Three thoughts on the Utah Jazz’s 129-93 loss to the Denver Nuggets from Salt Lake Tribune Jazz beat writer Andy Larsen.
1. Nuggets just out-talenting the Jazz
Look at tonight’s starting fives. The Nuggets started:
• Christian Braun
• Peyton Watson
• Nikola Jokic
• Michael Porter Jr.
• Aaron Gordon
The Jazz started:
• Cody Williams
• Kyle Filipowski
• Oscar Tshiebwe
• Isaiah Collier
• Collin Sexton
To be frank, in a pickup game draft, I am choosing four of Denver’s starters before I get to Collin Sexton in the Jazz’s lineup. And that frame of thinking even ignores that the Nuggets have the league’s best player of this decade in Nikola Jokic, who put up the most casual 27/14/6 you might have ever seen. Even the half-court buzzer beater was casual.
To be sure, the Jazz would be in a better position if their players were healthy. Walker Kessler can put up a fight against the Nuggets in a way G Leaguer Oscar Tshiebwe is simply unable to. Lauri Markkanen’s presence probably means that the team wouldn’t shoot 17% from three. John Collins probably would have made a significant impact, too.
But the Jazz are far away, from a competitiveness point of view. They need many, many good players to play well against the Western Conference’s best teams in the years to come.
2. Isaiah Collier’s All-Rookie campaign
The bad news: Isaiah Collier had a pretty bad game on Friday. He scored just three points, all from the free-throw line, going 0-7 from the field. He did have seven assists next to just one assist, though, and his -18 wasn’t as rough as others.
On Thursday, the Jazz launched a new campaign to the league’s media voters to get Collier on the league’s All-Rookie team. Called “Big Mountain Pass,” the campaign involved the team getting a ski lift chair, painting it purple, doing a photo shoot, then sending out the results of it to all 100 NBA media voters. (I’m one of those 100 media voters this year, as the vote moves around the various beat writers in the market. Nothing bad happened last time I had the vote, I promise.)
Here’s what the team sent:
Isaiah Collier's All-Rookie campaign.
Does Collier have a good chance at the award? I think so. He’s currently eighth on NBA.com’s rookie ladder, and his assist numbers since the All-Star break have been wildly impressive. The only players with more assists since then are Trae Young, James Harden, Tyrese Haliburton, and Devin Booker, all All-Star level players.
The rest of the numbers are good in the context of Collier’s early season, but only okay in the context of the wider NBA. The perfect example is his 3-point shooting percentage: he’s up to 31.9% after the All-Star break, which is poor for an NBA point guard, but so much better than the 23% he shot before then.
I think he’s probably likely to make it, but it depends whether voters consider the totality of the season equally or more heavily weight the second half of the season. We’ll see.
3. Will Hardy’s thoughts on NCAA tournament prospects
I probably overuse Will Hardy news conferences as points for this Triple Team. ... He’s obviously not the only voice on this team. But Hardy does tend to be transparent about his opinions, and his opinions do really matter for the future of the Utah Jazz.
So, humor me as I do it again. This week, he was asked about whether or not he watches the NCAA tournament, and his answer was pretty standard:
“Sure, you know I’m a basketball sicko, and so I’m interested in the tournament, and I watch it, and, you know, everybody fills a bracket out, and it’s fun to watch,” Hardy said.
But then he was asked if he considers the NCAA tournament heavily when considering potential prospects for the Jazz.
“I think there aren’t enough players who have played in meaningful games, and that’s at any level. I think we see it in high school. You see all these AAU games and tournaments and it’s like: do any of them mean anything? Probably not. Now there are guys who get to compete for a state championship with their high school team, and I think those games are meaningful,” Hardy said.
“But it’s amazing sometimes when you go through the draft process and you study a player and you go: he’s never played in a game that meant anything," he said. “You want people who understand what it means to really compete to win and not to compete to play."
That’s really interesting, because the Jazz have kind of leaned towards prospects who were highly touted AAU prospects but then struggled in college. I think it’s clear at points this season that Hardy’s been hoping for more competitiveness in his players, which he hasn’t always gotten.
Watching the Jazz, I feel that too: there are a lot of players who don’t have the highest level of competitiveness. It’s one of the things that makes Collin Sexton stand out on this team, and an aspect of play the Jazz simply need more of.
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