The Triple Team: Jazz’s defense shuts down Magic’s woeful shooting

Three thoughts on the Utah Jazz’s 113-99 win over the Orlando Magic from Salt Lake Tribune Jazz beat writer Andy Larsen.

1. Jazz defense takes advantage of Orlando offense

Coming into Saturday’s game, I hadn’t fully realized what a spiral the Orlando Magic had been in. They’ve lost seven of the last eight games, four of them by 20 points or more. That includes two losses to the Portland Trail Blazers and the Toronto Raptors, two very bad teams.

It was pretty immediately obvious on Saturday: that team cannot score. They are ranked 29th in the NBA offensively, and looking at their stats, the fact that they’re the worst shooting team in the NBA could not be more obvious.

But while the Magic’s horrendous form meant that the Jazz’s defense had an opportunity to win the day, it was an open question whether or not they’d be able to. After all, the Jazz are the league’s 29th-ranked defense, too — it was the classic case of a stoppable force vs. a movable object.

The game plan was obvious: protect the paint at all costs, and let them fire away from three. They did that, especially early. The Jazz allowed zero points in the paint in the first quarter, and only 36 for the whole game. The result is this shot chart:

Paolo Banchero, the Magic’s best offensive option, went 4-19 on a variety of bad looks like this:

Lauri Markkanen’s playing really far off of him, but Banchero never even really looks at the rim from three. Instead, he isos up in the post, and takes that shot. There’s a reason teams aren’t playing basketball like this anymore. In the modern NBA, jacking up bad midrangers is a great way to score fewer points than your opponent. Credit Markkanen for smart defense here, but it’s also too easy from the Magic.

I will also note that the Jazz’s gigantic frontcourt — with John Collins, Markkanen, and Walker Kessler all starting — is ideal for this particular matchup and protecting the paint well. They simply have much more size than most front-courts, and all of them can rebound pretty well too.

So if the opponent can’t shoot, they’re going to have a bad time. Unfortunately, no other team is this bad at shooting.

2. Lessons on team-building philosophy

The Magic haven’t shied away from their overall strategy in building their roster: they love length and defense above everything else. Their starting lineup today consisted of a 6-7 point guard, a 6-8 shooting guard, a 6-10 small forward, a 6-10 power forward, and a 6-11 center.

And you know what? That is extremely useful defensively. The Magic have been able to be a reasonable basketball team this season, just two games below .500, because they’re able to defend at a high level. They have the third-best defense in the NBA, which is pretty remarkable given the number of missed shot and transition possessions they need to defend.

It also probably is untenable offensively. In the end, you just need people who can shoot the ball. If a team can simply go under every screen, all you can do is drive towards traffic and hope to get fouled. Even if a team fouls a lot (like the Jazz did tonight, giving up 35 FTA), the offense still is going to be too stagnant to work.

I think the Magic have tried to juice this by drafting scoring guys (Cole Anthony, Jett Howard), but there’s a big difference between players who shoot a lot and players who shoot well. Both of those guys had significant and real efficiency questions coming into the NBA, and they are rearing their head here too.

In the end, you can’t be just one thing. Yes, it’s good to avoid having too small of a backcourt, and yes, length is useful when it’s coupled with skill. But I don’t think you can reliably teach players the skilled elements of the game enough to turn long defense guys into solid enough offensive players, and that’s where the Magic’s strategy has gone kaput.

3. Thoughts on today’s trade

The Jazz completed a trade today, sending Drew Eubanks and Patty Mills to the L.A. Clippers for P.J. Tucker and Mo Bamba.

The Jazz got the Clippers 2030 second-round outright in the deal. They actually already had swap rights to the Clippers pick thanks to the trade in which they signed-and-traded Kris Dunn to L.A. this offseason, this deal simply gives them that pick outright, so now they have both their own and the Clippers' second-round picks in 2030.

First off: the Jazz did this trade solely for the second-round pick. P.J. Tucker and Mo Bamba are not expected to play for the Jazz. The Jazz may keep their contracts around through the deadline, but these were contracts that made the deal work, not players in an on-court sense.

The deal, then, is the Jazz using their cap space this season in order to acquire a pick that’s likely to be in the 50s. Those picks generally have a cash value in the millions on draft day, and that’s what the Jazz are paying to get this one — the remaining sum on Tucker’s $11 million contract, essentially. And the Jazz weren’t using their cap space this season anyway.

So, sure, why not.

I guess my only qualm is that, generally, when teams rescue another team from the luxury tax (as the Clippers are being rescued by this deal), they get more than a six-year removed pick at the very end of the second round back. The Clippers weren’t that far into the luxury tax, so it’s not a surprise that the Jazz didn’t get that much, but I still feel as if an expiring Eubanks and the luxury tax savings were probably worth an earlier second-round pick than a later one.

Complaining about this feels very, very small potatoes, though. If the Jazz are able to sell John Collins or Collin Sexton for bigger returns later this week, that will make a much more significant impact on the franchise’s future than this minute deal.

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