2 studs and 1 dud from Utah Jazz win over Cleveland Cavaliers

Utah Jazz dud: Jordan Clarkson

This is getting a little repetitive. We wanted to write a joke about using the copy and paste function to write this slide, but we’ve already done that as well.

Clarkson finished with 7 points on 3/14 shooting from the field and 1/8 shooting from downtown. It’s not that his inefficiency disrupts the flow of this Utah Jazz offense. He operates as he’s expected to: as a volume scorer with no conscience. His role is to alleviate Donovan Mitchell’s shot creation burden, and from a volume perspective, he does exactly that.

The shots just need to drop for it to matter. The Jazz escaped the Cavaliers last night by a single point. That’s great: it’s a win on the ledger. However, the deeper this Jazz team advances into the NBA playoffs, the less they’ll be able to afford a 3/14 effort from the NBA’s reigning Sixth Man of the Year.

All told, Clarkson is now shooting 37% from the field and 29.4% from downtown on 8.9 attempts per game. That’s gruesome. We’ll maintain a semblance of hope that he can turn it around, but 23 games into the 2021-22 season, it’s getting increasingly hard to call this a slump.

Clarkson’s struggles aside, the Utah Jazz improved to 16-7 on the year with this victory. They’ll hope to extend their winning streak to 5 when they face the Minnesota Timberwolves on Wednesday evening.