Three thoughts on the Utah Jazz’s 114-109 win over the Dallas Mavericks from Salt Lake Tribune Jazz beat writer Andy Larsen.
1. Rudy Gobert’s mind-blowing defense
Man, this game ruled. It was the best version of what basketball can be — a chess match but with the queens, rooks, bishops, and knights having jaw-dropping athleticism.
And in that chess match, Rudy Gobert was the defensive linchpin, just stymieing the Dallas attack in the end-game. Some of this was just masterful: literally the best defensive player in the NBA playing at his very best defensively against a top-5 offensive player. It’s such a joy to watch.
Take this one. Gobert’s fully up on Doncic even from well beyond the 3-point line, trying to prevent the stepback three. He’s swiping, he’s jabbing. He’s being the aggressive party in the confrontation.
Against Doncic, this is suicide for most defenders. He’s is able to score 30 points a night in the NBA despite not being able to run fast or jump high precisely because he is so good at reading how a defender is guarding him and taking advantage. And indeed, Doncic gets around Gobert! Except Gobert is so good at moving with him that he can stay with him through the drive. In the end, Doncic tries his very best verbal flop, but I truly don’t think this is a foul, it’s just good defense.
Another one. Just look at the number of hesitations, or little subtle fakes, that Gobert stays down on, but stays in front of. It’s remarkable:
Here’s going to be a big consideration in a potential Gobert vs. Doncic matchup in the playoffs: is stuff like this called a foul?
Gobert’s very limby here, and definitely has his arm across Doncic’s body as he drives. But Doncic does exactly the thing that attackers can’t do under this year’s rulebook: he draws his arm up and hooks the defender’s arm in order to create the contact. If he does it in a natural way, it’s a foul, if he’s contact seeking, it’s not supposed to be this year. Mavs fans are furious this wasn’t called, and I see their point... but I also see why it was a non-call.
Doncic really complained about the officiating postgame, and Dallas head coach Jason Kidd said that the Gobert/Doncic matchup “was to our advantage.” Truthfully, I’m not sure that it is.
Gobert answered a lot of the criticisms tonight. He was absolutely phenomenal.
2. Finding spacing situations that work
Oh, by the way, Donovan Mitchell was great, too. He shot the ball extremely well, making seven threes, but then made plays happen like this:
Beautiful. Splitting, spinning, moving, and finally getting a defender in space and hitting him with precise footwork. He’s become such a great offensive player. But naturally, the Mavericks weren’t necessarily happy with that, and so they became more aggressive in defending Mitchell on screens or in their zone.
Remember the Jazz’s loss against the Lakers before the All-Star break? The Lakers did that too, and the Jazz were cooked — the other Jazz players moved the ball too slowly and just badly against an iffy Lakers defense.
Well, the Mavs are actually a good defense, and so it would require an even higher level of execution. And it did get a bit sketchy for a minute or two there: on one possession, the Jazz hit those swings on the aggressive play, eventually finding Royce O’Neale in the corner, who didn’t take the shot. Again, it seemed familiar.
So let’s do it better. Let’s do that again, but this time put Bojan Bogdanovic in the corner. I can always count on Bogdanovic to take his open corner threes, and he’s going to make a really high percentage of those, too. The result was the biggest shot of the game:
Setting up spacing well is everything against a well-coached, aggressive team defense like the Mavs have. Quin Snyder has more spacing weapons than any other coach in the league, and he puts them in good positions to succeed. (As much as Snyder gets criticized for the Jazz’s playoff performances, you can’t say the offense has let them down in the post-Rubio era — now that the shooting is there, the offensive performances, even in the playoffs, have been good enough.)
3. Other matchup notes
Goodness, that was such an intense game. I think because it was against a likely Jazz playoff opponent made it matter more, but it was also a rare thing in this era of stars sitting out and maybe not always going at 100%: each team really, really tried to win that game. Here’s some other stuff that looked like it might come up important in a future playoff matchup between the two teams.
• I thought the Mavs had more success when they used Jalen Brunson/Doncic screen plays than the Gobert-involved ones, especially early in the game. Conley guarded Doncic a few times, and, yeah, probably not gonna work. They only ran it once late, here:
Doncic honestly forces a tough look. It looks like Doncic had a lane to drive, but then saw Gobert in the paint. If the Mavs space Maxi Kleber, Gobert’s matchup, out to the perimeter, does Doncic drive and find success there? Maybe. That, to me, will be the swing play in a Dallas/Utah series: can the Jazz defend those plays better than they did against the Clippers?
• Royce O’Neale was getting killed on screens today, just bouncing off the screening man, often trying to earn an offensive foul whistle to no avail. It meant a ton of situations where the Mavs could just attack Gobert (or worse, Whiteside) two-on-one, and that’s no good. He was really physical on ball and did some really nice ball-denial defense late in the game, though, limiting the Mavs to just one opportunity late.
• The other end of the spectrum there for the Jazz was Danuel House, who is just so much skinnier than O’Neale that he can slither in between, and stay in front. Frankly, he’s the only Jazz defender that can do this reliably.
• If the opposition doesn’t want to go at Gobert, another easy option in the bench lineups is just attacking Jordan Clarkson — Spencer Dinwiddie did that with effectiveness tonight.
• It’s funny... the Trent Forrest lack-of-jump-shot just kills you. Kills you. It short-circuits possessions in the worst way. There are no point guards who are that reluctant to shoot in NBA playoff lineups — save Ben Simmons. And you know what happens to him in the playoffs. And yet Forrest does just enough good stuff — a poke-away steal, pick-and-roll savvy, above-average defense — that it’s hard to say that he’s not a playoff player. I could truly see it going either way.
• Can Hassan Whiteside guard pick-and-pop bigs? Even more than the awareness issue, I think it’s just a speed issue. I don’t know... I kind of think that if the Jazz play the Mavericks, they’d just have to play Rudy Gay at the five.
• Likewise, I don’t think Eric Paschall plays a role in a potential Jazz/Mavs series. Maybe as that five instead of Whiteside/Gay, but why?
• The Jazz’s next games against Dallas won’t look this good, I don’t think. They play them twice in the fifth game of long road trips... just tough conditions. Probably makes winning this one even more important!
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