Utah Jazz: Keys to a First Round Victory over the LA Clippers

Key #2 – Controlling Tempo Not Enough, Need to Make Shots

Although the LA Clippers have built a reputation as the “Lob City” run-and-gun type team, they actually don’t play as fast as some people might suppose. Their pace has actually slowed since the 2013-14 season and compared to the rest of the league’s desire to increase the tempo, the Clippers have stayed relatively steady. This season, they finished ranked 17th in the league in pace at 98.2 possessions per game.

Of course, that’s still significantly faster than the 30th ranked Jazz (93.6 possessions per game), but the fact of the matter is that unlike some of the teams at the top of the league in pace, the Clippers aren’t completely thrown out of wack when the tempo slows down.

In fact, the first two games of the regular season series between the Jazz and Clippers were played at a relatively slow pace with the scores ending up as very low-scoring. If you had told me that the Jazz and Clippers were in a low-scoring, grind-it-out battle without telling me the score, I likely would have assumed that it was Utah that came away with the win.

However, while the Clippers had a low-scoring output in both of those outings, the Jazz had a really, REALLY low-scoring output. Utah lost the first contest 88-75 and the second 88-72. Normally, you’d think that holding LA – a team that averages 108.7 points per game, the sixth highest in the league – to under 90 points would be a solid recipe for victory.

Unfortunately, despite good defense on Utah’s end and doing a great job of managing and slowing down the pace, the Jazz simply couldn’t find enough offense in either of those two games to come away with the win.

In the first contest, Utah held the Clippers to 22.2 percent shooting from deep, but shot just 39.7 percent from the field on their end. While the Jazz converted on a respectable 36.8 percent of their threes, the offense gave up 18 turnovers which was also obviously too costly.

Things got much worse in the second bout, though, as the Jazz shot a horrific 32.2 percent from the field and an even worse 17.2 percent from deep. Both were low scoring games, which typically would fit Utah’s style, however their inability to find any sort of rhythm on offense proved dramatically costly.

While of course missing shots is never a good recipe for winning games, to be quite honest there have been instances when the Jazz have been able to overcome poor shooting nights and still come away with victories due largely to their ability to control the tempo and play stellar defense. However, based on those two early losses to LA, it’s clear that such is not the case against them.

Utah can’t get away with poor offense and expect their other redeeming qualities to carry them to victory. Instead, they have to find a way to control the tempo but also convert efficiently on the offensive end.