Game Thread Dec 03, 2021 07:00PM MT: Jazz vs. Celtics

[gandalfe]

The offensive dominance this year cannot be overstated. The Jazz are 4.4 points better than the second place Warriors. Same difference between 2nd and 15th.

It's not fun to watch Mitchell and Clarkson chuck when they are not making their shots, but there's something to their chucking that is allowing everyone else to be hyper efficient. It sucks when they take a bad shot when we could have gotten a better shot....but maybe there's an understated benefit to having every difficult shot taken by a decent shot maker. In other words, every difficult shot is taken by someone who is relatively good at taking those shots...even if they are inefficient compared to the average.

And, obviously, because either of them COULD get hot at any time, and have a history of getting hot, the defenders simply can't leave them alone. Just like with Steph Curry, they're good enough that you have to pay attention to them from half-court on, and that means that someone else has a chance to slip their defender, and THEY can all make shots too, so you can't leave them alone, until finally something gives, just a little bit of light, and BAM! So now the defenders are getting tired, because they have to work harder, and suddenly, by the end of the game, those shots start falling more because the defense has been dealing with it for 40 minutes and are just beat down.

I just talked myself into understanding why we seem to explode in the late-game, I think.