Key #2 – Clean up the turnovers
It’s hard to nit-pick after a dominant victory. After all, given that the Utah Jazz stomped the Wizards in the way they did by 47 points, it’s pretty obvious that not a whole lot went wrong and that Utah dominated in nearly every facet of the game. However, one area where the Jazz allowed the Wizards the edge was in the turnover battle.
In this season’s previous match-up, Utah turned the ball over 16 times compared to Washington’s 13. It obviously didn’t hurt them much then, but if the Jazz replicate that amount of carelessness with the ball, it could very well come back to haunt them tonight.
Utah Jazz power ranking round-up: Are the Jazz the best of the worst or worst of the best? https://t.co/hq5tkMmHsp pic.twitter.com/Y0H1C4ZxBk
— The J-Notes (@TheJNotes) January 10, 2018
On the season, the Wizards are ninth in the league in forcing opponent turnovers at 15.3 per game and seventh in the league in points off turnovers at 17.9 per contest. In other words, Washington excels at forcing turnovers and they’ve been able to convert off of them quite well to generate a considerable amount of easy points per game.
With how much Utah has struggled on both ends of the court, they can neither afford to waste possessions by simply giving the ball away, nor can they allow their opponent to get any easy points off of those giveaways. If the Jazz aren’t able to take care of the ball, they’ll be playing right into Washington’s capable hands and likely removing all chances of being able to earn a season sweep over the Wizards.