After a handful of disappointing losses, the Utah Jazz appear to be right back on track. Last night’s 119-103 victory over a hard-nosed Toronto Raptors club came with so many positives, we’re afraid we’ll lose count.
The Jazz shot the 3 ball with hyper-efficiency for the second game of a row, knocking down 19 of their 46 attempts (41.3%). If you live and die by the 3, the Jazz have been living like Ferris Bueller with an entire week off over the past couple of games.
These are the conditions that every three-point dependent NBA team have to accept. It’s a feast-or-famine strategy, and Utah Jazz fans can only hope that the squad is able to eat in this year’s postseason. For the time being, they improve to 10-5 in a contest that was close until it wasn’t. The Raptors hung in with the Jazz until the end of the third quarter, when Utah’s half court defense tightened up.
Once again, the Jazz took care of business against an opponent they were supposed to beat, but did it in such a convincing fashion that it’s worth celebrating. Here are 2 studs and 1 dud from last night’s performance.
Utah Jazz stud: Royce O’Neale
As we recently document, Royce O’Neale is having an excellent season under the radar. The rugged Utah Jazz wing currently ranks 14th in the league in steals per game at 1.6. That number doesn’t even necessarily encompass O’Neale’s elite brand of perimeter stopping as accurately as his 2.5 Defensive Box Plus/Minus (DBPM). He is a player you have to watch to appreciate.
Last night, on the other hand, he occupied a position that your average box score reader can readily comprehend.
O’Neale finished this contest with a season high 16 points, shooting 6/8 from the field and 4/6 from three-point range. Notably, O’Neale hardly changed up his general offensive approach. His 8 field goal attempts hardly strayed from his usual 5.8 attempts per game, and his 6 attempted threes were only slightly more than his average 3.9.
He deserves credit for resisting the urge to jack up shots in excess in spite of his accuracy. O’Neale plays within the flow of the offense whether his shot is falling or not. Last night, it simply was. He chipped in 4 rebounds and 3 assists in this contest as well.
Oddly enough, the only thing he didn’t do was steal the ball.
Utah Jazz stud: Rudy Gay
Yesterday, we made predictions about Gay’s Utah Jazz debut. We anticipated 15 minutes of action, 6 points and 3 rebounds for the veteran forward.
We were pretty close on the minutes, and not terribly far off on the rebounds. Otherwise, we sold the newest Jazzman woefully short.
Gay finished this contest with 20 points on roughly the best efficiency a coach could ask for: 7/8 from the field and 5/6 from downtown. Playing against a Toronto Raptors team that used to feature him on offense, Gay took an opportunity to turn back the clock.
Like O’Neale, Gay’s production came within the flow of the Jazz’s offense. He largely took and made reasonably uncontested shots. He also impressed Utah Jazz fans with stout defense on the perimeter and solid lateral passing (nobody could accuse Gay of taking good shots when great ones are available elsewhere).
It’s worth noting that Quin Snyder did not utilize Gay as a small-ball center in this contest, opting to pair him with Hassan Whiteside most frequently in the second unit. That’s fine. Gay can play that role situationally, but even in an NBA trending towards small-ball, the 6’8, 250 pound forward still possess the lateral quickness to guard perimeter-oriented 4s.
We also saw him taking advantage of his thick frame to body up rail-thin Raptors big man Chris Boucher on a couple of occasions last night. Gay is likely to mostly feature as a perimeter weapon for the Jazz, but make no mistake, he can wrestle on the inside if the need arises.
Gay’s Utah Jazz debut didn’t have to go nearly this well to satisfy fans of the team. He probably won’t be good for 20 points per contest, however, adding a player who is even remotely a thread to deliver this sort of performance should be a significant boon to the Jazz’s title odds.
Utah Jazz vs Toronto Raptors dud: Pascal Siakam
Typically, we reserve these spaces for members of the Utah Jazz. This is, after all, a Utah Jazz page. In this case, we could not isolate a single Jazzman as having a dud performance last night.
Go ahead, you try it. Bojan Bogdanovic was a bit quiet with 7 points, but he chipped in an uncharacteristically high 6 assists to compensate. Jordan Clarkson’s 4/12 shooting from the field doesn’t qualify as efficient, but with 11 of those attempts being three-pointers, we can’t call it a dud of a night either. Mike Conley only scored 5 points, but he added 7 assists, 2 steals and a block. Besides, we know Conley doesn’t look to take over on offense unless he’s required to.
Pascal Siakam is coming off of an injury, and deserves the benefit of the doubt from Toronto Raptors fans. Once again, this article is being written primarily for Utah Jazz fans.
Pascal Siakam was horrible last night.
He was 2/14 from the field, finishing with 4 points that he effectively nullified by committing 4 turnovers. He looked compromised. He wasn’t able to drive, and he’s not a strong enough shooter to be a featured offensive weapon if he isn’t getting to the rim.
Frankly, the Raptors might want to consider sitting their star forward for a while longer. He hardly looked like an NBA player in this performance, yet alone an All-Star.
This might be the only time all season we feature a non-Jazzman in one of these pieces. Last night, the squad played a virtually perfect game, and a star forward on the opposing team was so brutally bad that we had to make an exception.
The Utah Jazz won’t shoot this well every night. No team could live up to that expectation. However, with two dominant performances in a row, it’s obvious that they’re trending back in the right direction.