 19 minutes. That will win you a lot of games.
That’s because the Jazz, having played against this defense so frequently, finally learned what they could exploit over and over again.
“A great example was Jae at the end of the game, we knew where they were going to help from and he set it up perfectly and made the play and knocked down a three,” Kyle Korver said. "So I think we started making some shots and found a nice little rhythm.”
A large part of that was Donovan Mitchell beginning to make the Wolves pay from the midrange. I’m usually pretty against midrange shooting, but Mitchell’s percentages make it extremely worthwhile, thanks to a very good pull-up jumper and an improving floater. He’s shooting 48.4 percent from 10-16 feet, and 46.8 percent from 16 feet to the 3-point line.
That means that they have to start respecting that by having the big contest there, which forces a wing to come help on the rolling Rudy Gobert. From there, it’s just a matter of finding the open 3-point shooter and sinking the shot. The Jazz had 16 corner threes tonight, a huge total.
“Gobert puts a lot of pressure on the rim, does a great job of it,” Minnesota coach Ryan Saunders said. “We got concerned with that on the fly and allowed their open three-point shooters to get some clean looks.”
2. Defense allows open threes
It was good that the Jazz’s offense was clicking the way that it was, because the defense wasn’t very good on the perimeter. It was very good inside, where the Jazz allowed the Wolves to score only 24 points in the paint. But from outside, the Wolves found a lot of joy.
(NBA.com)
Some of those plays were threes the Jazz were scheming to allow. Jarryd Bayless, especially, was left open as a matter of choice, of the Jazz just going under screens to prevent Karl-Anthony Towns and others from finding success. But others, like this play by Gorgui Dieng, is probably one that Derrick Favors didn’t need to help this much on.
Other than that, though, the Jazz are usually very good at preventing the 3-point shot. They’re the best team in the league at allowing teams to shoot from deep only allowing them to take 3s on 28.4 percent of their possessions. That’s a great number in the modern NBA, and it stems from Gobert’s presence down low, which allows the Jazz to stay connected and aggressive on their shooters on their perimeter.
They have had problems with defending shooting big men, though, and the Wolves have those in spades. So that they were able to get out of two consecutive games against Minnesota with two wins is a nice accomplishment, even if it required them to do it in some unorthodox ways for them.
3. Derrick Favors' important offensive rebounds
Derrick Favors only had two offensive rebounds tonight, so it wasn’t his biggest night on the offensive glass. But he’s never had a better ratio of rebounds to points created: both of his offensive boards immediately led to threes for the Jazz.
Take this play, for example. Favors misses a jumper, but he gets his own rebound by coming in late and somehow ending up with the ball, even though he looked second-best on the play. And because he’s in traffic, he immediately kicked it out, leading to the open three.
He did the exact same thing, but on a Royce O’Neale missed three, later on in the quarter. Again, six points that the Jazz wouldn’t have otherwise.
"There’s always a play a game, sometimes more, where he makes a catch and you’re like ‘how did he get that?’,” Snyder said.
I think many big men would have forced a bad putback shot in those situations. Those tip plays are less efficient than you might think: it’s hard to control the ball so that it goes in the hoop when you’re in heavy traffic. But Snyder teaches his big men to quickly read the situation: if they have a “half-body” advantage on their defender, then it’s safe to go up. If not, though, they should look to immediately find an open 3-point shooter on the perimeter.
That’s what Favors did, twice, and it meant gaining that first-half lead that they’d build on in the second half.
