Three thoughts on the Utah Jazz’s 129-118 win over the New Orleans Pelicans from Salt Lake Tribune beat writer Andy Larsen.
1. Donovan Mitchell’s efficient all-around game
Donovan Mitchell was absolutely terrific tonight: 36 points on 11-19 shooting, including 6-8 from deep and 8-8 from the free-throw line. He also had seven rebounds and five assists and a block, though added four turnovers.
The sixth 3-pointer meant a record for Mitchell: he’s the fastest player to 600 3-point makes in NBA history.
Honestly, the key thing to me was about how much control Mitchell seemed to have of his powers tonight. There are times when Mitchell forces things, rushes shots, and generally makes bad decisions. But Mitchell did nearly everything right against the Pelicans. This highlight video from the Jazz social team does a good job of showing it:
See how he’s jumping straight up and down on the 3-point shots? See how he’s manipulating the gather to get closer to the rim and drive through traffic?
And then once the defense starts to cheat over to defend him, he’s finding teammates. That bullet pass from Mitchell to Royce O’Neale was something special.
He was also a difference maker defensively tonight, which certainly isn’t always the case. But it was clear he wanted to set a tone, and no Jazzman was more vocal in communicating with his teammates.
And this save was one of the most impressive I’ve seen. I thought Mitchell had stepped out of bounds to get this ball, and so did Pelicans coach Stan Van Gundy, who was ejected from the game complaining about the non-call. But after watching it on video, the refs were absolutely right.
The classic narrative is to say that Mitchell had this game in response to the TNT comments at halftime, but, well, he scored 13 in the first quarter tonight and 15 in the first quarter on Tuesday, so I don’t think the comments had much to do with the play. He’s just playing at a really high level now after a slow start to the regular season.
2. Rudy Gobert playing against bench lineups
Maybe the biggest adjustment to the rotation Quin Snyder in this season compared to last is playing Rudy Gobert in three stints per half rather than two. Here was the Jazz’s rotation tonight, from pbpstats.com
Jazz rotation Thursday night, from https://www.pbpstats.com/live/nba/0022000227/game-flow
Those middle stints of each half have been pretty successful for the Jazz this season. When Gobert is on the floor with Jordan Clarkson and Mike Conley, as he is in those stints, the Jazz are outscoring teams by 16 points per 100 possessions. Now, it’s probably too early in the season to say that number is predictive, but it does explain how the Jazz have gotten some of these leads in their 11-4 start to the year.
I think the biggest thing it does for Gobert is allow him to take advantage of some foolish bench player decisions. Like, here’s Nickeil Alexander-Walker attacking the rim, but he’s not used to someone like Gobert hanging around down there. The result is a block.
The benches of the league are filled with guys who will make mistakes like this, and Gobert can swat them away. Starters generally know better.
Meanwhile, Derrick Favors can hold his own against the starting bigs of the league in the middle of the quarters while Gobert rests. You can definitely notice a drop-off in defense, but the Jazz aren’t getting embarrassed while Favors is out there — there’s a huge difference between Favors and Tony Bradley.
3. Okay, we’ll talk TNT
My Jazz beat partner Eric Walden has a good wrap-up of everything that happened tonight between the Jazz (and especially Mitchell) and the national TV broadcast on TNT tonight.
Here’s my perspective on it: Inside The NBA is the most decorated studio show of any sport ever for a reason — those guys have been entertaining in a way that most sports talk isn’t. There’s a whole lot of sports talk out there that is basically former players coming up with new ways to say one-word ideas over and over again. Basically, they fill time.
I was watching a game yesterday in which a color commentator said a player needed to be more aggressive. Then he said that the player needed to be more forceful. Then he said the player needed to attack the teeth of the defense. Then he said that the player needed to enforce his will on the game. Then he said that the player needed to play smash-mouth basketball. And he did all of this in one 10-second spiel, describing one play. It was a remarkable display of boring filler, but this kind of thing happens all the time in sports commentary.
Inside The NBA is not that. Their filler is full of non-sequiturs, larger points about basketball, the commentators making fun of each other, or political points. And that’s why they’ve been successful: because they’re different. Watching them is unlike watching any other studio show. In the past, it’s been entertaining.
What’s happened with Inside The NBA, though, is that this success in non-basketball elements has emboldened them to lose touch with the league entirely, instead just doubling down on the bits that made them famous. Shaq’s bit is just to attack players who haven’t won a ring, because it reminds the audience that he has. Charles has a big heart, but makes such bad predictions that it’s a bit of the show to write them down and make fun of them later. Kenny is clearly the best analyst of the three, and he’s still misreading plays on the big board all the time.
While Inside the NBA wasn’t paying attention, the game changed from underneath them. There are certainly TV analysts who have kept pace with the league’s changes, so it is possible. But because Shaq, Chuck, and Kenny got all of this credit for being the best sports show on TV for not really being about sports, they haven’t bothered with the work of actually watching games.
That’s why they all still think it’s funny to mispronounce Giannis Antetokounmpo’s name, or say Nikola Jokic is from Russia — both legitimately disrespectful things from the league’s premier broadcast about two of the league’s premier players. Tonight’s awkward segment with Donovan Mitchell was just another example of the same kind of thing that happened when Shaq said he hasn’t watched 5-year veteran Christian Wood, who averages 23 points per game, play. Why respect the current game when the accolades say you don’t need to?
The problem is that we’re now going on a decade of this. I had high hopes that this approach would change when the Golden State Warriors became the league’s dynasty. After all, the Inside The NBA crew famously said a jump-shooting team couldn’t win the trophy; the Warriors did it three times. That should have been a slice of humble pie, and instead it disappointingly made zero impact on how they view the game.
In the end, Inside The NBA’s tone is just such a huge disservice to the league. The quality of play is at an all-time high, with players more skilled and smarter than ever before. And instead of championing this, the show is full of commentators that are just itching to tell you how bad it all is, how it doesn’t compare to their own accomplishments.
Here’s the meat of the issue: Shaq went after a guy who put up 36, 7, and 4 in the 7th game of a 7-game winning streak tonight. Would you ever, ever, see an NFL broadcast do that? No, because they’re in the business of keeping people impressed with their product. The NBA seems to want to do the opposite.
We need to champion commentators who do their homework, who love the game. Doris Burke is terrific, as is Richard Jefferson. Hubie Brown still clearly loves everything about his job. There are tons of commentators out there that could really add respect and insight to the Inside The NBA crew.
But for now? Inside The NBA is just the “funny guy” at school repeating the same joke for the 500th time. The joke is now stale, and by now, we can tell — he’s repeating it to hide that there’s nothing else there.
