Game Thread Dec 03, 2022 07:00PM MT: Jazz vs. Trail Blazers

[Tremendous Upside]

Also the 4th quarter starting lineup was Sexton, Fontecchio, Beasley, Lauri and Kessler. So 2 catch and shoot guys and 2 bigs. Expecting way too much from Sexton there....

Kinda weird move from Hardy.. just like it was to keep KO on the bench and Beasley on the court for as long as he did. After all KO was a bright spot offensively and Beasley was a big net negative in my eyes.

Precisely. WTF was that lineup???

Beasley... I'm beginning to get pretty tired of his "I'm not being paid to defend or rebound" act. **** that. Yeah, he can get hot from the perimeter once in a while. Yeah, shooting is a premium skill in the modern NBA. So Beasley will always have a job. Big ****ing whoop.

But watching this guy not give the slightest bit of effort to stay between his man and the basket, die on every screen, and absolutely never box out is infuriating. Almost insulting to the rest of the team.

Our defense has sucked for a while now and Beasley has been one of the biggest culprits, along with Clarkson. Every team has a few weak links on D but we just can't have any this bad.

I've given Sexton a lot of **** about his defense, among other things, but Beasley makes him look like Draymond. Sexton is too small and still misdirects his energy, but at least he cares and tries his best on that side of the ball. The only thing Beasley seems to care about is his shots.

 

[HermanG]

Your examples involve others getting him the ball in spots that he can take advantage of which Is exactly what I wrote already. My first post even talked about wanting him used in curls towards the rim more.

So again, I'm not sure what point you disagree with other than the semantics of what generating offense means.

So you dont think Embiid, AD or other bigs create their offense just because they dont carry the ball inside themselves?

I did miss that curl part though.

But my definition of creating own buckets is that you get the ball with the defender in position and you can beat him 1on1 and score or earn FTs consistently. Doesnt matter where you get the ball.

 

[mikka23]

So you dont think Embiid, AD or other bigs create their offense just because they dont carry the ball inside themselves?

I did miss that curl part though.

But my definition of creating own buckets is that you get the ball with the defender in position and you can beat him 1on1 and score or earn FTs consistently. Doesnt matter where you get the ball.

My point was that when the offense becomes stagnant you can't just give him the ball. With somebody like Mitchell you can give him the ball and he can make something happen, pretty much regardless of circumstance. Obviously bigs can generate offence but they still need the ball and they need space.

Lauri is more of an offball player and matchup dependent. If a team is guarding him tight with a small (like Caruso for bulls) then you need to run some action to get him free closer to the rim. If he is being guarded by a lumbering big then you want him faced up and with space.

In both cases it requires the man bringing the ball up to spot that and then some team action to set it up. At the start of the game they run a lot of action for Lauri which is why he has been starting well. But it also dries up over the course of the game because neither JC or Sexton are naturally good at recognizing that.

Yesterday the ball and man movement stopped completely towards the end and Portland were being very aggressive defensively. That needed somebody to make something happen, which is going to fall to Clarkson when there is no Conley.

 

[HermanG]

My point was that when the offense becomes stagnant you can't just give him the ball. With somebody like Mitchell you can give him the ball and he can make something happen, pretty much regardless of circumstance. Obviously bigs can generate offence but they still need the ball and they need space.

Lauri is more of an offball player and matchup dependent. If a team is guarding him tight with a small (like Caruso for bulls) then you need to run some action to get him free closer to the rim. If he is being guarded by a lumbering big then you want him faced up and with space.

In both cases it requires the man bringing the ball up to spot that and then some team action to set it up. At the start of the game they run a lot of action for Lauri which is why he has been starting well. But it also dries up over the course of the game because neither JC or Sexton are naturally good at recognizing that.

Yesterday the ball and man movement stopped completely towards the end and Portland were being very aggressive defensively. That needed somebody to make something happen, which is going to fall to Clarkson when there is no Conley.

I just wish Hardy would post him up. He has enough physicality to get leverage for a safe pass that any guard can make. Its essentially what they do with Embiid all day long.

And I know Lauri is no Embiid, but JC is no Mitchell either.

 

[HermanG]

Anyways I'm done ranting for the day. Hopefully JC and Lauri connection is restored. We need them both, and we need them elevating each other.

 

[Tremendous Upside]

Some more observations:

- Kessler is quietly having a fantastic rookie season for a relatively unheralded young big who's something of a throwback. His timing is uncanny - something you definitely can't teach - and the few warts he has (FT shooting, handling contact in low post defense against other bigs) are certainly nothing he can't improve at. This kid should be playing a LOT the rest of the way.

- I don't really understand any complaints about Lauri not getting enough touches. With Markkanen, it's not the number of touches... it's the quality. As someone pointed out, his points-per-touch stats are out of this world. A lot of it has to do with hot 3pt shooting lately, of course, but until recently he was also getting the ball to his "spots" very well. With Lauri, that usually means he's on the move toward the basket, with a step on his defender... or deep in the paint, having sealed off his guy. That's the stuff we should be focusing on, not giving him the ball on the perimeter against a set defense.

