Utah Jazz: Keys to a series win over the Houston Rockets

Win the three-point battle on both ends

Whenever you think about the Houston Rockets, one of the first things that probably comes to mind is how deadly they can be from three. However, while that certainly can be the case, it’s also somewhat of a skewed perception.

The perception exists because the Rockets both attempted and made the most three-pointers of any team during the regular season by a considerable margin. They put up an average of 42.3 threes per game (the second highest mark was Brooklyn’s 35.7) and made an average of 15.3 per contest (again, Brooklyn was second at 12.7).

In other words, the Rockets put up threes by the bunches and are anything but trigger shy. However, that doesn’t necessarily mean that they are particularly accurate. For the season, they shot just 36.2 percent from deep as a team. That’s not a bad mark by any means, but it was 14th in the league and worse than the average of the Utah Jazz.

So far in the playoffs, the Rockets have once again led in both makes and attempts, upping their attempts to a whopping 43.4 per contest. Yet in spite of that increase, their makes per game have actually gone down to 15.0, meaning their three-point efficiency has decreased as well to a lackluster 34.6 percent. Once again, Utah has the edge in that regard in the playoffs thus far.

Even if the Jazz can force the Rockets into tough shots from three, they’re likely still going to heave them. However, challenging them from deep and bringing their efficiency down will be the key to defeating them. The Rockets can fall into a tendency to live or die by the three and with how many they take, usually they find a way to live. But if they get too trigger happy and start making bad decisions with their shots, the Jazz could force the opposite.

On the defensive end of the floor, the Rockets were pretty stingy in their perimeter defense in the regular season whereas the Jazz weren’t so much. Houston held teams to just 35.1 percent shooting from deep, the seventh best mark in the NBA, while the Jazz allowed teams to shoot 36.5 percent, good for 17th in the NBA.

The Jazz have remained pretty consistent at that mark during the playoffs as they allowed the Thunder to shoot 36.4 percent from deep, just a tenth of a percentage point lower than in the regular season.

The Rockets, meanwhile, have undergone a major reversal in their perimeter defense thus far. They allowed the Minnesota Timberwolves to shoot 41.3 percent from deep in the first round, the worst mark allowed in any postseason series up to this point. That’s pretty surprising, especially when considering that in the regular season, the Timberwolves shot just 35.7 percent from behind the arc, which was 19th in the league.

In fairness, the Thunder were one of the worst three-point shooting teams in the NBA during the regular season, so Utah likely should have been able to hold them to a less efficient mark, but still, going up against two bad three-point shooting teams, Utah fared better than Houston defending the perimeter.

If the Rockets get lackadaisical and continue their lackluster coverage on the perimeter in the second round, the Jazz absolutely need to take advantage. I can almost guarantee that the Rockets will continue to put up more threes than the Jazz per game. However, if Utah can blow them out of the water in terms of efficiency by executing well, taking advantage of potential lackluster perimeter D, and enforcing their will at the three-point line on defense, we could see a huge swing in momentum in Utah’s favor.