SALT LAKE CITY — Three thoughts on the Jazz's 120-101 win over the Houston Rockets from KSL.com's Utah Jazz beat writer, Andy Larsen.

1. Jazz offense is cruising

The Jazz's offense was sensational tonight, scoring 120 points on only 91 possessions. That's a 132 offensive rating, and qualifies as the second best performance for the Jazz on that end of the Quin Snyder era. That's only behind the beatdown the Jazz put on the Lakers last season, but man, that Laker team was not trying.

The Rockets were trying, and while their defense isn't elite, it's at least not bottom-of-the barrel. But the Jazz made so many shots tonight, finishing 15-28 from outside the arc for a solid 53.6 percent. That's obviously very good, but I didn't think it flattered the Jazz too much: many of the shots were just that open.

After the game, a couple of Jazz players credited that shooting performance on making the extra pass. Here's one example. Rodney Hood was on fire in the first quarter, shooting 5-6 overall and 3-3 from beyond the arc. Naturally, the Rockets started to focus on stopping him. Hood, though he could have taken the heat check three here, instead passed it to Lyles for the wide-wide-wide open three.

Rodney Hood, even though he's on fire, passes to Trey Lyles for the easy 3: pic.twitter.com/Ilar9luJnW — Andy Larsen (@andyblarsen) November 30, 2016

A quick history of the heat check: for a long time, statisticians argued that there was no such thing as "the hot hand," the idea that players who made their last shot are more likely to make their next. Indeed, researchers found no correlation between the two. But now that we have SportVu data, it turns out that the reason this is true is because players who have made their last shot are more likely to take more difficult shots, artificially lowering their shooting percentage. If you adjust for that, there actually is a hot hand effect, although it is small; about a percentage point or two.

But here's the best way to deal with that: use that tendency of defenses to overreact to hot hands to find other open players. Hood does that here and gets an excellent shot for his team through his teammates.

Now, to be sure, Ryan Anderson's defense here is dreadful, and other teams would have done a much better and smarter job on the Jazz from the outside. But the Jazz have started to really take what bad defenses give them, and it's resulted in fantastic offensive performances like we've seen over the last four games.

2. Unique defense on Harden.

Publicly, Quin Snyder was pretty balanced on Rudy Gobert's play tonight.

"I don't want to get into too many superlatives with him. At the same time, I want to be very complimentary when a guy plays at that level."

Privately, though, Snyder and the coaching staff were marveling at Gobert's play against Harden. The Jazz asked a lot of Gobert tonight. To stop Harden and the Rockets the Jazz chose to defend all of his pick and rolls in a 2-man game, with whoever was guarding the screener (usually Gobert, with the Rockets' four-out style) and Harden. Usually, this sort of strategy takes away the Rockets' 3-point game, but means Harden gets 40 points or Clint Capela gets 15, as the team's big man is unable to defend both the lob threat and Harden's inside game.

Gobert can. Check this out: see how Gobert takes a full slide towards Capela to prevent the lob, then steps towards Harden once he goes up for the shot and gets the block?

Rudy Gobert able to shade toward Capela, preventing the lob, and still get back to block James Harden's shot: pic.twitter.com/YU8gXCYpOp — Andy Larsen (@andyblarsen) November 30, 2016

That's not just great length, that's great movement in the paint too. Gobert's been fantastic this year. Eric Gordon of the Rockets noticed too. "He is so long he can guard two when we are coming off the pick-and-roll, so you know he did a good job and they tried to take away from us making a lot of threes."

One other thing, while we're on the topic of Harden. His defense famously features an on-off switch: when he's engaged, he's actually pretty decent, but there are times where he just switches off. Here, he turns off for a second, leaving Hood open for a three, but watch how he contests the shot once he realizes it.

James Harden with the unusual low closeout on Rodney Hood: pic.twitter.com/SuvVTmNqVE — Andy Larsen (@andyblarsen) November 30, 2016

He goes low, and appears to touch Hood on the leg. That's kinda goofy, no? I'm not sure if he's trying to scare Hood here, or what, but it's certainly not your usual closeout.

3. Gordon Hayward's great game

Gordon Hayward finished with 31 points on 8-16 shooting, and added seven assists and five rebounds to his line tonight. That's Hayward's season high in scoring, and pushes his scoring average to 21.4 points per game, a career high.

That's also means that it's seven straight seasons that Hayward's improved his scoring average. Here's the table, coming into tonight:

Snyder continues to put more focus on Hayward's defense than his offensive game, which reveals his usual tendency towards creating the Jazz's identity. But the offense has been pretty excellent in the last week.

Related topics