Utah Jazz vs. Cleveland Cavaliers: Keys to the Game

Although the Utah Jazz have defeated LeBron James five straight times in Salt Lake City, based on their recent play they’ll be hard-pressed to extend that streak with the Cleveland Cavaliers in town on Tuesday.

The Utah Jazz’s rough five-game road trip is finally over. And though they went just 2-3 in a week that included narrow wins over the last place team in each conference and tough losses to some of the top teams in either conference, there’s still plenty of reasons to be optimistic about this Jazz squad and to have hope that they’ll get things turned around soon.

George Hill missed most of the week after taking a nasty elbow on New Year’s Eve against the Phoenix Suns and though he finished well in his first game back, he looked a bit hesitant in both of Utah’s latest contests.

Furthermore, Derrick Favors and Alec Burks are still working their way back into game shape and although Rodney Hood has looked atrocious of late, it seems almost impossible that his latest slump will go on forever.

Thus as these last few little kinks get worked out, the Jazz still have plenty of time left in the season to come together, build some momentum and prove themselves as a top-tier team. They won’t have much time to think about what went wrong on their road trip and prepare for the future, however, as they’ll be back in action tomorrow to host LeBron James and the defending NBA Champion Cleveland Cavaliers.

Although the Utah Jazz are currently enjoying a five-game winning streak against LeBron James-led teams in Salt Lake City, that’s not to say that any of those wins have been easy or that they’re guaranteed to be able to do so again. Yesterday, I recapped each of those five victories and nearly all of them were tightly contested nail biters that could have gone either way.

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And Cleveland has been on an absolute tear so far this season and has looked every bit the championship contender that we all expect them to be. Kyrie Irving has turned into a superstar point guard, Kevin Love has found his place on the team and is having an incredible season and LeBron, well, he just keeps on doing his thing and defending his case as best player in the world.

So there’s no question that the 28-8 Cavaliers will come into Salt Lake tomorrow primed and ready to avenge their losses of the past two years. In past seasons, this game has typically come for them at the tail end of a grueling road trip, but this time the Cavs are coming in off a day of rest and just the second game of their West Coast road trip, so expect them to be fresh and ready to go.

Thus, it’s going to take a lot more than luck or a mere hot streak during the game for the Jazz to come out on top. In fact, if the team that has showed up the past three weeks is the one that comes out to play against Cleveland on Tuesday, the Jazz are in big trouble.

Nevertheless, as I said earlier, formerly injured players should eventually find their groove, Hood at some point has to climb his way out of his shooting slump and the Jazz have to have at least some amount of confidence going up against King James as they’ve found a way to muscle past him five years running. If some of those things turn around in time for Tuesday’s contest, Utah could once again pull off the upset.

Still, that’s a lot of things to come together, so if Utah hopes to have a chance in tomorrow’s contests, there are several key areas where they’ll need to excel.

Key Match-up – Gordon Hayward and LeBron James

This match-up is the obvious one that stands out between these two teams, although the George Hill vs. Kyrie Irving and Derrick Favors vs. Kevin Love match-ups will be important, too.

Yet the Cavs still lean on their best player LeBron James in nearly every way. Gordon Hayward and the Jazz know that they aren’t going to be able to outright stop LeBron, but they have found success against him in recent years by simply flustering him and making him less efficient. James is averaging a robust 26.2 points per game this year, so if Utah can even keep him somewhere below his average in the low 20s, it will be a huge plus for them.

Then there’s no doubt about it, if the Jazz hope to have any chance of extending their home winning streak against LeBron, they’ll have to get a big game out of Hayward. Not your typical “20-point big game” but more like one of his outstanding, All-Star worthy 30-point outings.

Hayward has had 30-point games of that caliber five times this season, with the most recent coming last Monday in the win over Brooklyn. And Hayward has put up big games against LeBron in the past, most notably two years ago when he drained the buzzer beater to win the game, and Utah will certainly need that out of him tomorrow night.

Key Stat – Three-Point Percentage

It comes as no surprise that the Cleveland Cavaliers are a deadly three-point shooting team. They certainly boast the personnel to be such and with LeBron and Kyrie grasping so much of opposing defenses’ attention, there’s plenty of opportunities for their teammates to get open looks from deep.

