Three thoughts on the Utah Jazz’s 111-110 loss to the Brooklyn Nets from Salt Lake Tribune Jazz beat writer Andy Larsen.
1. A fake comeback that almost wasn’t fake
There’s a name for the fourth-quarter-get-the-game-within-single-digits-but-lose-anyway game: a fake comeback.
Essentially, when teams have a 23-point lead in the fourth quarter, they stop playing as hard. As Kelly Olynyk noted postgame, the Nets’ offense slowed down in the fourth quarter as they just were trying to play out the string. A slower offense is a less efficient one. Perhaps Nets players started to take shots to improve their statistics, rather than in an effort to advance that lead. It’s easy to get really sloppy and unfocused in those circumstances.
Usually what happens from there is that the leading team puts their foot down, and keeps the win probability bar above 90%. And heck, that’s nearly what happened tonight. But some unusual things happened:
• The Nets missed an unusual number of free throws late. Seth Curry is a career 87% free-throw shooter... he missed both late. Dorian Finney-Smith is a career 72% free-throw shooter, and went 1-2. Spencer Dinwiddie is a career 80% free-throw shooter, and went 1-2.
• Ochai Agbaji hit this very ridiculous three at the end of the game:
That’s such a cool shot. To have the footwork to sprint towards the ball, catch and turn in two quick steps, stay under control, and leap over the contest of the defender — that’s some star-level stuff. I’m not saying Agbaji is going to become a star, but usually you only see that level of scoring technique from stars, because they’re used to taking those shots. (Agbaji, of course, was that guy at Kansas, and it’s been fun to see him flash more of that recently.)
• Talen Horton-Tucker, after missing 10 straight shots in the first part of the second half, scored 12 points in the final three minutes of the game on 4-4 FG, adding 4-4 FT. Sure.
In the end, the Jazz did have a chance to win it:
After the game, Will Hardy said that there weren’t many other options on this play, Markkanen had lagged behind in his effort to get the rebound, and the other players were basically covered. The Jazz were out of timeouts. So yeah, with only five seconds to get it down the court, that’s probably the best the Jazz could do.
Still, this team continues to rebound most of all when they’re basically down and out of it, in sharp contrast to Jazz teams we’ve seen in the past. Good work.
2. The Jazz’s decision to play Lauri Markkanen
What would you do if you were in the Jazz’s shoes?
The case for playing Lauri Markkanen today:
The Jazz, despite everything, were only 1.5 games out of the play-in tournament. They had five games remaining: today’s, two against the Lakers, one against the Nuggets, and one against the Thunder. Clearly, today’s game was winnable. The others are too: even the No. 1 seed Denver Nuggets are only 5-5 in their last ten games, have lost their last two, and haven’t played Nikola Jokic recently. The Jazz really could make the playoffs.
Lauri Markkanen also really, really wants to play. He really, really wants to be named All-NBA, and win MIP. Ever since he learned that I am a voter on those awards, he has been incredibly nice to me. More importantly — to both of us — he really, really wants to make the playoffs for the first time in his career. It would be another gigantic step in his career.
Indeed, he seemed very frustrated at not being able to play against the Celtics. He put in a hard workout pregame, even throwing down tomahawk dunks with that injured left hand.
“You want to play every game, so it’s frustrating not being able to,” Markkanen said. “You see how hard we fight and you want to be out there.”
Playing him keeps your star player happy. Simple enough.
The case against playing Lauri Markkanen today:
The Jazz are also 1.5 games out of the 8th-best draft slot, two games out of the 7th-best slot, and 2.5 out of the 6th-best slot. They also have competition on the other end: Dallas, weirdly, has only one more win than the Jazz this season. Getting all the way down to six would double their odds of the No.1 draft pick and getting this man:
Yes, Victor Wembanyama shot a stepback three and got a putback dunk on it. He frankly made it look easy, too. I’m telling you: he’s the greatest prospect of all time. As I wrote in October, whatever the Utah Jazz have already done and must still do to get Victor Wembanyama, I believe it would all be worth it.
Even ignoring the draft aspect of things, there’s another argument for not playing Markkanen: it’s just not in the long-term interests of the team. The Jazz are not going to win the championship this year. They might in the next few years, and Markkanen could be a big contributor to that. But if some horrific injury were to happen in these last five games, it would be a huge setback to the program. Imagine if he had to miss much of next season, what that would do to the Jazz. And a horrific injury might also rob Markkanen of some of that hard-earned athleticism he’s shown off so much of this year. This is a depressing paragraph.
What legitimately might be best for this situation is if the play-in teams could get some distance between them and the Jazz, and just eliminate them from play-in contention sooner rather than later. That way, Markkanen would know his efforts were for naught anyway, and might feel more comfortable with the Jazz’s plan to not play him. But, at least as of the time of me writing this, the three teams above the Jazz are losing or have lost. So there goes that plan.
3. Walker Kessler’s free-throw shooting
First of all, I hope Kessler is okay. When he was elbowed in the head by Horton-Tucker on a rebound in the third quarter, he looked pretty woozy, and wasn’t totally great at running straight. He’s been evaluated for a concussion, but the Jazz want to have him go through more tests tomorrow before they announce whether or not he’s in concussion protocols.
But this game was an opportunity to bring up my thought on Walker Kessler expanding his game to include 3-point shots. You see, Kessler shot a corner three today and missed. He also missed both of the free throws he took today.
Here’s my point: I won’t believe in Kessler becoming a 3-point shooter at the NBA level until he learns to make free throws.
Right now, he is averaging 52% from the line this season, after a college career where he averaged 57%.
In NBA history, there are zero starting 7-footers who shot at least two threes a game while shooting under 60% from the free-throw line. It just doesn’t happen: in order to be a good shooter from distance, you probably have pretty good touch on the free ones.
There’s one close example. Christian Wood (only 6-10 in height) is only a 69% free-throw shooter. And “starting center” is kind of a stretch for him: Houston started him, but they hardly count as a real NBA team. Dallas benched him super quickly this season.
Now, I’m not saying he can’t ever shoot threes. Maybe the best example is Blake Griffin: he shot 52% from the charity line in his second year, but got it up to 72% two years after that, then started to really shoot threes three years after his free-throw growth. By the end of his career, most of his shots came from deep. But I think it’s going to be a process for Kessler to develop touch — he won’t likely have that 3-point game soon.
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