Three thoughts on the Utah Jazz’s 118-88 victory over the Brooklyn Nets from Salt Lake Tribune Jazz beat writer Andy Larsen.
1. This game didn’t have much excitement
I feel sorry for ESPN. Willing to give the league’s small market No. 1 team, the Utah Jazz, a chance against the stars of Brooklyn on a Wednesday night, Brooklyn responded by sitting all of their stars and playing a meaningless contest that was over after 10 minutes or so.
To recap:
• Kevin Durant has missed over half of Brooklyn’s season due to a hamstring injury.
• Kyrie Irving missed the Nets’ 3-game road trip due to personal reasons
• James Harden was ruled out of the game due to neck soreness. For what it’s worth, Harden has been on the injury report for this before, so it might not be something that they just invented to give him a rest. That being said, “neck soreness” is the kind of thing that gives the league’s casual fans eye soreness from all the eye rolling.
• Blake Griffin just rested. He looks old and slow enough when he does play that it’s easier to make the rest argument with him, and yet — rest.
• Joe Harris played the first five minutes of the game, the Jazz went up 16-4, and the Nets were like, “Nah, we’re gonna lose, there’s no reason to play him any more.” Essentially the same thing happened with DeAndre Jordan, but he played 12 full minutes.
What can the NBA do about this? I don’t know. I think at this point, it’s kind of a problem that’s a symptom of the league’s structure. 72 games in a compressed schedule results in a playoff setup where home-court advantage just doesn’t matter very much — most of your series aren’t going to go to a Game 7, and if it does, that game is much more likely to be determined by matchup considerations than by where the game is being played.
It impacts the Nets’ championship odds about 0.0% to lose this game. It might help 0.01% to rest the stars. So... why not?
In the end, I think the league probably tried to do too much by fitting in 72 games into this schedule. They were just doing their best to recoup as much revenue as possible, so I get it. But it has sure resulted in some real stinkers.
2. Jordan Clarkson on isolations
Do you know who has been weirdly ineffective in isolation situations this season? Jordan Clarkson!
The Nets were playing this switch everything style of defense that wasn’t exactly super effective, but it did seem to bother two players more than anyone else: Joe Ingles and Jordan Clarkson. Ingles isn’t exactly brilliant against switching defenses — this is the biggest reason his playoff effectiveness has sometimes been in doubt, and well, we don’t call him Iso-Joe for a reason.
But Clarkson’s more of a surprise. We know him as a twitchy scorer, but that hasn’t actually translated into isolation success this year; instead he’s been much more effective as a pick-and-roll or spot-up guy.
To wit, coming into tonight’s game, Clarkson had used 89 possessions this season, but he’s only scored 63 points in those possessions. That’s 0.7 points per possession, ranking in the 24th percentile among NBA players. Not great! It doesn’t really get better when we include him driving, then passing: that’s 0.78 points per possession, which is 27th percentile in the NBA.
Those stats will look even uglier once we figure tonight’s game into the equation. Clarkson went 1-15 from the field: 1-11 from deep, including some pretty crazy pull-up threes, and 0-4 on the stuff inside the arc. Many of those misses were on isolation plays.
Jordan Clarkson's shooting chart tonight. (NBA.com)
I think it makes some sense, actually. For as good as a scorer as he is, Clarkson doesn’t exactly jump off the charts athletically. He doesn’t have blow-by speed, he doesn’t have amazing verticality, he scores through essentially guile and extreme skill.
Those are the kinds of players that usually need an advantage created for them. In particular, he’s been amazing with a screen set for him as a pick-and-roll ball-handler, and even sometimes being the one setting the screen when teams are switching. I think that’s where we’ll see the best from Clarkson, when he’s working through the offense to get in good spots, or attacking in transition.
3. 3-point shooting... it works!
The old expression is “Live by the three, die by the three.” I don’t think it’s really true!
Well, the Jazz have been basically only living by the three. When the Jazz take over half of their shots from deep, they are 18-2. When they don’t, they’re only 14-9.
Here’s the thing: as much as we talk about shooting variance from deep, there’s also variance in the other types of scoring as well. Some nights, players miss layups. Other nights, they miss free throws. Mid-range shots are also frequently missed. Getting those threes just means that those makes, when they do happen, are worth some extra points, and that’s a good thing.
Heck, I think you can even look at tonight’s game as a little microcosm of that. Tonight, the Jazz shot 7-11 in the first quarter, and immediately led the game by 21. Then, they missed their next nine threes. — that cut the lead to 14. Eventually, the threes fell again, and the Jazz pulled away. They shot 41% from deep tonight, but would have won even if they shot 24%.
That’s kind of how it works. When you take 55 (!) threes in a game, in the end, you’re not going to go something incredibly low like 8-55. Even on a bad shooting night, you’d probably make 15 of those (only 27%) and still score 45 points that way. That’s the equivalent of shooting 41% on your 2-point shots, or about what Fred Van Vleet is shooting from inside the arc this year. It’s not great, but not catastrophic.
Anyway, threes are good, and teams that shoot them will continue to be rewarded by the mathematics of basketball.
