Like I mentioned earlier, the Utah Jazz played well in the opening few minutes of the game. They also came out of the second half playing good basketball. Donovan Mitchell scored the first six points of the half for Utah, and on the next offensive possession, it was Mitchell drawing the double team that collapsed the Laker defense and eventually led to a Gobert dunk.
Interestingly enough, Andy Larsen of the Salt Lake Tribune wrote a piece on how the Jazz like to make a statement on the first play of the game.
via the Salt Lake Tribune:
"“The Jazz’s first plays are usually successful. This season, they’re scoring 1.33 points per play on those first looks, which is far above their usual half-court success rate of 0.93 points per possession. They weren’t quite as good last year — maybe due to all of those Favors and Rubio attempts — but still converted at exactly 1 point per possession, higher than last season’s 0.95 points per possession in half-court offense.”"
I also noticed this in several of the past Jazz games, that they can heat up pretty quickly coming out of a timeout or opening a quarter. In my opinion this has more to do with catching the defense sleeping than it does with brilliant offense. In the opening minutes of last night’s game, the Jazz found Bojan Bogdanovic open in transition for a couple threes. After the half, it was Donovan Mitchell going to work rather than the advantage offense system creating open looks.
The same thing happened in the New Orleans Pelicans game a couple weeks ago. The Jazz led 18-2 at the 8:41 mark in the first quarter, thanks to a barrage of three pointers and Donovan Mitchell buckets. Furthermore, in the Jazz’s loss to the Raptors on Sunday night, they had the worst first-half performance in franchise history, but followed it with the most points scored in a third quarter in franchise history.
The blowout victory over the Sacramento Kings at home was the lone game where Utah was able to keep the hot hand going for more than a few minutes. It came against a banged up team lacking De’Aaron Fox and Marvin Bagley III, but they can look to that game as a blueprint for the rest of the season.
The Jazz have got to feed the hot hand when it is there. Last night Bogdanovic had a great first half, but only got up 15 shot attempts to finish with 23 points. Had he gotten more touches he could’ve finished with over 30 points, and the game would’ve been a little closer.
Another problem is the Jazz need their reluctant shooters to fire away when they’re open. Royce O’Neale in particular has been picky about his shots. His percentage is really high because of it (top 5 in the league at one point), but he is disrupting the flow of the Jazz offense when he gets too trigger-shy.
In the next film sessions, I suspect coach Quin Snyder will try to show his players when and how they pass at the wrong time, and shoot at the wrong time. Once those two things get corrected, the Jazz offense can extend these hot streaks for longer periods than a couple minutes. More buckets means more inbound passes for the other team, and hopefully a set defense for the Utah Jazz. Also cutting down turnovers will help their defense improve by miles.
The elite Utah Jazz team we were all expecting is not too far away, assuming Quin Snyder can help his players correct their klutz offense. As far as defense goes: