Three thoughts on the Utah Jazz’s 128-121 loss to the New Orleans Pelicans from Salt Lake Tribune Jazz beat writer Andy Larsen.
1. Will Hardy’s disappointment
For a game the Jazz were trying to lose — just look at that injury report, “resting” Walker Kessler and sitting Lauri Markkanen, John Collins, Collin Sexton, and Jordan Clarkson — Will Hardy was pretty upset with how his team lost the game.
Among Hardy’s quotes:
• “76 points in the paint is unacceptable. I don’t care who plays in the game.”
• “Everybody wants to play more, and then you get a chance to do it, and you go out there and you don’t execute, that’s frustrating.”
• “The frustrating part is that there’s so much opportunity on our team right now, and all of these young players are getting an opportunity to show us who they are, what they are, and that opportunity needs to be met with the desperation that it deserves.”
• “No one cares what your resume was before you got here. I don’t care how many points you scored in high school. I don’t care what you were ranked coming out of high school. It doesn’t matter where you played in college. Doesn’t matter how many wins you got in college. It doesn’t matter how many points you scored in college. Your Instagram followers mean nothing to me. This is a job ... this is a profession, and it needs to be treated as such.”
• “Kelly (Olynyk), who I love, was Wilt Chamberlain for him, he’s just ducking in on every play getting a layup. It’s unacceptable, there’s no words to describe some of those plays. I don’t mean that in a way to slight K.O., but there’s no way that he should be dominating the paint like he did early in the game."
• “Everybody wants a promotion, everybody wants to get paid more and have more responsibility, and in team sports, that’s a very real thing. Everybody wants more minutes, you want more opportunity, and so you have to be ready when you get it.”
So, yeah, Hardy wasn’t happy.
On one hand, it’s tough to play your best to win when the team very obviously isn’t either. If the Tribune told us we were looking to lose the news media battle this year, I might not write my best articles.
On the other hand, this is these young players' chance in the NBA. There aren’t necessarily going to be a lot of games in which the Jazz start five guys under the age of 24, like they did tonight. If they play well in those opportunities, they’ll get more of them. If they don’t play well, they’ll find themselves out of the league.
2. Breaking down the poor defense
So who was Hardy talking about? What bothered him most was Kelly Olynyk’s scoring and lack of help on Zion Williamson. Who struggled most at that? Let’s watch the film.
First, here’s four Olynyk plays:
Look, Brice Sensabaugh just gets absolutely bullied on two of those plays, and Isaiah Collier on one. On the last one, Kyle Filipowski just swipes at the ball. I get that Olynyk is tall, but frankly, the sheer effort isn’t there on these plays — fouling before the catch is preferable to simply trying at 30% effort here.
And here’s six Williamson drives:
On these, everything is just so weak. The Jazz want the initial defender to try and stay in front and for a second player to come help in the paint — but that initial defense is easily ran over and the second player helping generally is just waiving in the direction of the ball.
Filipowski doesn’t really direct Zion’s body at all on the drives. Sensabaugh’s help simply has no impact. He’s just waiving around the ball at best, simply getting out of the way at worst.
I think Hardy put Sensabaugh on Williamson to try to get him to defend more, and he didn’t show a lot of interest in those man-on-man situations, either. (Filipowski’s attempt at a taken charge is pretty ludicrous in clip four.)
In clip five, K.J. Martin is upset Collier’s help isn’t there sooner or with more impact. And in clip six, with the Jazz still having a real chance at the game down just three with a minute left, Keyonte George’s one-on-one defense consists of him folding his arms. Sensabaugh’s weak swipe and Filipowski’s contest have no prayer of working.
Watching the film — and you’re free to watch it yourself if you disagree — Sensabaugh is the worst offender by a pretty significant amount, but Filipowski, Collier, and George all contribute weak defense. For Sensabaugh to end up with zero fouls in that game is especially rough.
Those guys simply have to step up, for the sake of their NBA futures. Hardy’s not the only coach in the league who would be unhappy at those efforts.
3. Oscar Tshiebwe’s career night
Oscar Tshiebwe put up his career highs in both points (16) and rebounds (13) tonight, and even had a game-high +25 as a result. (To have the best plus-minus in a game your team lost by seven is pretty impressive.)
On defense, Tshiebwe’s strength was key to slowing down Williamson — I suspect in a game they were trying to win, the Jazz finish with Tshiebwe rather than give Filipowski minutes to develop further. He’s the only player on this roster with the strength to compete with Williamson, and it was legitimately impressive how much he stopped some of Zion’s drives like a wall.
“I’m big too. Sometimes I forget I’m big and strong,” Tshiebwe said.
But his offense was in a much better place than it has been on Sunday night, with 8-9 shooting from the field. I liked how he read the defense when he got the ball, and generally made the right play with the defense coming at him.
And then the rebounding is so awesome. He’s averaging 17 rebounds per game in the G-League — legitimately chortled when I saw that stat — in 30 minutes a night. He had 13 in his 20 minutes tonight in the NBA.
Tshiebwe says one thing he can get better at is defensive communication. It’s true, there were a couple of blown switches tonight.
“Coaches say (to me) ‘you’re too big, your voice is so little! Maybe we have to put you in a choir class,‘” Tshiebwe said.
My overwhelming preference is that he remains a Jazz player, though, because he’s just a delight.
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