Three thoughts on the week in Utah Jazz basketball from Salt Lake Tribune Jazz beat writer Andy Larsen.
1. At some point, the defense has to improve.
For the third year in a row, the Jazz have the worst defense in the league.
Monday’s game against Portland was the 14th consecutive below league-average defensive performance for this team, and it was a doozy — for three quarters, the Jazz had nearly a 150 defensive rating, which would have tied for their worst defensive performance in a full game ever. (The Portland garbage squad didn’t keep scoring at such a high rate, however.)
Why are the Jazz so bad defensively?
The most important reason is center personnel. They have absolutely no chance right now at protecting the rim, given that they’re playing Jusuf Nurkic, Kevin Love, and Kyle Filipowski at center. Those are three of the worst interior defenders in the NBA: They were bad before coming to Utah, and have been bad since coming to Utah.
That’s explicable, given that they figured they’d have Walker Kessler this season. But given that they had Kessler for most of last year and were still last in the league points to other problems.
For example, they also don’t have any good perimeter defenders.
There’s a legitimate case for Svi Mykhailiuk being the best perimeter defender on this team, which is concerning. Taylor Hendricks’ injury and related rust have sapped him of much-needed quickness and he’s getting blown by with alarming regularity. He is a below-average defender right now.
The other players are either not consistently focused off-ball (Isaiah Collier, Brice Sensabaugh, Walter Clayton), or, while relatively focused, not strong enough to provide resistance (Keyonte George, Cody Williams). Elijah Harkless should not stand out to the degree that he does.
I am somewhat concerned about the front office’s ability to identify defensive talent, or perhaps their lack of care in prioritizing defense when making those decisions. Maybe it just takes time, but I would have projected Hendricks, Williams, Clayton, and Filipowski to all be reasonable defensively by now, but they are not. This has also shown in the veterans they’ve acquired: they had to dump all of John Collins, Collin Sexton, and Jordan Clarkson for negative value because of how damaging their defensive weaknesses would be on the trade market. Meanwhile, a team like Oklahoma City can comb the undrafted free agent market and find quality defensive pieces at a whim, it seems.
Finally, I’ll admit: I am significantly concerned about Will Hardy and his coaching staff’s ability to coach defense.
(Rick Egan | The Salt Lake Tribune) Utah Jazz head coach Will Hardy talks with Utah Jazz guard Isaiah Collier (8) on Dec. 30.
Even granted all of the above, last in the league three years running is untenable. The Bulls are throwing out Josh Giddey, Kevin Huerter, and Nikola Vucevic lineups and are at least 21st. The Kings are starting three of the most offense-only veterans of all time next to Keegan Murray and Domantas Sabonis, both below-average defenders, and are at least 27th. The Wizards and Pelicans are horrendous defensive teams with awful personnel and still aren’t 30th. There are other terrible defensive teams in the league, and they are not this bad.
Being 30th, three years in a row, indicates everything isn’t working. I’m not saying Hardy should be fired; I don’t think he should be. He has too many other strengths. But I do think it’s reasonable to suggest that he needs a strong defensive coordinator in the program to help turn things around. As of now, it feels like they’ve tried nothing and they’re all out of ideas.
“Defense is what we’re attacking every day, and it’s what we’ll continue to attack until we get it right,” Hardy said. “I’m the person that takes the responsibility for how our team performs. You know, I come and talk to you guys every day, and I’m never going to duck my responsibility in terms of leading our group. And my expectation is that everybody on our team take responsibility for their individual play.”
All of it needs to improve.
2. Keyonte George’s in-season work
Keyonte George’s offseason has been well-covered by now: He spent nearly every day in Salt Lake City with the Jazz’s coaches, with only a few forays outside of the Jazz’s practice facility. Even then, he sought to spend time with his teammates as much as possible.
But Hardy also said recently that his in-season work has been just as impressive.
(Rick Egan | The Salt Lake Tribune) Utah guard Keyonte George (3) dunks in a game against the Detroit Pistons.
For example, he’s the first Jazz player on the court warming up and getting a workout in on game days. Typically, players order their workouts by seniority — those who have been in the NBA longest get to go closest to game time. George’s status as a third-year veteran would normally put him in the middle of the pack of warmups.
But George’s gone a different route. For a typical 7 p.m. start, he’s on the arena floor by 4:45 — the first player out there.
“Historically, there have been a lot of really good players who like to get to the gym very early and be the first ones on the court,” Hardy said.
He’s also getting reps differently than before. In his first couple of years, he took pretty traditional approaches to his workouts. Now, he’s trying to go game-speed or faster in his time on the court.
“I saw something from Aaron Gordon,” George said, referring to the Nuggets’ forward. “He said in his workouts, he shoots way faster than he would in the game. So I’ve been trying that for the last couple of days, and then in the game, it’s starting to make it kind of feel even smoother.”
Hardy noted that his in-season approach has been significantly different than his first two years:
“Maybe not a full 180 degrees (different), but it’s probably like 168 degrees,” Hardy said. “He doesn’t hide from the fact that some of the things he was doing, some of his behaviors, weren’t good enough. He’s done a lot of work to improve those things, and he deserves the credit for that.”
3. Steph Curry and Lauri Markkanen
The two highest gravity players in the NBA, per Synergy data?
Teams panic when they see Steph or Lauri on the court. They shift their defenses to shorten the closeouts to those guys, which, of course, generally opens up space for their teammates.
The Warriors have been trading off of Curry’s shooting ability for good offensive outcomes for over a decade now; they’re really quite clever how they use not only Curry making threes, but the threat of him doing so, in order to open up their whole offense. Really, the Jazz do the same with Markkanen, even though he’s seven feet.
I asked Warriors coach Steve Kerr to compare and contrast how the Jazz use Steph and how the Jazz use Lauri off the ball.
“They run probably more flares than anybody that we face. And flaring Markkanen off the top of the key is really difficult to guard,” Kerr said. “Most teams run pin-aways like we do. That’s where the big pins for the guard, the shooter, but them flaring a 7-foot guy out there is very difficult to handle.”
(Rick Egan | The Salt Lake Tribune) Utah Jazz forward Lauri Markkanen (23).
“OKC does some of that with Chet Holmgren, too, and it kind of distorts the chessboard a little bit. It’s a look that you don’t see as often night after night in the league, and so players just aren’t as accustomed to guarding it,” Kerr continued. “They just run good stuff in general. Will does a great job of just kind of piecing together different actions and creating a good flow for his team.”
It’s probably why the Jazz’s offense has been so good — they lead the league in assist percentage, and are an above-average offense despite pulling the ball out of the basket on every play, facing a set half-court defense.
If Markkanen’s defensive threat were as potent.
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