Three thoughts on the Utah Jazz’s 114-99 win over the Houston Rockets from Salt Lake Tribune Jazz beat writer Andy Larsen.
1. How would you know if a team wasn’t trying their hardest?
Take this game out of the equation for a second. Let’s say you wanted to measure a team’s effort level in a contest. What aspects of the game would you look at?
• I think an obvious one is rebounding. Rebounds are hard work: you have to box out, you have to be physical, and you have to go jump to the ball. If you’re trying really hard, you’re probably getting a lot of contested rebounds.
• We also now have hustle stats: deflections forced, loose balls recovered. You’d look at those.
• You’d look at fouls. While I think there are fouls committed out of laziness, there are many fouls committed as a residue of effort: fighting over screens, rotating, defending all over the court.
• You’d watch for shot contests. If you’re in position to contest a shot, but don’t, that’s just choosing not to put your arm up.
• You’d look at their playcalling. If a team is trying a whole bunch of new plays that they just learned in practice, or playing unusual defenses, those might not be as effective yet as their go-tos. Playing experimentally might not be the best approach against talented opposition.
I think you can argue that the Jazz showed all of those signs tonight. The Rockets had a 19-6 advantage in offensive rebounds, and it was pretty flagrant the offensive rebounds the Jazz let go by them at times. This is just straight up lack of effort from Joe Ingles to go get the ball, and you could argue that Donovan Mitchell could have done more to protect the situation, too.
The Rockets had 12 deflections, the Jazz had nine; Houston had a 8-5 advantage in loose balls recovered. They drew three charges, the Jazz drew 0.
The Jazz committed 17 fouls, below their season average, even though the game was played at a relatively high pace.
There were certainly missed shot contests. Jae’Sean Tate isn’t a non-entity as a shooter, he takes two a game for even the normal Rockets. So I was surprised when Derrick Favors didn’t even think about getting his hand up on this one:
We saw more zone than the Jazz normally use tonight, and I thought this was a sign of Jazz experimentation. But when I asked Quin Snyder about it, he said that the zone was mostly because his team couldn’t figure out a way to protect the paint the normal way, so they tried this approach. More on that later.
Regardless, I think it’s pretty clear what happened tonight: the Jazz didn’t try their hardest, because they were playing a shorthanded Rockets team — a team that used a starting lineup that combined made less money ($7.9 million) than every Jazz starter individually. They thought that they could win without trying very hard. And honestly, they were right in the end, though it probably got closer than they bargained for.
2. Why are the Jazz having trouble defending the paint, anyway?
In short, teams are doing a better job at attacking the Jazz without involving Rudy Gobert.
This was an interesting chess match tonight, especially, because the shorthanded Rockets only had one player over 6-6: Justin Patton. So most of what they did was not especially center-oriented, which means Gobert was guarding a spaced-out opponent.
Take this early play, for example: the Rockets put Mike Conley and Bojan Bogdanovic in a pick and roll, while Patton spaces Gobert out up top. Conley goes over the screen, and of course Bogdanovic is just not very good at defending two-on-one situations, so it’s an easy drop-off pass.
You probably just need to switch this, honestly, but the problem is that the Jazz have been worried about putting Bogdanovic in tough isolation situations.
Again, here’s another situation where the Jazz could switch, but don’t:
How concerning is this situation to you? Conley does his best, but can’t really do much to stop the Porter drive, in the end. Switching it honestly might be more effective, in the end.
That’s why I liked the Jazz using the zone as much as they did, under the hope that they can get better at it with practice: the zone always keeps Rudy Gobert down near the paint. Theoretically, that’s a really good counter to teams that are changing everything to keep him out of the action.
But if the Jazz are going to play zone, they have to do a much better job of rebounding than they did tonight.
3. Doug Birrell’s passing
Quin Snyder called Doug Birrell a “healer” in his pregame press conference tonight.
Technically, his job title was team massage therapist, but honestly, he was one of those guys behind the scenes of the Jazz that just made everything run well. Maybe the thing I’ve heard most consistently over the years about Doug was just how effectively he welcomed everyone to the team, with dinners, good humor — though Joe Ingles joked otherwise, calling it “horrible” — and just an overwhelming spirit.
Heck, he even reached out to me a time or two, just little chats about non-sequiturs in the locker room. Most team personnel show a reluctance to do that, because they don’t want to be seen as the source of a leak — Doug knew that he was too trustworthy for anyone to suspect him.
He worked for the Jazz for 21 years, traveling with the team everywhere they went for at least most of my recollection. Even as he fought the disease that ended up taking his life, he went down to the league’s bubble in Orlando. There’s a reason he stayed on so long through three coaching staffs, from Stockton and Malone to Mitchell and Gobert — he was great at his job, and he was great to have around.
It’s been a hard week for the team. Doug’s funeral was Friday morning, before the game with the Rockets, and it really could have had an impact on the way the Jazz played. How could it not?
“I think this was a tough game, this is a tough few days for us, for his family,” Mitchell said. “His presence is missed.”
Doug Birrell was 51 when he died earlier this week on March 7. He is survived by his wife and three daughters.
