Three thoughts on the Utah Jazz’s 121-117 loss to the Sacramento Kings from Salt Lake Tribune Jazz beat writer Andy Larsen.
1. Letting De’Aaron Fox score 49
On one hand, it’s not that the Jazz’s defense should be too heavily criticized for letting De’Aaron Fox score 49 points tonight. After all, he scored 60 points against a much better defense just last night. 24 hours later, the Jazz limited him to 11 fewer points!
And on the other hand, last night, the Kings had Domantas Sabonis, the guy who finished eighth in MVP voting last year. Tonight, they had Doug McDermott — remember him? — start instead. And of course, 49 points is 49 points, probably bad to allow no matter how you spin it.
And on the other other hand, if you watch the tape... you’ll see that it was a pretty impressive 49. Fox hit all manner of stepbacks and floaters and midrange pull-ups, frequently contested. Only two of his baskets came at the rim, everything else was from the areas you probably want him to shoot from.
And on the other other other hand, the fact that the Jazz’s defenders were basically there, just not making an impact is pretty reflective of how poor they are. Keyonte George is taller than Fox, but when he contests Fox’s shot, I’m not sure he makes any sort of difference. He’s not the only one who struggled though: Collin Sexton, Cody Williams, and John Collins all did too. Ideally, the Jazz would have a defensive stopper on their team they could throw at players like Fox, someone who could make a difference.
And on the other other other other hand... stopping Fox even just one more time might have resulted in a Jazz win. As a franchise, they don’t want to win games right now. Many Jazz fans online were excited that the Kings were able to pull this one out — and I don’t wildly disagree with their long-term thinking.
2. Kyle Filipowski responding to getting tested
Kyle Filipowski’s good play continues to be the story of the early Jazz season.
It’s not a super standout box score for Filipowski — just nine points — but the rookie led the Jazz in plus-minus with a +12, and picked up three steals to boot. The loudest moment of the night, maybe for either team, was this killer poster over Kings center Alex Len.
But the steals were nice — as was his defensive effort all night. He’s just significantly better defensively than NBA opposition gives him credit for. Fox manipulated the Jazz to get Filipowski switched on him twice, and both times, Filipowski forced Fox into a contested jump shot, ones in which Filipowski’s length seemed to speed him up a little bit.
That’s not the only time Filipowski was tested, though. The Kings were also testing him in a variety of other ways — mostly physically, down in the paint. Filipowski said he’s found his veteran NBA competition is being “being physical, like, sneaky physical,” with little elbows being thrown when the refs aren’t watching. He came out of tonight’s game with ice on his shoulder and ankle, for example. He was the last player out of the training room as the Jazz’s staff tended to him.
“I guess that’s how it is for rookies, especially rookies that stand up to that sort of thing,” Filipowski said. “I gotta pull my big boy pants on, you know, and not back down from that challenge.”
The same was true in college, I noted — teams would do whatever it took to test Filipowski, both in isolation and with their physicality. Then, Filipowski largely responded to all of those tests, on his way to become a second-team All-American.
He’s doing the same now. If he keeps this good play up, he’s on his way to being recognized as one of the league’s best rookies this season.
3. The longest game
This was an issue tonight.
The biggest delays of the night came when the Kings took (and won) two challenges in those final two minutes — truth be told, both plays were pretty obviously bad calls from the officiating crew tonight that Kings coach Mike Brown probably thought should have called right from the get go. There were also six fouls called in that period; add in two timeouts by either team, and you end up with a long game.
There were also weird administrative breaks as the scorer table and referees disagreed on how many timeouts the Jazz had left, for example. (The referees were right on that.)
The NBA has done a lot to make the game faster at the end — in particular, limiting teams to only two timeouts in the final three minutes has made a difference compared to the three-or-four timeout fests that we could get in the past. But challenges can slow things down a lot as well. In the end, I probably lean towards correcting the call to the right one, especially when the bad calls are as obvious as what we saw tonight.
Regardless, these delays resulted in a game time of 2:35. That’s the longest non-overtime Jazz game since the Christmas Day game in 2021, which was 2:39. That game was at least on national television, though, resulting in much longer timeouts and halftimes. The previous 2:35 or longer non-overtime Jazz game before that? Not since Nov. 10, 2015.
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