The Triple Team: Three thoughts on Utah-Portland preseason game


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SALT LAKE CITY — Welcome to the Triple Team! After each Jazz game, I'll give you my three thoughts on the game we witnessed. Here are three thoughts on the Jazz's 88-81 preseason loss to the Portland Trail Blazers Monday night.

1. Jazz's offense completely stalls against Portland

The Jazz put up only 81 points on offense tonight. That's bad, and continues a trend we've seen since the Phoenix game: in their last seven quarters, the Jazz have only put up 136 points total, good for an average of only 19.4 points per quarter.

It's not the pace of the game either. Last year, the Jazz often scored low points totals, but as often as not, the cause was the slow-moving offense that limited the number of total possessions. The game tonight featured 100 possessions, an above average total for an NBA game.

So what happened? Well tonight's offensive performance against Portland was the result of poor ball movement and execution, which led to non-ideal shot opportunities. Then, the Jazz made those at a horrific rate.

As Quin Snyder put it, "The ball sticks when you're not efficient, when you're not spaced well and there is nowhere to pass it. When you do pass it, it doesn't really do anything. It doesn't create much."

Overall, the Jazz shot just 9-42, or 21 percent, on shots outside of the paint. That's very bad, and will make it nearly impossible to win games.

But the inside shots weren't going down, either. The Jazz were only 11-25 from within the restricted area, only 44 percent. That's bad too.

Tom Smart/Deseret News
Tom Smart/Deseret News

That distribution of shots for the Jazz is about average, actually, for the team: last year, the Jazz averaged taking 40.6 shots per game outside of the paint. But these ones mostly didn't come from ball movement, but from the Jazz taking their opponents one-on-one, then forcing a look late in the shot clock. That's not ideal.

Before the game, Quin Snyder told us how his team, because of the lack of elite shooting on the roster, had to be incredibly precise in order to generate quality spacing, and therefore, quality looks. They weren't tonight, and it was clear that Snyder was frustrated.

"We weren't very good offensively. We didn't make plays. We didn't make shots. We have to learn to be better."

2. Jazz played a lot of quadruple wing lineups

The "Quadruple Wing" lineup is an unusual look for two reasons: it features neither a traditional point guard and only one traditional big at a time. Tonight, due to Rudy Gobert's foul trouble and their point guards' inability to score, the Jazz went to this unusual look early and often.

Overall, the Jazz played 11 distinct 4 wing, 1 big lineups tonight, for about 18 minutes of play.

  • Burks/Favors/Hayward/Hood/Millsap played 2:18, and finished +2.
  • Burks/Favors/Hayward/Ingles/Millsap played 3:04, and finished +4.
  • Favors/Hayward/Hood/Ingles/Millsap played 1:03, and finished +1.
  • Hayward/Hood/Ingles/Millsap/Withey played 2:26, and finished +4.
  • Hood/Johnson/Ingles/Millsap/Withey played 1:17, and finished +2.
  • Burks/Johnson/Ingles/Millsap/Withey played 1:08, and finished -1.
  • Burks/Hayward/Favors/Johnson/Millsap played 2:41, and finished +1.
  • Burks/Gobert/Hayward/Hood/Millsap played 0:53, and finished -2.
  • Burks/Gobert/Hayward/Johnson/Ingles played 0:57, and finished +1.
  • Gobert/Hayward/Hood/Johnson/Ingles played 1:01, and finished even.
  • Burks/Gobert/Hayward/Hood/Ingles played 0:41, and finished -2 before intentional fouling started at the end of the game.
Those lineups were a +10 for the night, and on a night where the Jazz ended up losing by 7, you can see why Quin Snyder chose to go to them so often. The quirky look worked.

They should be effective, so long as the opposing power forward can't power through whoever ends up guarding him, and the point guard isn't quick enough to fool a wing defender. With Portland missing Lillard and playing Meyers Leonard primarily at the 4, tonight was the perfect time to try those lineups out.

3. Tom Thibodeau sat next to Jerry Sloan

This is a very gossipy point, but I think it's interesting.

Former Chicago Bulls head coach Tom Thibodeau was in EnergySolutions Arena for tonight's game, seated next to former Chicago Bulls head coach Jerry Sloan.

Okay, okay, perhaps Sloan was more well known for his years coaching the Jazz.

Tom Thibodeau, the winning coach in Jerry Sloan's last career game, is seated next to him on the 11th row tonight. Two ex-Bulls coaches. — Kurt Kragthorpe (@tribkurt) October 13, 2015

Tom Thibodeau is sitting with Jerry Sloan at the Jazz game. What's that about? #PORatUTA — Laird Doman (@lairddoman) October 13, 2015

It could be just as benign as I described it up there: it could be two old-school former coaches, unable to leave the game they love, taking in a preseason basketball game together.

But, and forgive me for the imaginative leap, what if Thibodeau were somehow to advise the Jazz? Remember, Thibodeau was a fantastic defensive assistant for the Boston Celtics before leaving to coach the Chicago Bulls, at both places, he led either the first or second-best defense in the league for multiple seasons.

And moreover, Snyder said this about Thibodeau in March:

"Thibodeau's the dean of all defense. If you do what Thibodeau does, by and large, it's going to work out."

Can you imagine the effectiveness of the Jazz's defense, which was already number one in the league by a large margin during the second half of last season, with the benefit of Thibodeau's coaching? It'd be the "immovable object" of NBA defenses. It'd be legendary.

Again, there's no indication that a partnership is actually occurring. But a man can dream.

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Andy Larsen

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