The Utah Jazz are going to have a problem winning while playing 6 guards

The Utah Jazz can’t win by playing these six guards all together.

What was Will Hardy thinking? Everyone knew it was a bad idea to play six guards in one game. There was no point. The six men are not different enough from one another to warrant playing all of them. Yet, Hardy did, and it turns out that most of them couldn’t do the one thing we knew they couldn’t do, but needed to; play defense.

Was it a lack of effort? Are there too many “offensive-minded*” guards on the team? (Code for bad on defense*) Are there too many smaller guards? Collin Sexton, Kris Dunn, and Jordan Clarkson are 6’3, while Talen Horton-Tucker and Keyonte George are 6’4, with Ochai Agbaji at 6’5.

Agbaji is, borderline, big enough to guard small forwards, but he’s mostly a two-guard. Everyone else? Are all the same size and we’re shocked that the Sacramento Kings took 51 shots on the Jazz defense on Wednesday night.

Maybe it’s not a size issue, maybe it’s an effort issue. In which case, just get rid of anyone you think is half-assing it on defense. It doesn’t matter if you score two points half of the time you’re on offense if you’re giving up 2.5 points two out of three times you’re on defense. You’ll never be able to make up the deficit on offense alone if you don’t try some on defense.

Maybe it’s a talent thing; in which case the Jazz need to focus on the players who have the skillsets needed to win games. Guys who can facilitate on offense and slow down, if not stop, guys on defense.

Maybe it’s a fit. Maybe every one of these six guards is really good, just not in this scheme.

Either way, what I’m hearing, is that we need to limit the minutes some guards get. Clarkson and Sexton are carbon copies of one another, while Horton-Tucker and Dunn are very similar. George is still unknown but could be very similar to Clarkson/Sexton or Horton-Tucker/Dunn. Really, only Agbaji can stand alone in that regard. He’s uniquely his own among the other five guards that the Jazz deployed.

Clarkson looked good, and honestly, that’s about it. Part of the issue is that everyone was playing around 20 minutes (some a bit more, others a bit less), and very few had a chance to stand out, simply due to how the lineups were being used. This positionless NBA works great in theory but rarely in execution.

The Jazz need another forward and maybe another power forward or center. There’s no reason to be playing the likes of Horton-Tucker or George when you have better, more season, and more consistent players ahead of them.

The Jazz would’ve been better off playing Dunn, Sexton, Clarkson, and Agbaji, along with rookies Taylor Hendricks and Brice Sensabaugh. Trying to slow down an offense as good as the Kings with three men who are human turnstiles (Sexton, Clarkson, Horton-Tucker) was never going to be a winning formula.

So why did Hardy think it would be?

The questions are already starting.