Three thoughts on the Utah Jazz’s 141-97 loss to the Sacramento Kings from Salt Lake Tribune Jazz beat writer Andy Larsen.
1. Post-blowout hangover
I was pretty stunned when I looked this up.
The Jazz won by 42 points on Friday in Portland, the eighth-largest win in franchise history. Then they turned around and lost by 44 tonight. It is, of course, the first time in franchise history that’s ever happened.
But while confirming that stat, a more revealing one appeared: the Jazz are just 2-13 in the games after their 40-point wins. 2-13! And while none of those 13 losses were previously by 44 points, there were a number of blowouts in the group, losses by 20, 21 (twice), 24 (twice), and 29 points.
2-13 is a hard record to get if you’re a bad team — it’s just an 11-win season over an 82-game slate. After a 40-point win, though, you’d think that the opposite would be true; that most of those games would happen with the Jazz’s good teams playing their best basketball, and so naturally they’d be likely to win the next one, too. Not so.
2-13 is the kind of record that indicates something real is happening there: that after a win that big, the players start to think that basketball is easy. That there’s a letdown in effort, or attention to detail. In a 40-point win, it’s likely a role player or two had a great game, that may erroneously convince him to take more shots in the next one.
I asked Will Hardy about the stat, and he seemed intrigued by it. “I felt like there was a little bit of a letdown in certain areas of physicality,” Hardy said. “But yeah, it’s an interesting stat, I don’t necessarily think there was like a massive letdown tonight.”
So a small letdown, not a big one. Honestly, watching the game, that’s how I felt too — that the Jazz played worse than they did against Portland, but the biggest difference was in the level of their opponent. The Blazers played so poorly, playing with low effort and low skill. The Kings? They made the Jazz pay over and over again.
2. The bench struggles
The biggest problem in tonight’s game was the bench’s minutes. While the starters lost too, the bench players performed abysmally. Despite playing huge stretches of this game, especially in garbage time, they scored just a combined 22 points.
The plus-minus numbers are uglier: The Jazz were outscored by 37 points in the 25 minutes Johnny Juzang was in the game, 30 points in the 17 minutes Brice Sensabaugh was in the game, and 28 in the 16 minutes Isaiah Collier was in the game.
In the end, the game was really lost in the Jazz’s first bench stint, when the Kings initially got out to their 20-point lead; the Kings were averaging over 1.5 points per possession with the bench in the game.
It’s rough — but it has been for a while, really, ever since John Collins moved to the starting lineup. Since Nov. 10, when that move was made, Brice Sensabaugh has a -27 Net Rating when he’s in the game. Juzang’s a -13, Collier’s a -14.
Tonight, Hardy scrambled a bit when it happened. He tried to salvage it by putting in Micah Potter and Drew Eubanks in the second quarter and then Svi Mykhailiuk in the third, which expanded the rotation to 11 and then 12 guys. That’s probably too many, but I also understand wanting to make a change when the deficit is 20.
I just have my doubts about the talent of the bench, especially while Jordan Clarkson is out. They have neither a source of consistent offense nor consistent defense on the bench, which leads to a lot of possessions ending in turnovers and layups the other way. I’d consider putting Filipowski back in the starting lineup and Collins back on the bench to rectify at least the offensive side of this some, at least while Clarkson can’t play.
3. Cheating the format of this article
The Triple Team would seem to indicate you’ll get three points about this game. Today, though, I’ve got a bunch of smaller items to get out there. I apologize.
• Kyle Filipowski came back and made nearly no impact on this game — we’ll give him a pass given his youth and that he had missed seven in a row. Interestingly, in that absence, Filipowski was dealing with two issues: a sprained ankle on his right leg and “inflammation” in his left.
That latter injury happened, Filipowski said, in his highlight-reel dunk over Alex Len the last time the Jazz were in Sacramento. It turns out that he landed with a lot of force after the dunk and it seemed to cause inflammation and swelling in the leg that was bothering him. Hence, sitting until it was right. A weird injury, to be sure, and potentially something to watch.
• The legitimate concern over Keyonte George’s career prospects does seem to have motivated him. He’s playing visibly more dedicated defense recently, even despite this loss tonight. Now, he still struggles to consistently make an impact because he’s not very strong, and he doesn’t have ball-hawking instincts like other defensive point guards. But it’s gone from tire-fire to fine quite quickly.
“I’ve got to show (Will Hardy) that I can sit down and guard and he doesn’t have to take me out of the fourth, when it’s time to get a stop, to sub me out on defense,” George said.
The other nice part of this: George has discovered that playing defense seems to get his offense going, too.
“When I’m pressuring the ball and I’m locked in on that side of the ball, it gets me into the flow of the game. Okay, now, shots are downhill. My legs' energy is there,” he said.
• After missing a game, it seems to take Lauri Markkanen a while to get back in the swing of things. In his three return games this year, Markkanen’s shot 3-10 for eight points, 7-20 for 19 points, and now 2-9 for eight points tonight.
At the end of the first quarter (which he played all of), he looked visibly tired. It’s hard to make shots when you’re tired.
• For their players, the Jazz have peanut butter and jelly sandwiches available in two forms pregame: the homemade with-crust option and the Smuckers' Uncrustables option. Players were split on which they preferred.
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