The Triple Team: Thanks to Donovan Mitchell and Derrick Favors’ heroics, Jazz come back from 17 down in 4th to beat No. 1 Bucks

Three thoughts on the Utah Jazz’s 115-111 win over the Milwaukee Bucks from Salt Lake Tribune beat writer Andy Larsen.

1. From 17 down in the fourth quarter, Jazz come back and win

What a comeback. I thought the Jazz were done in this game after Milwaukee went on another huge run to extend the lead to 17 points, 90-73 with 9:39 left. This was a reasonable opinion, as, according to Inpredict, the Jazz had just a three percent chance of winning the game at that point.

Then Donovan Mitchell happened. For the rest of the quarter, he scored 19 points on 7-10 shooting, 3-3 from three, and added three assists. Even on the three misses, Derrick Favors got the rebound and scored because there was so much defensive attention on Mitchell.

The initial 7-0 run to cut the lead to 10 came from some pretty standard play: a Mitchell kickout to Joe Ingles behind him, a classic Ingles/Favors pick and roll conversion, then a Mitchell pull-up three in transition. Curiously, then Bucks coach Mike Budenholzer went with a lineup without either Giannis Antetokounmpo or Brook Lopez in the game, and that’s when Mitchell was really able to get going, using his quickness to get to the rim without any protection to meet him there. The Jazz went on a 10-3 run to cut the lead to three.

Also helpful: how much shooting the Jazz kept on the court. Kyle Korver finished the game instead of Ricky Rubio, meaning that Milwaukee didn’t want to leave two shooters. That meant Mitchell had more room to operate than usual.

But the Bucks adjusted, finally got their best players back in the game, and Mitchell still excelled. Mitchell’s baskets were just plain-old tough shot making. A ridiculous, off-balance floater, a pull-up three, and finally, a 29-footer to give the Jazz a 6-point lead.

I thought it was most impressive, though, that he balanced his attacking mindset with the realization that his on-fire status meant that Milwaukee had sent several Bucks to try to smother him. That’s when the Jazz got their easiest points in the most critical moments: when Mitchell fired a cross-court fastball to Jae Crowder in the corner, or to Favors inside after he was doubled.

In the end, Mitchell scored 46 points and added six assists to lead the Jazz to a 4-point victory against the team with the best record in the NBA.

He’s not perfect, and it’s not always, but in Donovan Mitchell, the Jazz have a player that other teams just can’t stop. In the NBA, that’s pretty darn valuable.

2. Derrick Favors with an incredible game

Rudy Gobert was absolutely horrendous on Saturday night. I think he’s been the Jazz’s best player this season, but he couldn’t have looked worse against Milwaukee, scoring only five points on 2-9 shooting while going 1-8 from the free-throw line. Oh, and he was essentially a defensive sieve, letting Antetokounmpo do whatever he wanted to do to him inside.

When he was on the floor, though it was only for 19 minutes, the Jazz had a 63.6 offensive rating and a 139.4 defensive rating. Maybe this is the more evocative stat: in a game the Jazz won by 4, he had a -36 plus-minus. Ouch. That’s shocking for a player of Gobert’s caliber, especially one that looks so good from a plus-minus point of view most of the time.

But up stepped Derrick Favors in an absolutely incredible way. He put up 23 points (on 10-12 shooting) and added 18 rebounds and three blocked shots in one of the very best games of his career. As opposed to Gobert, he was a +29.

First of all, we have to talk about his dunk. I’ve been a Favors watcher for eight-and-a-half seasons now, and I’m not sure I’ve ever seen him have a dunk quite this good.

That looks like it’s going to be a standard-but-still-impressive Favors layup finish on the roll, but Favors just says “Why not?” and dunks it all over Ersan Ilyasova.

But that wasn’t all that was special. The blocks he had in this game were superb, including this one on the NBA’s dunk leader:

We also have to note Favors’ 18 rebounds, which is an impressive enough number in its own right without also considering the massive lineup the Bucks were playing. In a game where the Bucks played with four guys 6-foot-10 or above — and the fifth was 6-foot-8 Khris Middleton — Favors came up first in rebounds in all of that traffic.

Favors was drafted into the league as a long, athletic freak, but kind of lost that somewhere along the way due to injuries, and maybe somewhat due to Favors trying to become a post player in the Ty Corbin era. But now, he’s healthy: “It just felt good to be able to do that again," Favors said. "Last couple of years have been kind of tough.”

It’s sometimes crazy to remember that Favors is just 27 years old. This should be the prime of his career, and recently he’s made it look like exactly that.

3. Milwaukee’s fun big lineup

There might be a couple of caveats on the win: Milwaukee was playing its second game in two days (which might explain why they ran out of gas down the stretch) and their injury report, which meant Eric Bledsoe, Malcolm Brogdon, George Hill, Sterling Brown, and even Dante DiVincenzo missed the game. The Jazz are familiar with massive guard injuries, but that’s even impressive by local standards.

But I thought that Budenholzer was really creative when he just decided to start his five best healthy players: Antetokounmpo at point guard, Khris Middleton at shooting guard, Ilyasova at small forward, Nikola Mirotic at power forward, and Brook Lopez at center.

And it worked! That lineup outscored the Jazz by 22 points while it was on the floor. It was really only the fact that they needed to rest that gave the Jazz a chance to come back... along with the fact that someone needed to guard Mitchell.

“You kind of wish you could play it for 48 minutes, but Giannis is just so unique as a ball handler, and Khris as a ball handler, and there’s all of the size and shooting," Budenholzer said. Hopefully it’s something we can have in our pocket going forward.”

Jae Crowder thought that the unique look really helped the Bucks. “These guys threw a curveball in the game and kudos to Coach Bud over there. He’s a heck of a coach. He threw that screwball out there for us and making us adjust to those guys. It took a lot for us to adjust, but we got it done.”

I think people think of the league’s positional revolution as “going small," and indeed, we do see that a lot. But at times, we’ve seen the opposite work too. If anything, the biggest takeaway is that positions aren’t rigid anymore — instead, it’s about what skills you bring to the court.