Utah Jazz: Scouting out major weaknesses of the team

Defending 5-out lineups

Another weakness of the Utah Jazz roster lies within its biggest strength – Rudy Gobert. Since he was made permanently a starter back in February of 2015, the Jazz defense has been great.

When he isn’t blocking shots, he’s altering attempts making them fall short, or even eliminating attempts from the paint entirely. Even when Gobert isn’t the one defending the ball handler, when they get in close, they have a fear in the back of their head that he will swoop in and swat the shot.

Perhaps the only way to combat Utah’s behemoth in the paint is to take him out of his fortress as much as possible. Other teams can run a bunch of screens to switch Gobert out onto perimeter players, and force him to guard someone like Trae Young.

They can run a pick and roll with a lob threat and someone adept at shooting floaters. This pairing happened to be Clint Capela and James Harden in the 2019 playoffs. Gobert can’t guard both of them at once, so he has to choose to stick to one player.

If he moves in to deny the ball handler, then they lob it up to their teammate for the easy jam. If he sticks with the big man the ball handler has an uncontested layup.

But the newest way to pull Rudy out of the paint has been playing 5-out offense. Two teams from Texas specifically have the tools to do just that.

The Houston Rockets don’t play with a traditional center on the floor anymore. They play with three knockdown shooters to space the floor for James Harden and Russell Westbrook.

The Dallas Mavericks can deploy Kristaps Porzingis at center (which in my opinion, they should do more often). With his silky smooth jump shot and high release point, it is really hard to block his shot.

Both of these teams have all five of their players stand outside of the 3-point line on offense, and allow their MVP caliber players to initiate a play with all the space in the world. It effectively neutralizes Gobert when they get a shot attempt in close range without him near.

In other words, the other teams have found out how to minimize Utah’s biggest strength on the defensive end of the floor. It doesn’t work every single time, because Gobert is so good at recovering for help defense and chase down blocks. But it works enough to give Jazz fans a scare.

Of the five weaknesses I’ve mentioned, the Jazz can do their best to minimize three of them with no roster transactions. The other two, they just have to hope their two stars can make up whatever lost ground comes from backup center minutes and five-out offenses.