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SALT LAKE CITY — Three thoughts on the Jazz's 89-82 loss to the Boston Celtics from KSL.com's Utah Jazz beat writer, Andy Larsen.
1. Trey Lyles aggressive and skilled
Lyles' performance will be the talking point for Jazz fans watching summer league throughout, and tonight is no exception. Tonight, he scored 26 points (tying the high in the 10-game history of the Utah Jazz Summer League), and picked up 11 rebounds, two assists, and four turnovers.
After the game, Lyles spoke to the media about his performance and his role on the young team:
"I take the loss personally because I'm the leader of this team, and they all look to me for guidance and knowledge, I'm definitely trying to embrace my role as best as I can."
That's interesting, because Lyles is actually the youngest player on the Jazz's summer league roster by a solid 17 months. Still, what he said wasn't wrong: you can tell players are looking to him for guidance on the court, pointing at defensive mistakes and deferring to the talented Lyles on the offensive end.
What is Lyles trying to work on for next season?
"I think playmaking ability, from the top or from the wings. Just being able to drive and finish, still trying to work on that a lot."
He's was extremely aggressive driving to the rim from outside tonight, including a great drive and dunk sequence in the fourth quarter.
Nice moves, @TreyMambaLyles! #UtahJazzSLhttps://t.co/CKmcj0FJOn — Utah Jazz (@utahjazz) July 6, 2016
Playmaking is still a little bit shy of where he probably wants it to be: he's driving, but his two assists to four turnover ratio indicates that he's usually holding on to the ball a little too long. He's so good at finishing around the rim that teams will collapse and there will be open players to kick out to. The sooner he develops feel while he aggressively drives, the better. It's great that we're talking about this for a 6'10'' player, though: he'd be the tallest player on Boston's summer league roster, for example.
After Tuesday's reported Boris Diaw trade, Lyles will have to fight with the veteran for minutes. But that's okay: I'm not sure that there's a player that I'd like Lyles to emulate more in terms of his feel for the game and defensive smarts than Diaw.
2. Defensive rotations tightened up some
Summer league head coach Johnnie Bryant's first takeaway after the game was an improved, though still flawed interior defense.
"Last night, we gave them 40 points in the paint. We gave them 28 tonight. The thing that hurt us was fouling once they got to the paint. They shot 37 free throws. We cleaned up, basically, them not scoring in the paint, but then once they get to the paint we have got to do a better job of shwing their hands and being disciplined to where they don't shoot 37 free throws."
It's at least good the Jazz were in positions to make defensive plays tonight, but sending the Celtics to the line 37 times is rough. Interestingly, it wasn't necessarily the Jazz's interior players that picked up all of the fouls: the Jazz's big men picked up nine fouls between the four of them. 20 other fouls came from the perimeter players.
This is a problem the real Jazz had too at the beginning of the season in 2015-16, sending opponents to the line way too often. It might be the hardest thing to do in basketball, finding the fine line between defending effectively and fouling, and it's the rare summer league game that doesn't fall way short of that goal.
3. NBA experimenting with four referees
One other possible reason for the big number of fouls called in tonight's game (51 overall): four, rather than three, referees on the court. Tonight's crew of 3 NBA and 1 D-League official called the game from both new and familiar vantage points, and there were some strengths and weaknesses to the approach.
The idea is an experiment favored by the Jazz. Hopefully, the thinking goes, having four referees will minimize blind spots for the officials, where currently lots of player body traffic gets in the way of making good calls. The league tried at least two configurations: having two refs on the baseline and two refs in the back corners, and a 1-2-1 approach with one ref fully behind the action.
I've reached out to the NBA for comment on how they think the experiment is going, and hope to have a more detailed look at the results soon. I'm glad, though, that they are willing to play with this, and think summer league is the perfect time to try out novel suggestions that may make an impact on how the game is played, or refereed, down the road.
