Three thoughts on the Utah Jazz’s 107-106 loss to the Oklahoma City Thunder from Salt Lake Tribune Jazz beat writer Andy Larsen.
1. Process over results
The Jazz played nearly 48 minutes of excellent basketball on Saturday night, and still lost. That’s a credit to the Oklahoma City Thunder, the importance of shot-making in the NBA, and the brutal reality that factors out of the Jazz’s control play a large part in every game.
We’ll get more into what the Jazz did well later, but suffice it to say that the Jazz had all of the above go against them in the fourth quarter:
1. Five consecutive missed 3-point shots.
2. A missed call on Russell Westbrook that would have been his sixth foul, and sent Donovan Mitchell to the line. Instead, Terrance Ferguson nailed a pull-up jumper on the other end.
3. Numerous loose balls that somehow found their way into the hands of the Thunder
3. When Donovan Mitchell tried to make a free throw, he missed. When he tried to miss, he made it.
And yet they still won the quarter 25-14 with a remarkable defensive performance and some really good offense off of those misses by OKC. They came up one point short of the victory.
Kyle Korver is in his 16th season, and so I thought he had a pretty good perspective on the ups and downs in the NBA.
“I went on a 16-game winning streak in Cleveland last year. And I knew that bad days were coming, because it just felt like we were picking up bad habits,” Korver said. “We were getting wins, but it was getting sloppy. And then we went on a stretch where we were just terrible.”
That’s not where the Jazz are though. “I feel the opposite right now. I feel like we’re building good habits,” Korver said. I feel like we’re playing better basketball. We gotta keep putting the ball in the basket, but I feel like that’s been coming too. I like were we’re headed."
The Jazz are only 3-3 in their last 6. That won’t get it done. And yet, they’ve been playing much, much better basketball. As Korver said, the good times are coming.
2. Paul George scores 43
What a good thing it is for the Oklahoma City Thunder that they still have Paul George. Despite asking out of Indiana to seemingly join an L.A. team last year, George was so enamored by Oklahoma City’s team that he decided to re-sign with them again this offseason.
And then, apparently, he worked on his game. I’ve seen great Paul George games, but that was the best I’ve ever seen, pre-catastrophic-injury or post-injury. In the end, George scored 43 points, picked up 14 rebounds, had six assists, and even added five steals and a block on the defensive end. He was the best player on the floor by a significant margin.
From a Jazz point of view, is there anything they could have done better? Here are the highlights.
I mean, there are a few times where clearly, they gave him too much airspace. Rudy Gobert and Derrick Favors could have closed out more when they were switched on to him. Jae Crowder probably switched off of him too easily once or twice.
Joe Ingles sold out once to stop the transition three, then got beat and George had a layup at the rim. On the next transition play, he stayed back and George nailed a three over the top of him.
Overall, though, this is nit-picky kind of stuff. Paul George just consistently read the defense and made the right play, sometimes in spectacular fashion. And given that the Jazz limited Westbrook to 3-17 shooting, and allowed 102 points per 100 possessions anyway, it’s hard to get too mad.
It’s this kind of performance that has people saying Paul George should get MVP consideration this year. Maybe not at the top of the list — thinking Kawhi Leonard, LeBron James, and Steph Curry here — but he’s been OKC’s biggest contributor in their run to the top of the Western Conference.
3. Ricky Rubio’s passing
That’s the best passing game Ricky Rubio has had in a Jazz uniform. Tonight, he had 14 assists — his previous Utah high was 12 — and played Oklahoma City’s defense like a fiddle at times, even when they weren’t super concerned about stopping him from scoring.
The Thunder play their bigs high on the pick and roll, a fact that the Jazz used over and over again in the playoffs last year to get good baskets. That means that the Jazz have a four-on-three elsewhere on the court, and Rubio did a great job of finding the open man, even if those passes weren’t easy.
Here’s a quick sequence. Here, he takes advantage to find Gobert open at the rim.
Next play, Jerami Grant shifts over to prevent the pass. But Rubio, crafty as he is, puts the ball above his head on the pass to make Grant think he’s passing cross-court to Thabo Sefolosha. Instead, it’s a big bounce pass to Gobert for another dunk.
On the next play, Grant knows what’s coming, so he gets Gobert in the paint early. So Rubio stares Gobert while making his pass, then whips a no-look pass 50-feet away to Sefolosha in the corner. Then, Sefolosha finds Gobert, who gets fouled. (Gobert missed both free throws. One or both of those points would have been nice.)
On the next play, they run it again. This time, the screen is closer, so Rubio goes all the way under the basket, before faking the pass to Sefolosha in the corner, only to whip it around to Gobert for another dunk.
This is my favorite aspect of basketball: players using vision and craft to open up space where it seemingly didn’t exist before, as if by magic. Growing up watching John Stockton play probably did that to me. Rubio, when he’s at his best, is one of the players with that gift.
Follow @andyblarsen