Utah Jazz: Poor shooting in LA a microcosm of season’s bigger issue

The Utah Jazz had a dismal shooting night in their most recent contest in Los Angeles. Unfortunately, that kind of performance is becoming more the norm than the exception.

The Utah Jazz had ample opportunities to pull out a victory on Friday night when they visited the Los Angeles Lakers at the Staples Center. After all, they forced the Lakers into a mind-blowing 23 turnovers and did a good job holding them in check from the perimeter by limiting them to just 30.4 percent shooting.

Unfortunately, it just so happened that Utah had their own similar struggles in the contest. They nearly matched LA’s turnover numbers by giving it away 19 times themselves. Turning the ball over has been a problem for Utah all year, and though they managed to turn LA’s turnovers into a significant number of their overall offensive output, the fact of the matter is that they couldn’t do enough and weren’t able to take care of the ball well enough themselves to produce a win.

And one of the biggest issues of the night was one we’ve seen repeated game after game all season long – shooting. The Utah Jazz offense was as clunky as we’ve seen it as they failed time and time again to simply put the ball through the hoop. The Jazz shot under 40 percent from the field yet again and went a pathetic 4-of-23 (17.4 percent) from the perimeter. Ouch.

Worst of all, though I wish that I could say that this game was just a slump and an outlier, it’s actually looking more like the norm than the exception. In fact, in a way this shooting performance was something of a microcosm of what’s been plaguing the Jazz all season long.

With another forgettable shooting outing, the Jazz dropped to 17th in the league in field goal percentage at 45.5 percent. Fortunately they have Derrick Favors and Rudy Gobert to buoy that up, otherwise there’s no telling how poor it would be. Meanwhile, their 3-point percentage has fallen to 32.1 percent, good for a measly 27th in the league.

Over the course of the past seven games, in which the Jazz have won just twice, things have been even worse. The Jazz have shot under 40 percent from the field three times and under 30 percent from 3-point land five times, with three of those times being under 20 percent.

During that seven-game stretch, the Jazz are dead last in the NBA in both categories. Dead. Last. They’re shooting just 41.7 percent from the field and 26.6 percent from the perimeter. Yikes. What’s worse about their 3-point shooting is it’s not like it’s a bad percentage on a small amount of shots either. They’re currently hoisting over 30 per game, 16th in the NBA. In other words, they’re shooting a high volume, they’re just not dropping. Double yikes.

So at what point do we continue to attribute it to being a slump and at what point do we just have to confess that the Jazz aren’t a great shooting team? I think we’ve always known the latter to be true to some extent, even if not to this magnitude. But I still think the Jazz are a better shooting team than they’ve shown this year, particularly in the last seven games. Still, they’re running out of time to prove otherwise if this rut continues much longer.

And in Friday’s loss there were several culprits. Ricky Rubio had another vintage shooting game as he went 0-of-4 from deep as well as just 3-of-12 from the field. Donovan Mitchell logged just 11 minutes before exiting the game with a rib contusion, but in that short amount of time he managed to get up nine shots, and only converted on two. Worse was the fact that he chucked up a whopping four threes in that short amount of time and didn’t convert on a single one.

In both their cases, many of those missed shots were just horrible looks and bad decisions, particularly some of the ill-advised threes that Donovan took. Others were decent looks but just bad misses. Mitchell had some such at the rim while Ricky had some other open looks, but given his shooting history, they were still almost cringe-worthy when he took them.

Then there’s Jae Crowder, who’s fallen into a bad habit of thinking he’s Kyle Korver. He’s firing threes at an incredibly high rate and they’re not often falling. He went 0-of-5 from deep in LA and 2-of-12 overall. Those dismal performances continue to cause those three players’ marks to plummet. Rubio is now at 36.6 percent from the field and 32.5 percent from deep. Mitchell is 41.8 percent and 29.2 percent, and Crowder is the worst of all at 39.2 percent and 29 percent.

Meanwhile, while Alec Burks did his best to stay aggressive and keep the Jazz in it, he went just 5-of-15 for the game while Dante Exum and Royce O’Neale were each 1-of-4.

So what gives? Why did the Jazz shoot so poorly on Friday and why have they shot so poorly overall for the season? Well, one reason is a simple lack of shooting prowess. That can’t be denied. Aside from Joe Ingles, there’s not one player on this team that can be considered anything close to a sharpshooter.

But beyond that, their collective worse-than-normal woes have had a domino effect that has simply made everyone worse. Teams aren’t fretting about the Jazz anywhere but in the paint, especially not beyond the perimeter, and that’s resulting in no space, no ability to drive and very few, if any, easy shots. For reference, the Jazz are 14th in the league in points in the paint, and over those last seven that I mentioned, they’re just 24th.

Furthermore, their lack of effective ball movement to set up good looks has been detrimental as well. Utah is 18th in the league in assists per game and 27th in the last seven contests. Several times Jae Crowder and Donovan Mitchell have been guilty of taking ill-advised shots early in the shot clock, and Mitchell and Rubio have both gotten into a habit of over-dribbling then chucking up a poorly-executed prayer.

Especially for a Jazz team so obviously lacking in shooting and that is supposedly predicated on ball movement and opportunity offense, the Jazz haven’t executed in that way at all. This poor offensive team can only turn things around by moving the ball and finding easy shots. Desperate heaves are only going to exacerbate the problem.

Last of all and along that same line, the quality of who’s taking shots for Utah needs to increase dramatically. As was the case in Friday’s showdown against the Lakers, there’s absolutely no reason why Jae Crowder should be hoisting more 3-point attempts than Joe Ingles. But that’s consistently occurred all year long. Crowder is second on the team, trailing only Mitchell, at 6.5 attempts per game.

In the last seven, Crowder is leading the Jazz with a whopping 6.7 per game compared to Ingles’ 5.1. Jae, who’s shooting under 30 percent from deep, is taking nearly two more threes per game than Ingles who is far and above Utah’s best 3-point shooter. That simply can’t happen. Joe Ingles needs to be atop the list in 3-point attempts and Crowder has to have the discipline and savvy to move the ball for a better shot rather than spot-up himself every time.

Sure, part of the reason for this is that with Ingles being the lone shooting threat on the team, opponents are sticking to his hip and purposely allowing others to shoot instead of him. That’s a huge issue the Jazz have by not being able to space the floor with additional 3-point threats. However, that doesn’t change the fact that Joe needs to look to be more aggressive, his teammates need to look for him more frequently and Quin Snyder needs to draw up more plays for him.

In short, Utah’s horrific shooting night that presented an ugly loss in Los Angeles unfortunately wasn’t an anomaly. It’s quickly becoming the norm. As lack of spacing, poor decisions, a shortage of ball movement and the wrong players taking shots continue to be an issue, the Jazz may find themselves on the bottom of the rankings in terms of shooting percentages for a while yet to come.

Hopefully the team can turn things around quickly. At 8-11, second to last in the Western Conference, and with a grueling stretch of schedule ahead, the clock is certainly ticking for a team that may very well look back and rue the complacency with which it started the season.