The Triple Team: Can Jazz make Lauri Markkanen a No. 1 option in the 4th?

Three thoughts on the Utah Jazz’s 115-105 loss to the Dallas Mavericks from Salt Lake Tribune Jazz beat writer Andy Larsen.

1. Lauri Markkanen needs to find his shot late

Coming into the fourth quarter tonight, Lauri Markkanen was on fire: 33 points, 10-18 from the field. The game was tied.

Get that man the ball!

Instead, Markkanen had just one shot for the rest of the game, despite playing 9:13. He took a free throw, but it was just due to a technical foul. Meanwhile, the rest of the Jazz scored just 16 points, and the team lost the game due to their lack of late-game offense.

Markkanen said he was fatigued in the fourth quarter after taking most of the last few days off due to his injury. But, counterpoint: weren’t his legs as fresh as could be?

This is the most discouraging thing about Markkanen’s development: he simply hasn’t shown the desire to be the No. 1 guy. The offensive stats are awesome — remember, Rick Carlisle compared him to Dirk Nowitzki and wasn’t crazy — but Nowitzki had the unabashed belief in himself to take the shots at end of games. Markkanen can just kind of coast — he spent somewhere around 75% of his 4th-quarter possessions just spacing in the corner.

Hardy was clear: “I want Lauri to be demonstrative trying to look for those opportunities. We’ve worked on it a lot. We’ve talked about it a lot. And teams are going to switch him a lot. So when the game slows down like that, go into the nail, the elbow, that free throw line area, even the mid post is really going to be important for him.”

Some of that has to be up to Hardy, too, to instruct his players at timeouts to find Markkanen. Instead, Collin Sexton took seven shots and Johnny Juzang took three. It’s just playing into the hands of the Mavericks, and why they lost the game.

2. Refs not calling as many fouls

As you may know, NBA scoring is down overall in the last few months. Or perhaps you don’t know, because you follow the Jazz, the worst defense in the league. Regardless, it’s true: we’re seeing much lower scoring totals than we did in the beginning of the year.

Why? Well, the biggest change has been how the game has been officiated. In short, referees are calling fewer fouls.

I thought tonight was a good example of the change. Yes, Luka Doncic and Lauri Markkanen both took eight free throws... but I thought in previous months or previous seasons they would have earned more.

Take this drive from Luka Doncic — I think refs earlier blow their whistle on this one to send Doncic to the line, but I think no-call is better.

Same with Kyrie Irving throwing himself to the ground here. Play on!

To be sure, this also impacts the Jazz: they have driving guards who tend to try to draw fouls, like Collin Sexton, Keyonte George, and Jordan Clarkson. Those players, especially George, will need to work on finding a midrange game that they can rely on to generate points without generating contact.

3. Gambling in the NBA

Today was a big day in the NBA: we have our first major gambling scandal in decades.

In two different games this season, Toronto Raptors forward Jontay Porter left early due to an injury — once due to eye issues, once due to illness. But after both games, investigators saw surprisingly large piles of cash being gambled on Porter’s player props. In particular, gamblers bet on Porter’s unders — that he’d score fewer points, get fewer rebounds, dish fewer assists, and make fewer threes than the Vegas oddsmakers expected.

In both days, Porter’s player props were the No. 1 moneymaker for bettors that day. That’s crazy: Porter’s a two-way player of minimal repute. I suspect most of you haven’t heard of him. Obviously, there’s no way for this to happen naturally: If Jontay Porter is attracting the most betting in the NBA, something fishy is happening.

But I also suspect that Porter isn’t alone — that there are gamblers and players not quite as stupid to make such large bets. I don’t think it’s quite a “tip of the iceberg” situation, I don’t think there are dozens of players gambling on games, but there just is significant incentive for players do exactly what Porter’s doing.

Gambling also is impacting the lives of coaches. Cleveland coach J.B. Bickerstaff said gamblers got his telephone number to send him messages about his home and his kids.

I asked Will Hardy if he had experienced the same, and luckily, he has not. But he has heard from gamblers on the job — in fact, every day of his head coaching tenure.

“I think when you really sit down and think about it, it is scary. Because there’s a lot of things that can be taken out of context. I obviously have very different intentions every night than people who are betting on the games. I would say since I got this job, I’ve had somebody at least one person yell something from the crowd every single night at me — about a particular player, or the spread, or points, rebounds minutes, not fouling at the end of the game, or fouling at the end of the game.”

This is weird. Hardy’s scrupulous enough to avoid that, but is every NBA coach? Is every player? Walker Kessler has said before that he receives angry DMs from bettors if he doesn’t hit his player over-under tallies for a game. Kessler’s not tanking, but there are literal teenagers in the NBA who receive the same. How sure are we that they’ll make the right choices?

I’m not sure what the right answer is here. I suspect it’s too late to put the toothpaste back in the tube. But it is troubling, and I suspect the story is only going to get larger.

The Triple Team is back! But this time, as an emailed newsletter, sent to your inbox after every game. To sign up to read future iterations of all three of Andy Larsen’s points, put your email address in below: