Three thoughts on the Utah Jazz’s 138-121 win over the Charlotte Hornets from Salt Lake Tribune Jazz beat writer Andy Larsen.
1. Jazz start slow, then absolutely light up the switching Hornets defense
Tonight was a really interesting game for the Jazz, because the Hornets presented them with a defensive strategy they haven’t seen much this year.
The Hornets started three point guards — LaMelo Ball, DeVonte Graham, and Terry Rozier, probably their best offensive look. Then they switched everything one through five.
For a little bit, this actually stifled the Jazz’s offense, something that we’ve seen before when the Jazz play switching defenses. Switches basically mean that the defense refuses to be screened, which means you don’t get the type of advantages that you normally do in the offense.
Instead, your advantage is twofold. First, you have mismatches, inside and out. You basically can take advantage of this by having dominant offensive players, and the Jazz have three players that can really use quickness against big men: Donovan Mitchell, Jordan Clarkson, and Mike Conley. Those players have to use their quickness advantage to get past that bigger man guarding them, and then either score or find the open man from the rotating defense.
Bojan Bogdanovic is also adept in the flip side of mismatches, using his bigger body to take advantage of smaller guards in the post.
But the second advantage you can use against switching defenses is one of timing. With a hard screen, it’s easy to tell when you should switch. But what about when a big man wanders up to set a screen, but never gets there, or slips early? The timing is much harder.
You can also do this on the perimeter: what if you have a player come up out there, and pretend to sort of set a screen? What does the defense do there?
Okay, that last one was some pretty lax defense from a tired Hornets team. But they probably also knew at this point that the Jazz getting open shots was inevitable, no matter how hard they tried.
That’s what was so impressive about the Jazz’s offensive performance tonight: they ran into something relatively new for them this season, and while it took them about a half-quarter to figure out, they then sliced it open with a scalpel. 138 points? That’ll do.
2. Let’s just talk about the impact of the three ball
The Jazz made 26 threes tonight, a new franchise record again. I’m sure they’ll break their own record again later this year.
The impact of the 3-ball is a decade-long revelation in the league, but it’s really hitting now for Utah. I mean, the Jazz scored 78 points tonight from deep. 78 points! At one point, Bogdanovic made four threes in 90 seconds.
It just kills teams to have 3-point shooting stretches like this. Absolutely slaughters them. At various points in the game, the Jazz had scoring stretches of:
• 11 points in 1:54
• 12 points in 1:11
• 11 points in 2:02
• 14 points in 2:12
If you can score a combined 48 points in a combined 7:19... what does the other team do at that point? You can afford scoring droughts in the other 40 minutes of the game, sure! Because you can score a half’s worth of points in just over seven minutes.
It’s like taking the red pill in the Matrix, or the Limitless drug, or I don’t know, insert another revelatory movie reference here. It just makes the impossible, possible.
I keep wishing that I could share this revelation with Jazz coaches of the past. Jerry Sloan already had terrific offenses, but man, what if he had John Stockton and Jeff Hornacek, two of the great shooters of that era, take more threes?
A decade later, Kyle Korver had the highest percentage 3-point season of all time, making 53% of his threes that year. So naturally, the Jazz played him only 21 minutes per game in the playoffs that year. Then they let him go to the Chicago Bulls in the offseason. Why, Kevin O’Connor?! You had such a good thing.
And Ty Corbin... in retrospect, he had some really quality shooters on those rosters. Mo Williams, Randy Foye, Marvin Williams, Gordon Hayward, Raja Bell, all absolutely have gravity on the floor from deep. So the Jazz took the 29th most threes in the league and just pounded the ball to Al Jefferson for goofy push shots over and over again in some of the most boring basketball the NBA has ever seen.
Paul Millsap should be the most mad: he worked on the 3-point shot in practice over and over, had this coming out party where his incredible 3-point shooting won them the game in one of the most unlikely regular season comebacks in NBA history, and Corbin still had him keep the three under wraps for the rest of his Jazz career. Then as soon as he goes to Atlanta — where Quin Snyder was Millsap’s favored assistant — he immediately expands his game, takes six times more threes per game, and becomes an All-Star.
Ah, what could have been. Still, at least the Jazz had the revelatory moment at some point. Right now, they’re a joy to watch.
3. Mike Conley’s injury
Mike Conley didn’t play his normal minutes in the third and fourth quarter tonight. At first, it seemed like the injury may have been related to him being hit in the face on a breakaway layup, but then we heard from the team the true nature of his trip to the locker room: right hamstring tightness.
The bad news is that hamstring issues cost Conley about 20 games last year, really making his integration with a new team more challenging. The good news is that this is his other hamstring — that hamstring bothering him was his left.
It’s something to keep an eye on, though, for sure. To an underrated degree, this team needs Mike Conley to make their system work: the Jazz outscore opponents by 17.7 points per 100 possessions with him on the court, but they’re outscored by 5.9 points per 100 possessions when he’s on the bench.
Conley’s terrific on his own, but his presence also allows Mitchell to be an off-ball scorer. Mitchell’s best at taking the advantages the offense generates for him, and less good at making those advantages himself. Conley’s probably the opposite.
By the way, Conley absolutely should be an All-Star this year, given the outsized nature of his impact on the league’s leading team. Whether or not he will be one will be determined by this length of this injury, the voting of the Western Conference’s coaches, and perhaps the decision of NBA commissioner Adam Silver if there’s a Western Conference injury in the weeks leading up to the game.
