Rules help for sure. NBA forces you to defend just one side of the rim so if weakside doesn't slow down the penetration, it's over. It's how Clips beat the Jazz last two games.
But Rudy switched a lot against USA too and he didn't sag that much or try to recover immediately to the rim. Even when France gave up a rebound. You could see some trust there.
Zone defense is weird, there are too many variations and you need some length to play basic zones. Jazz lack the lateral quickness and awareness to slide and block the zones like Clippers did.
It really doesn't matter much when your perimeter defenders get beat easily, it keeps everyone moving and creates spaces. Best Jazz could do I think was shrink the floor and force pull-up jumpers but it's not like Clips don't have players to punish that.
Last year's defense during the regular season was kind of fool's gold, it had me fooled for sure after saying Jazz can't play good D if they have 4-5 bad defenders in rotation prior season. Or Conley was important on defense too but I don't know how much about that.