Key #3 – Continue to Dominate the Offensive Glass
One could argue that part of the reason for Utah’s lackluster perimeter defense is the fact that they are often playing two bigs in a league that is migrating swiftly towards solely using stretch-fours at the power forward position. While there may be some truth to that, the Jazz are also cashing in big time by sticking to that traditional approach as they were able to thoroughly dominate the Suns on the offensive boards on Monday by a count of 19-4.
But it wasn’t just Utah’s bigs that were crashing the offensive glass (Gobert, Favors, Udoh and Bolomboy accounted for nine of the 19 offensive boards). Instead, Utah’s entire team was making it a point of emphasis to hustle and chase down rebounds when possible. Players up and down their roster logged offensive boards and this was a huge reason why they were able to come away with such a big win.
https://twitter.com/utahjazz/status/916514351095283713
To quote a cliche from NBA2K, they dominated the boards and that’s why they dominated the scoreboard.
If Utah can have a repeat effort in which they virtually keep Phoenix off the boards and go on to log several second chance points as a result, it’s going to be very difficult for the Suns to have any chance at all of stopping them.