Utah Jazz’s defensive woes linger in preseason finale vs Blazers

The Utah Jazz finish their preseason winless against NBA competition after getting throttled by Damian Lillard, CJ McCollum and the Portland Trail Blazers.

Make no mistake about it — the Utah Jazz have been kind of a mess defensively, allowing 128-plus points in three straight games heading into their preseason finale. For a team that has championship aspirations and prides itself on suffocating the opposition, that’s simply not going to cut it.

At Wednesday’s shootaround, head coach Quin Snyder indicated that integrating new players into his unique defensive schemes, which are built around reigning DPOY Rudy Gobert, would be a process. “To change some of those [defensive] habits does take time,” he said. Apparently, old habits die hard.

The Jazz wrapped up preseason play at the Viv against Damian Lillard, CJ McCollum and the Portland Trail Blazers and it was not pretty. The Blazers’ backcourt duo combined for 53 points on 19-of-28 shooting and hit eight 3-pointers along the way as Portland won in Utah, 126-118.

As a result, the Jazz finished preseason play winless against NBA competition and 1-4 overall, with their only win coming against the NBL’s Adelaide 36ers.

Although Utah managed to play marginally better defensively during parts of the game, the Blazers smashed the Wasatch Front in the opening carom, hitting 12 of their first 15 shots en route to a 38-point quarter.

It was an outburst from which the Jazz couldn’t recover; Portland continued to have its way as the game wore on. By night’s end, the Blazers had connected on 58 percent of their shots, better than 55 percent from distance and scored 50 points in the paint sans Pau Gasol and Jusuf Nurkic.

Whether Gobert is on the floor or on the bench, the Jazz simply aren’t getting stops. At best, they’ve looked out of sync — which is understandable given the personnel influx — but they’ve also looked small at times and lacking in toughness/physicality.

They can’t help the lack of size, but should be doing their best to try and impose their will with effort and energy.

Offensively, Utah had another fairly good night, outside of a third period during which they missed 14-of-19 shots. Donovan Mitchell was sensational, scoring 27 points and knocking down four of his five 3-point tries. As it happens, Mitchell was also the Jazz’s best defender, which continues to be a carryover from his recent FIBA run with Team USA.

Mike Conley had his best game in Jazz duds, putting up 20 points of his own and running the offense with confidence. Joe Ingles and Emmanuel Mudiay shot the ball well and finished with 12 points apiece. Meanwhile, Georges Niang was the sole reason the game ended up being as close as it was after leading a late-game comeback of sorts.

He finished with 11 points in just eight minutes of play and was a perfect 3-for-3 from distance. As a team, the Jazz connected from deep on 14 occasions.

Bojan Bogdanovic continues to struggle, however. He was 0-for-9 in the game and finished with just one point.

Ultimately, this is the preseason we’re talking about; kinks are going to be ironed out, players are going to find their rhythm and new additions are going to be thinking less and reacting more on both sides of the ball. That said, the Jazz’s woeful resistance definitely doesn’t inspire confidence heading into opening night.

And while their opening schedule isn’t the murderer’s row it has been in recent years, it’s no cake walk either. Snyder’s process is going to have to start moving along if the Jazz don’t want to begin in a hole once again.