Utah Jazz bench gives away the lead
As previously mentioned, the Utah Jazz had clearly established themselves as the better team in the third quarter. But a problem that has plagued Utah all year came back to haunt them.
Within only a few minutes that safe Jazz lead was trimmed down to a two possession game before Quin put the A-team back in. Even then it still took a while to break the momentum Orlando had built up from Utah’s major unforced errors.
When the Jazz got a stop with numbers running the other way, Jeff Green fumbled a contested layup that would have prevented the lopsided run. Ed Davis was given a pocket pass inside for a nice dunk, but got the ball stripped from his hands before he could shoot it. Oftentimes this season Davis has tried too hard to get offensive rebounds, resulting in silly foul calls that put the Jazz in the bonus.
Those little flaws in addition to weak transition defense add up to a big run for the other team.
The real reason why Orlando was able to keep up despite the paltry three point shooting is because they made it up in bench points. The Magic bench scored 44 points and Utah’s only put up 14.
The six minutes where the Jazz fell apart were the minutes when Mike Conley would have returned to the lineup.
— David Locke (@DLocke09) December 18, 2019
Even when Georges Niang was playing with four starter-quality players, you could tell the chemistry was off. He didn’t look comfortable out there, often thinking too hard about when to help on defense and when to switch when guarding the pick and roll. When you’re thinking too hard about a play you’re one step slower than the players who react out of habit and muscle memory. At the NBA level being one step slower is costly.