The Triple Team: Does the NBA need to change the way players are being officiated?

Three thoughts on the week in Jazz basketball from Salt Lake Tribune beat writer Andy Larsen.

1. Jazz struggle against the best

It’s holiday time, which means visits from friends and family I don’t get to see very often. It’s a delight.

As you’d expect, I’m frequently asked about the Jazz. There are a lot of folks, in my experience, who have kind of tuned out, so they want to know what’s going on this year from someone who pays close attention.

And it’s kind of a weird year to sum up. The Jazz are sort of in Play-In tournament contention but mostly trying to keep their top-8 protected pick they owe OKC and they sort of are prioritizing youth development but also definitely are starting Svi Mykhailiuk and Jusuf Nurkic and they sort of are listening to trade ideas for Lauri Markkanen but also mostly don’t want to trade him. It’s a run-on sentence both here and in reality.

They’ve sort of hired a new general manager and scouts but most of the same people who ran the team before still work there now, and the new GM is the old one’s son.

On the court, they sort of look promising? The games have actually been quite enjoyable to watch in recent weeks, and the offense gets plaudits from coaches around the league, and they generally play unselfish basketball, which is a delight. And it’s a good thing that they’re fun to watch offensively, because the complete lack of defense guarantees they’re going to be back on offense in a blink of an eye.

I think the most useful way I’ve found to sum up the team was on display on Monday night: This is a basketball team that can compete against many, even most NBA teams — but has no chance against the best in the league.

Here’s how the data stacks up:

In other words, the Jazz are the worst team in the NBA when playing the best teams in the NBA. Even the Wizards do better than the Jazz do against the league’s top 10. The Jazz do have surprising wins against these teams, but on the aggregate, most of these games haven’t even been close, like what we saw Monday.

Against the other 20 teams? They’re not great or anything, but they’re competitive, middle of the pack. Their offense works really, really well against bad teams.

This is a barrier the Jazz faced early in the Quin Snyder era, too: They struggled against teams that took them seriously. That team was able to turn it around, though, as Rudy Gobert emerged and Gordon Hayward developed. (Later, Donovan Mitchell really helped, too.)

2. One Jazz player is best in the league at something

Basketball Reference is obviously the second-best website in the world — behind only sltrib.com. One thing they do that I really like is bold when a player is a league leader in a certain statistic. For example, it’s easy to see from Nikola Jokic’s player page that he’s leading the league in rebounds and assists.

There’s only one bolded number on the Jazz’s team page:

It’s Jusuf Nurkic’s defensive rebounding percentage! Nurk gets 31.2% of the available defensive rebounds when he’s out there on the floor.

That puts him above Andre Drummond and Karl-Anthony Towns and Jokic, and all of the other great rebounders out there. (Shouts to Atlanta’s Jalen Johnson, who ranks sixth in the league in defensive rebounding percentage, getting more rebounds than Rudy Gobert and nearly every other NBA center, despite, you know, being much shorter.)

We’ve written about Nurkic’s rebounding before, but now we have more data on how he’s impacting the team overall. Also, this graph, from PBPStats.com, is in Christmas colors.

The Jazz’s shooting gets way worse with Nurkic in the game, and their turnovers go up. (That makes sense, as he’s third in the league among centers in turnovers.) However, their defensive rebounding gets much better, and they send teams to the line significantly less.

Doing some 3-point shooting luck adjustment (which you can find here), the Jazz’s overall numbers improve to be about the same when Nurkic is on the floor vs. when he’s not.

3. Changing the way the game is officiated

This might be the defining NBA YouTube video of the season.

Ben Taylor, over at his YouTube channel Thinking Basketball, has done some great work on understanding why offense is up again this year. This 20-minute video explains the various ways that the game is officiated in favor of the offense in 2025 — and why it’s so hard for defenses to get any stops. I think, in general, it’s not that the players aren’t trying. It’s because, the way the game is officiated now, they’re not really allowed to try.

While Taylor brings up clips of multiple kinds of changes (yes, including traveling), the most standout topic to me was his discussion of how drives to the basket are officiated. Now, offensive players can simply bully through defenders — even if defenders take the contact right in the chest.

The best part of the video is at the 9-minute mark, when Taylor shows examples of how differently blocks and charges were called 15 years ago compared to now. Kevin Durant bowls over Ronnie Brewer in one clip, and, sure enough, a charge is called.

As it should be.

I actually think the standard and consistency in NBA refereeing is much, much higher than it was then. It’s just that the league office has instructed its officials in such a way that playing legal defense is nearly impossible. It’s been discouraging to see NBA Points of Emphasis come out so defenses can’t guard straight-line drives effectively, for example.

Playoff basketball is better in part because the officials begin to allow more defense to be played. Olympic basketball is even better for that same reason. This is the kind of basketball fans want to see, not 152-150 scores.

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