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MHSL82
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Lowe: How the Jazz move ahead without Gordon Hayward
Not the entire article...
This was back right before December, so stats have changed.
Not the entire article...
This was back right before December, so stats have changed.
Without Hayward, the Jazz rely even more on Quin Snyder's whirring, Euro-infused system of screens, cuts, and drives. He calls it "advantage basketball."
Some players are so good, they constitute a living, breathing advantage. James Harden can walk the ball up, take one ho-hum screen, and destroy your defense.
Utah's players need a head start -- an advantage. Snyder's system runs so that whenever a player catches the ball, he has one.
Rodney Hood doesn't laze into a pick-and-roll with Favors. He waits for Favors to ding Ingles' defender with a back screen. If it hits, someone -- either Hood's guy or Favors' -- will sag back to patrol Ingles. That duty falls on Hood's man, Malcolm Brogdon, who paws at Ingles as Hood curls around Favors with 10-plus feet of daylight just as the ball arrives.
It's not a pick-and-roll so much as a catch-and-roll. Utah runs a lot of those.
Ricky Rubio-Favors pick-and-roll -- a prelude designed to give Mitchell breathing space.
The first rule of advantage basketball is that you never surrender your advantage. Get a five-foot head start, and you should expand it 10 feet before shooting or exchanging the baton. "You have to keep the advantage," Gobert says. "Punish them."
Hesitation erases an advantage. When Hood or Mitchell comes off a screen and pauses to pound the ball, you see Snyder's exasperation. The coaches have shown Mitchell that one aggressive dribble immediately after a catch covers as much territory as two or three ponderous ones, he says. Ingles will tell you: Decisiveness turns slow players into fast ones.
This stuff isn't unique to Utah, but the Jazz teach it in more granular detail. Hood is a master at faking a cut toward the rim before jetting out for a handoff:
Kevin Love, Karl-Anthony Towns, the Gasol brothers. Gobert is a lob-catcher who needs the ball at the rim. Rubio has surprised him with passes around the foul line.
"We will figure it out," Gobert says. "Some games were easier than others."
Without playmaking bigs, the Jazz have leaned on Rubio to do more heavy lifting in the half court -- a burden that has overwhelmed him at times. "Our team needs Ricky more than any team he has played on," Lindsey says.
Utah has scored just 99.4 points per 100 possessions with Rubio on the floor, equivalent to a bottom-five offense, per NBA.com. They have thrived when Mitchell plays without Rubio. Rubio's splits have been better over those past six games, and Utah needs to sustain the uptick. They face a cartoonishly hard December schedule -- the toughest month any team will play this season, per ESPN Stats & Information.
Rubio aside, smart teams switch a lot of Utah's fancy screening, confident the Jazz don't have zippy one-on-one types to exploit mismatches. Even Hood's handle can go awry in those spots. Few opponents fear Gobert or Favors in the post, even against little guys.
Favors is good, but his development -- and his development of skills that don't overlap with Gobert's -- has stalled out. His jumper is so-so, his post game mechanical and overcomplicated. The Jazz historically obliterated teams with that super-big pairing -- until this season, when the shooters who propped it up went elsewhere. Favors has looked more comfortable at center. He gets more shots in the restricted area when he plays without Gobert, per NBA.com.