Key #1 – Win the three-point battle
To begin the year, the Utah Jazz were one of the hottest three-point shooting teams in the league. Unfortunately it seems that, especially of late, they’ve only plummeted from there as they’re now just 12th in the league at 37 percent. That free-fall should come as little surprise considering that the Jazz have shot under 30 percent from three in six of their last eight games and are converting on just 28.6 percent of their attempts from deep during that stretch.
That’s really, really bad, and a big reason why the Jazz haven’t been able to compete of late. In fact, the stark difference in Utah’s three-point percentage in wins vs. losses is absolutely mind-blowing. In victories, they’re averaging 43 percent from deep whereas in losses, they’re shooting just 32.4 percent. Rediscovering their shot from behind the arc will obviously be huge if they hope to win tonight and moving forward.
"At stake: A split of the season series, which Utah leads right now 2-1."#MileHighBasketballhttps://t.co/24XJCzaba7
— Denver Nuggets (@nuggets) January 5, 2018
Meanwhile, although the Denver Nuggets have a worse three-point shooting average than the Jazz overall (36.4 percent, 15th in the league), they’ve certainly been better than Utah recently. And one interesting thing about the Nuggets is that they’ve been pretty consistent in their three-point shooting regardless of the games’ results.
In wins, they’re converting on 37.5 percent of their threes while in losses they’re converting on 35.3 percent. In other words, you basically know what you’re going to get from the Nugs, so the Jazz simply have to be ready to top it. In these two teams’ last contest, Denver thoroughly out-shot Utah from behind the arc (36.7 percent vs. 28.6 percent) while also holding the Jazz to an abysmal 32.1 percent shooting from the field.
Thus, Utah’s only chance for coming out on top this time around may very well be to finally catch fire and find success from three-point land.