The Jazz came into Thursday night’s game on fire. Winners of six in a row, 10 in a row at home, they were feeling as confident as a team can get.
But playing a team as good as the Thunder raises the pressure and thins the margins. The Jazz played well for most of the game — and so did their opposition. In the end, Oklahoma City came out with the 134-129 win.
Against a quality team, every possession matters. In this game, the Jazz were just careless enough on just enough possessions on both ends of the floor to come out with a streak-snapping L. Certainly, those plays were tilted at the beginning of the game, when the Jazz fell to a 19-point deficit, but some errors also came in the 4th, too. Those possessions can tell us about where this team can improve moving forward, turning losses like these into wins.
Here are five possessions that mattered tonight:
No help when help is required
Head coach Will Hardy’s biggest problem with the team’s performance during the game was their help defense.
“Early in the game we were way too late on our primary help,” Hardy said. “Our secondary help was non existent.”
Here’s a good example of what he’s talking about. The Jazz do a great initial job of putting a cup around Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, forcing the pass back out, and Simone Fontecchio does well to sprint to Jalen Williams to prevent a three. Williams, a very good second-year player, attacks the closeout — but no one is there to help the drive. The Thunder have two iffy shooters in the corners, and either Lauri Markkanen or John Collins needs to help, but nobody does.
The Thunder had 42 points in the paint in the first half, nearly criminal. The Jazz tightened it up hugely in the second half, allowing just 14 points in the paint in those 24 minutes. In the end, though, the early sloppy defense made a difference.
Sloppy fouls
The best part of Kris Dunn’s game is his hard-nosed defense that generates a lot of steals. That also generates a lot of fouls, but the tradeoff is usually worth it.
Tonight, though I don’t know that it was. Dunn picked up his second foul just a few minutes into the game, but Hardy trusted his veteran point guard, knowing that Dunn doesn’t usually play 30 minutes a night, anyway. But Dunn didn’t repay that trust, with this third foul just six minutes into the game.
This is just going to be a foul 100% of the time, as Dunn reaches all the way across SGA’s body while he drives. By fouling Gilgeous-Alexander, he not only picks up a third foul, in effect disqualifying him from the rest of the half... but he also sends SGA to the line for two free throws. In all, the Thunder star had 17 free-throws tonight, making his scoring night relatively easy.
Know your teammates
Lauri Markkanen has a quirk in his free-throw shooting — on his second free-throw, he waits a beat for the release. He frequently gets other team’s players to step into the lane early, which means that even if he doesn’t make the free throw, he’ll get another chance. It’s a good strategy!
But it also relies on your teammates knowing your tendencies. Collins and Markkanen have both started the vast majority of Jazz contests, they play a lot of minutes together. So Collins should probably know by now what Markkanen is going to do.
Unfortunately, here he loses focus and takes away his teammate’s second free-throw attempt. You can tell he immediately regrets it. Mistakes are just going to happen in an NBA game, and they’re understandable... but this one cost the Jazz a point.
Get a good shot on every play
With four minutes left in the game, the Jazz are fighting to keep it close. The Thunder are making tough shot after tough shot, while the Jazz’s offense holds serve, too. Then, Kelly Olynyk comes down the court and does this.
Look, we’ve all seen the Jazz benefit from Olynyk’s goofy play, but usually, his tricky footwork results in a better layup or a trip to the free-throw line. This is Olynyk just posting up Aaron Wiggins from the beginning of the play, getting stopped, and throwing up a contested turnaround shotput at the basket. It misses badly.
The Jazz’s offense is predicated on sharing the ball and turning good shots into great shots, but this is neither. So early in the shot clock, and with the opportunity to pass the ball out, Olynyk’s isolation post up here cost the Jazz a chance to run something better. Cason Wallace hit a three on the other end immediately after this miss, and the Jazz took a timeout, now down 10. Olynyk was subbed out.
Dominate the glass
Coming into the game, the Jazz’s best chance at a victory was to dominate the glass. After all, the Jazz are the league’s second-best offensive rebounding team this year, while the Thunder rank in the league’s bottom three at both offensive and defensive rebounding.
The rebounding battle was in favor of the Jazz — Utah had 11 offensive rebounds, the Thunder only seven — but not by enough to win the game. This rebound, in which Gilgeous-Alexander had a rare miss on an open shot, was a key one.
Yes, it’s a unusually hard bounce off the back of the rim, but ideally someone is either there for that rebound or Fontecchio puts a body on Cason Wallace and prevents him from grabbing the ball.
There’s much to be proud of in this effort for the Jazz. Early in the season, a 19-point deficit to the Thunder would have meant a long slog towards a blowout, but this team fought back. Change a few possessions, and they could have won the game — their next step towards becoming a truly contending team.
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