Three thoughts on the Utah Jazz’s 106-94 loss to the Dallas Mavericks from Salt Lake Tribune Jazz beat writer Andy Larsen.
1. Offensive diagnosis
The Jazz had a 94 offensive rating tonight, which will lose you basically every game in which it happens.
Will Hardy chalked it up to simply bad shooting — he actually called it his favorite game the Jazz have played this season, despite the loss. I do think there’s an element of truth to that: the Jazz shot just 23% from deep on the night. If they shoot 35%, they score 12 more points and the game goes down to the wire. You’d expect Lauri Markkanen (2-11 from deep) to shoot better, especially.
Furthermore, the problem wasn’t turnovers tonight — finally! The team had only 15 turnovers, that’s nearly exactly league average. Hurrah.
I do think, though, that the Jazz didn’t get the shots at the rim or at the corners that they’d prefer. They took just 18 shots at the rim (7th percentile among NBA games this season, per CleaningTheGlass) and eight corner threes (33rd percentile).
Some of that was due to poor Jazz spacing, in my estimation. This play came from early in the game as the Jazz were accumulating a 20 point deficit. John Collins is down in the paint while Walker Kessler is already there — Collins is trying to take advantage of a mismatch, but it’s a tough one. Realistically, Collin Sexton nor Keyonte George have any real chance of driving to the rim when there’s this much traffic down there:
Next possession, Collin Sexton gets blocked. Walker Kessler would ideally be the dump man here, but it’d be a difficult pass, and even if he did receive the ball, he’s way behind the basket. Remember, there’s four feet between the backboard and the out of bounds line.
To me, ideally, there’d either be someone in the corner closest to the camera on the weak side, or at the very least Kessler should be in the dunker spot at that same position. As is, it feels very scrunched.
I don’t really think this is a Hardy play design problem, I think it’s a game recognition problem. Understanding what the Mavericks are doing (switching), then providing spacing for the Jazz’s quick players to score is important. It seems like everyone’s just a bit too eager to put themselves in the play rather than spacing for their teammates.
2. Two Walker Kessler notes
The Jazz’s best player tonight was Walker Kessler, who scored 18, added 10 boards, and had eight stocks: five blocks and three steals.
First: The steal count is his highest ever, a career high. It’s also just the fifth time he’s had at least eight steals and blocks combined; the other times occurred when Kessler had seven blocks, though.
But I liked how active he was with his hands tonight. In this clip, he shows up to prevent the corner three, gets back to his man, then reads the dump off pass on the perimeter and steals it. This is a great example of the kind of turnovers ball pressure (along with Collin Sexton) can create.
Second: I continue to love how Kessler runs the floor well. It gets him easy opportunities in both offense and defense — check out this transition block, for example.
Not every big man, especially rim protecting big man, runs like that. I asked Kessler where that skill came from.
“I was working — I still work with — a strength coach called Ryan Hansell. We worked on running form from day one, because I was kind of like a newborn giraffe, all legs," Kessler said. “We focused on the mechanics of a lot of stuff before getting into the actual strength building.”
Here’s an Instagram photo of Kessler lifting weights in 2020 with Hansell, for proof:
Why did Kessler want to be fast? “When I was young, we used to have track meets, but it wasn’t on the track team. It was kind of a big deal. It was elementary school, and you would all try out. You know, the fastest kid is the most popular kid. I wasn’t the fastest kid, but I was one of them. Like, I made the track meet every year. So that was pretty cool.”
There’s your Walker Kessler slice of life for the game.
3. Christian and Scooby
The Jazz have played these Texas teams every other day, it feels like. Seven times in just over a month? It’s too much!
So we turn our attention to NBA halftime acts. In general, halftime acts have the potential to be one of the best parts of this season. Tickets are cheap on the resale market, why not see some bad basketball and a halftime show?
This week, there have been two of the best: The Amazing Sladek, who is 65 years old and still climbing up stacks of chairs at center court. Here is my photo from the press seats, apologies for the lack of quality.
The Amazing Sladek climbs some chairs. (Andy Larsen | The Salt Lake Tribune)
And then tonight, we had Christian and Scooby, an acrobat plus chihuahua team that also makes the NBA halftime act top-five list. In general, Christian does feats of strength while his chihuahua, Scooby, balances on those feats of strength or does general basketball things. Here’s a much better photo (taken by our photographer, Bethany Baker) of Scooby dunking a basketball, for example.
"Scooby" dunks a basketball. (Bethany Baker | The Salt Lake Tribune)
If you’re a hardcore NBA fan, you already likely know about both acts. But here’s the news I didn’t know: this Scooby is not the original Scooby.
That first Scooby lived to be 17 years old, and died in 2020, according to this article from the Daily Paws.
Not only that: there are multiple new Scoobys. As of that 2022 article, there’s now-11-year-old Percy, and now-5-year-old Milo. They have different job duties: ″Milo, for example, can pick up a plush basketball in his mouth, carry it on his hind legs, and ‘dunk’ it in a small basketball hoop. Meanwhile Percy is best known for his ability to walk on basketballs.”
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