- I'm eating some crow on Sexton and I'm fine with it. He still makes too many mental mistakes for a PG, dribbles into the trees for no reason, lets his emotions get the better of him and wastes energy. BUT... at a point in the season where some guys on this team seem to have lost the basic ideas of unselfishness and ball movement that made the Jazz great early on, Sexton is trying hard to go the other way. And you have to remember that he's pretty much fighting the very core of who he used to be as a basketball player. I have to respect that if he's able to keep it up.

- I'm not loving Clarkson's aimless dribbling adventures into the teeth of the defense. It seems like every time there's at least a 50% chance of him losing the ball, and he rarely creates a real advantage - that stuff is so easy to anticipate and contain for NBA defenders. Like I mentioned recently, it's also a fact that Clarkson is passing less and shooting more these days. He's racking up counting stats but it's not really translating to wins. I think it's fair to say that he's playing with one eye on his free agency.

- The rep Olynyk has with the refs is just ridiculous. It's almost like he's not allowed ANY contact on defense these days. Sure he has a big bag of veteran tricks, but still, the whistle he gets is straight up unfair and harms the team as well. I'd like Hardy to draw some attention to it in the media.

 

[Step-Back Hook]

I understand you werent attacking him. But bigs can create offense even if they dont do it from the wing. That just happens on a different level of the field. Low or high post being a good place to start with back towards basket. Usually short dribble ending with cut to rim, cut and hook on the middle or midrange jumper or fadeaway. Its just as much creating your own buckets as dribble and drive is.

And we did see him drive to the paint with the ball earlier this year. For instance vs Suns he drove in 4 or 5 times from the arc and had a few well drawn and-1s as well. For whatever reason he isnt doing it anymore.

That is on him unless Hardy has for whatever reason told him not to do it.

Edit:
Oh and btw I wholeheartedly disagreed with your statement. You read me all wrong. You talk about dribble and drive as if it was the only way to create your own buckets.

On what I bolded: I think we saw one of the most passive Lauri after last Suns game where he hit his knee and shoulder with colliding Ayton. Last night he also seemed to fall in the start of the game https://www.nba.com/stats/events?CFID=&CFPARAMS=&GameEventID=9&GameID=0022200343&Season=2022-23&flag=1&title=Markkanen Lost Ball Turnover (P1.T1)
and in game when he was in the bench his knee was been wrapped up. There might be some real reason his first step seems off now. It is not just defenses being tighter or being fatigued as I have been thinking. Sure has to be at least a little bit of worried knowing his list of minor injuries each season holding him out for a while. IDK he ever had it on his knee so I guess it is nothing to be alarmed of too much.

 

[Elizah Huge]

All of the new posters coming to defend Lauri is not necessary. We all know he’s the best player on the team and we all know we wouldn’t be in the position we are without him. We also know we wouldn’t have been in a position to win last night without him.

With all of that being said he played the absolute worst he could on the final three possessions of the game and it is fair to be critical of him in that. Same as any other team would be with their star player.

 

[Agent#00]

Anyways I'm done ranting for the day. Hopefully JC and Lauri connection is restored. We need them both, and we need them elevating each other.

I don't think there's a broken connection between the two. Jc not passing to lauri is not intentional. He's too fun of a teammate to do that. He's just resorting back to his old self and that means less passing to anybody.

 

[Step-Back Hook]

All of the new posters coming to defend Lauri is not necessary. We all know he’s the best player on the team and we all know we wouldn’t be in the position we are without him. We also know we wouldn’t have been in a position to win last night without him.

With all of that being said he played the absolute worst he could on the final three possessions of the game and it is fair to be critical of him in that. Same as any other team would be with their star player.

As someone that has seen most of his games... It might have been THE WORST offensive takes he had in the clutch all his career. Most often he takes a shot or shares the ball without a TO but now his brains and moving froze twice. Whatever the reason I think he gets over it faster than his fans. I read in Finnish forum someone feels down half of this day for that. Thats quite extreme. I felt down a bit but not that long.

 

[Thee Jazz Fan]

lol, but we held them to 76 points over the last 3 quarters. You don't think that's good?

Oh, you’re one of those that rely on numbers? Geez

 

[seattlejazzfan]

They also kept getting Lauri matched on Simons over and over. Was this the result of the zone?

Bottomline is that Clarkson, Beasley, Fontecchio, THT shot a combined 2 for 19 on 3's for a whopping 11%. Teams just can't win that way.
They were wide open on alot of those shots too. Beasley and Simone missed several 3's with no defenders at all in their zip code.

yep. we think we are smart so we over-analyze this stuff. the jazz lost because those guys couldn't buy a three. sometimes its just that simple.