They’re currently second in the league in three-point percentage at 38.9 percent. With guys like Kyrie Irving, Kevin Love, Channing Frye, Iman Shumpert and of course LeBron James, all of whom shoot upwards of 37 percent from deep, this Cleveland team certainly has developed into a dominant deep ball threat.

And, oh yeah, on top of that they just added one of the greatest three-point shooters of all time in former Jazzman Kyle Korver. Due to some issues regarding the status of Mike Dunleavy who Cleveland traded to Atlanta in order to acquire Korver, it’s unclear whether or not he will make his debut against the Jazz tomorrow, but he very well could.

And while he was once a favorite of Jazz fans, having to contain him along with the rest of the sharpshooters I just mentioned will not be an easy or enjoyable task.

Related Story: Former Utah Jazz Fan Favorite Kyle Korver Headed to Cavs

The Jazz on the other hand are respectably the eighth best three-point shooting team in the league at 36.8 percent. However, it took a couple of late threes from Trey Lyles for the Jazz to reach that mark in last night’s loss to the Grizzlies and over the last few weeks for the most part the Jazz have struggled to find their shot from three consistently, particularly against the league’s better teams.

A part of that is due to how drastically Rodney Hood’s three-point shooting has declined lately, but overall Utah has to do a better job of sinking the three-ball. Cleveland is fully capable of using their three-point shooting to build devastating runs and take over ball games and Utah has to be ready to answer back.

So if Utah hopes to win, they’ll need to contain the Cavs defensively on the perimeter and benefit from some hot shooting of their own. The Cavs are likely going to dominate in several facets of the game so finding a way to win the three-point battle, challenging though it may be, would definitely give the Jazz a crucial advantage if they hope to weather Cleveland’s total and relentless offensive onslaught.

Key Performer – Rudy Gobert

Especially considering how certain Jazzmen have played of late, you could make an easy argument that four of Utah’s five starters are outmatched by those of the Cavaliers. However, the one spot where the Jazz own a clear advantage is at the center position where up-and-coming Rudy Gobert is quickly making a name for himself in the league.

Now, I mean no disrespect to Tristan Thompson as he is a superb rebounder, a tough post defender and an ideal teammate that has been an underrated piece of Cleveland’s success, but his 7.1 points, 9.9 rebounds and 1.2 blocks per game pale in comparison to Rudy’s 12.3 points, 12.3 rebounds and 2.6 blocks per game.

On both ends of the floor, Gobert should enjoy a huge advantage as his length, rim protection and finishing abilities will make life difficult for Thompson. Furthermore, with Thompson being far from one of Cleveland’s top scoring threats, the Stifle Tower will have the luxury of being able to focus his defensive efforts on backing up his teammates as a help defender if they get beat.

Gobert does a great job against elite centers, but when he’s up against the likes of Marc Gasol or DeMarcus Cousins, a significant amount of his defensive focus has to be on containing them. Against a team like the Cavs who doesn’t utilize their center nearly as much as a scorer, Rudy will have more freedom to clog the paint on D and focus on what he does best, protecting the rim.

So with his teammates dealing with so many tough match-ups, it will be critical that Rudy puts up a monster game tomorrow. And given the fact that he’ll be going head-to-head against a less than daunting opposing center in Tristan Thompson, he should be fully capable of doing so.

Prediction – Cavs 109, Jazz 101

It’s been pretty rare this season for the Jazz to get blown out by anyone and I’m confident that even against the elite Cleveland Cavaliers, they’ll be able to keep it close. But while Utah’s home streak against LeBron has been impressive, I have a hard time seeing them extend it to six games.

Of course, I’m sure many said the same thing about it being extended to three games, four games and five games, but this time there just appears to be too much against the Jazz.

First of all, they simply haven’t looked like a team that can compete with the Cavs of late. Sure fatigue played a part last night, but Utah’s offense looked lost and out of sync against Memphis. George Hill has looked a step slow, Rodney Hood has been MIA and the Jazz bench has been inconsistent at best.

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And as I mentioned before, this isn’t a fatigued Cavs team stumbling into Utah at the end of a long road trip or on the second night of a back-to-back, this is a Cleveland team that will be fresh, dangerous and likely out to silence any foolish enough to question whether LeBron and Co. are capable of winning in Salt Lake.

So while I think Utah will be able to keep it close, I’m going to project that LeBron breaks the curse, snaps the streak and comes away with what has become a rare win for him in Salt Lake City.

All stats courtesy of NBA.com