Key Stat – Turnovers
Since the departure of DeMarcus Cousins, the Kings have unsurprisingly struggled with cohesion and chemistry as they try to figure out how to work together and come up with enough offense to compete. While those issues have been evident with the eyeball test, they’ve been even more evidenced by Sacramento’s turnovers in recent games.
The Kings were already a high turnover team, ranking 21st in the league at 14.7 turnovers per game, but in the four games since the All-Star break that number has shot up even more to 15.3 per game. Most notably was their loss to the Timberwolves where they ended the game with a staunch 18 giveaways.
https://twitter.com/utahjazz/status/838429491294711808
Therefore, Utah will need to take heavy advantage of a Kings offense that is clearly still going through some major adjustments. Unfortunately, the Jazz haven’t exactly been great at taking care of the ball themselves, as they’re currently 13th in the league in turnovers per game at 13.6 and have put up 14.5 over their last four, including a ridiculous 24-turnover game against Washington.
Luckily, they were under their season average with 13 such miscues against Brooklyn, so hopefully that’s a sign that Utah is on the upswing in turns of turnovers and therefore will be able to take care of an adapting Sacramento team and come away with a solid road win today.