Jazz counterpunch Lakers to win fifth straight — what gameplan adjustments did Utah make?

Jazz coach Will Hardy considers himself a counterpuncher.

There are two types of coaches, he believes: coaches who try to make their team as strong as one strategy as possible — a strategy that they can use to blow opponents off the court. Then there’s those who teach their teams to be flexible, adaptable, unpredictable. Hardy’s the latter.

As the Jazz beat the Lakers 132-125 on Saturday night in front of a sold out crowd at the Delta Center, they needed every bit of counterpunching ability they could muster. After a late LeBron James scratch, the Jazz’s pre-game plan no longer applied to what the Lakers were trying to do. The referees called the game in an unexpected way. Their plus-minus weapon had one of his worst games of the season. All of it led to the Jazz getting out to a double-digit deficit.

The Jazz observed what the Lakers were doing. Then they counterpunched — and ended up with a victory.

Here’s how they did it.

John Collins over Walker Kessler

Walker Kessler has been the Jazz’s defensive game-changer over the last month. Once he enters into the game, he’s been clamping down on opponents, shutting off the paint.

Except for tonight, when he played miserably. He was a second late to every rotation, he found himself bested over and over again inside.

So what did the Jazz do? They played John Collins far more — and involved him in the game. Collins has sometimes struggled this season, but tonight, he played extremely well on both ends of the floor. Hardy thought this play was one of the most important of the game, where Collins sets a screen, pops out, and nails a three after a Jazz timeout.

“I thought was a really big shot for him, but also for like the next five or six minutes,” Hardy said. “Because now Anthony Davis is thinking a little bit about John on the perimeter.”

Collins ended up as a team-high +18 tonight, sharing that honor with Collin Sexton.

Responding to the refs

This was a wildly officiated game.

In the first half, it was the Lakers who were getting every call. As D’Angelo Russell and Austin Reaves drove to the rim, any amount of neck snapping would get a whistle. So too would just running out of bounds.

It really generates confidence in officiating when the referee waits until after a player has chosen to run out of bounds to call the foul. I don’t necessarily mean to call out Justin Van Duyne here out, though, because Pat Fraher and Scott Twardoski weren’t much better.

Anyway, the Jazz adjusted by learning how the referees were calling the game: get some contact on a drive, and you’re likely going to get a whistle. Hardy told the team to be more aggressive downhill at the half — and they just started driving.

This is exactly the kind of foul call that can go one way with one crew and the other way with a different set of refs.

After losing the free-throw battle 16-8 in the first half, the Jazz won it 31-8 in the second half. All of those free points changed the game.

To be clear, my overall preference would just be that the referees be more consistent from night to night. But given that they aren’t, the team that learns their tendencies the best is going to have a significant advantage. That was the Jazz tonight.

Stopping Anthony Davis with Lauri Markkanen

Yes, Anthony Davis had a triple double tonight. But to limit him to 15 points on 5-21 shooting — including a whopping zero points in the fourth quarter — defined the game for the Jazz defensively.

To begin the game, the Jazz had Collins on him, hoping to make Lauri Markkanen into a roving defender. But pretty early on, Hardy realized that Markkanen would be the better matchup to guard Davis, using his superior length to his advantage.

He did so inside and out. This is a lot of misses for a player of Anthony Davis’ caliber; he’s shooting 56% overall this year.

It was an important switch for the Jazz.

Keyonte George’s fourth quarter

Keyonte George hasn’t been finishing games recently. In his last 10 games, he’d only finished the fourth quarter twice:

But he was rolling for the Jazz in his stint at the end of the third and the beginning of the fourth — so Hardy figured he’d keep him in the game.

As a result, the Jazz finished the game with a lineup with five players who scored at least 19 points each: Markkanen had 29, Sexton had 27, Clarkson 21, while both Collins and George had 19 each. That’s a lot of firepower in one lineup, and it meant that the Jazz could attack the Lakers’ defensive weaknesses with essentially any player on the court.

“I think the guys are doing such a better job lately of communicating with each other about what’s happening in the game. They’re seeing what’s successful and they’re going back to it,” Hardy said. I think that’s where it’s great to have a team that can play a couple of different ways because when you see a quote-unquote weakness in a game, you can go to it.”

The big trend

There are other changes the Jazz made during the game — they played a handful of zone possessions, tried to push the tempo via Markkanen in transition, they changed where help on Anthony Davis was coming from a few times, and gave Sexton and Dunn specific assignments depending on who was cruising and who was in foul trouble.

But to me, the most impressive element of this win streak has been how the team’s gameplan has changed from night to night.

In a 24-hour period, Collins went from playing 15 minutes one game to 34 the next. Sometimes they’ll feed Clarkson, other times Sexton. Zone use has been up and down. Sometimes they’ll run their established off-ball oriented offensive system, and sometimes, they’ll just choose to make the opposition’s worst defender look silly.

In all five games of this win streak, they’ve been able to switch between identities at the drop of a hat. Opposing coaches look bewildered. After all, what do you do against such an adept moving target?

The Jazz’s identity right now is their lack of identity. They’ll do whatever it takes to win — and do it well.