I’m not saying it’s all that matters, but you can’t ignore the way difference in the way teams play. Some teams are going to take Rudy away first and foremost. Doesn’t mean we hit him every time we could, but that’s the reality of how some teams are going to defend. CLE was hard set out on taking away the big. Joe Ingles was literally walking to the basket and laughing as he took free layups because the Cavs wouldn’t leave him. He probably could have gotten a couple more shots, but there’s no way he was going to get a ton of good looks just because of how they were playing defense. Feeding him inside was not the way to play against that team.
During this win streak, the amount of shot attempts is almost exactly the same for Gobert and Whiteside. Whiteside didn’t even play in all of them so there was no big to feed for some portions of those games. The difference hasn’t been feeding the bigs more, it’s more accurate shooting. The Jazz have shot 44.4% from 3 since this winning streak started. Before that it was just 34.4%. That’s 5 more threes a game.
This isn’t to say that we’re not missing the bigs sometimes, but it’s pretty obvious where the difference has been. When shoot like **** and Gobert has 4 shots….yeah those times where we missed him are going to burn in our memory. But you’re not going to notice as much when you’re making 20 three’s a game.
There’s a method to the madness. I don’t think the Jazz get the best shot every time and there’s some things they could do better….but they are the best in the league in terms of taking the right shots. That’s why they’re having a historically great offensive season. They were near the top of the league all season long, but once the shooting came back (and Gay started taking JC’s shots) they elevated to this historically good level.