Utah Jazz vs. Brooklyn Nets: Jazz forced to play small and it pays off big

A short-handed Utah Jazz squad ended their losing streak sans Rudy Gobert in a 114-106 home victory over the Brooklyn Nets.

Despite missing their franchise player, the Utah Jazz were tasked with snapping a four-game skid against the Brooklyn Nets on Saturday. In the end, Donovan Mitchell and Derrick Favors led a small-ball attack with 26 and 24 points respectively to capture an eight-point win.

After taking a hit to his knee against the Miami Heat, Jazz center Rudy Gobert was a no-go in the game. While this seemed like cause for concern, imaging found no structural damage in his knee. Moreover, his absence presented intriguing lineup possibilities this presented.

Thabo Sefolosha had been putting in practice time for the power forward position and joined the starting group. Meanwhile, Donovan Mitchell started over Rodney Hood once again and Favors moved to center, where he registered a dominant performance for the Jazz.

Space(ing) Jam

The story of the night for Utah was spacing. All year, the Jazz offense has looked forced, crowded, confused and out of sorts. We’ve gone to all sorts of lengths trying to talk about chemistry, early season struggles, Ricky Rubio’s woes and the loss of Gordon Hayward to explain the shortfall.

The simple answer is really just about spacing.

Rubio, Favors and Gobert hasn’t been match made in heaven so far, but the pick and roll success against Brooklyn with Favors was very, very real. This was easily Favors’ best game since the 2015-16 season. The Nets played five-out ball most of the night, so that gave Favors plenty of room to work, but that still didn’t make it a gimme.

If you’ve been watching closely, Favors has had a lot of guard mismatches in the paint this year and we simply have not taken advantage. On Saturday, though, Favors capitalized and was the recipient of a lot of Rubio passes. He stepped up big in Gobert’s absence.

So, what do we do next?

Utah will wrap-up the current  homestand against the Minnesota Timberwolves on Monday. Quin Snyder now has some tough head-coaching decisions.

“Can’t he just move Derrick to the backup center position? Easy!”

Not so fast. Gobert is playing 33.8 minutes per game. That leaves just about 14 minutes leftover as backup center minutes. Favors has been playing about 26 minutes a night and probably deserves 28-30. This is the dilemma.

Favors and Gobert are definitely two of the best players on this team and they both need a lot of minutes, so there will undoubtedly be times when they need to share the floor.

The right solution may be starting both of them, but quickly bringing Sefolosha off the bench for Favors to stagger those minutes. Then Snyder can bring Favors back in relief of Rudy as the game progresses.

Solid guard play was key

Rodney Hood had a very impressive streak in the first half and ended 5-of-8 from the 3-point line. He had 19 points and that’s about where we want him to be.

Donovan Mitchell was able to get to any spot he wanted on the floor and had a great percentage from the floor. Mitchell even posted three assists with some really good plays looking for teammates. He probably should have had a few more but the shots didn’t fall.

Mitchell closed the game instead of Rubio and had a clutch play where he tipped in a missed lay-up to seal the victory.

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While Rubio didn’t close the final minute (which is somewhat concerning to not finish the last two games), he did have a very Ricky Rubio stat line and looked so much more comfortable running the offense with all of the extra spacing. He finished with 10 points, seven rebounds, eight assists, four steals and just ONE turnover.

It will be very interesting to see what Coach Snyder decides to do in the coming days, but the results on Saturday were encouraging!