The Triple Team: 3 thoughts on Jazz vs. Clippers


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LOS ANGELES — Three thoughts on the Jazz's impressive 102-91 win over the Los Angeles Clippers from KSL.com's Utah Jazz beat writer, Andy Larsen.

1. Gordon Hayward's phenomenal game came at the right time

Gordon Hayward had his first great game of the season, a 33-point, seven-rebound, two-assist, two-steal performance that really carried the Jazz to the victory.

Hayward was phenomenal. He did his work from all ranges tonight — he scored five of his seven 3-point shots, hit well from mid-range, and got to the free-throw line eight times. He also still helped the team even without scoring, a feature of his game for his entire career. His defense, rebounding, and passing really helped the Jazz.

All in all, the Jazz outscored the Clippers by 22 points in the 40 minutes he was on the court. Of course, the flip side of that is that the Jazz were outscored by 11 points in the eight minutes he sat on the bench, but Quin Snyder took a new approach to substituting Hayward tonight that turned out to be really effective.

In short, Snyder put Hayward in the game at the ends of the first and third quarters and at the beginning of the second and the fourth quarters. Putting Hayward in during these periods of the game, normally reserved for bench players, meant the Jazz had a cohesive offensive attack during these stretches. Yes, it meant Hayward had to play more minutes than Snyder would probably have liked, and he had fewer minutes with the starting lineup. But the Jazz avoided their recent problem of collapsing in the secondnd quarter tonight as a result, even making up ground on the Clippers.

That change turned out to be key to the Jazz snapping a 13-game losing streak against Clippers.

2. Raul Neto also had his best game of this season

Believe it or not, but there was a stretch in the third quarter in which Raul Neto, the Jazz's rookie point guard from Brazil, took over the game. In his 10:45 of game time in that quarter, Neto put together 10 points on 4-4 shooting, including a three point make and a beautiful bank shot from high off the glass. He also picked up four assists and a steal during this stint.

But more specifically, during the stretch from the nine-minute mark to the six-minute mark of the third quarter, Neto was on fire. In that stretch, he either scored or assisted on every bucket, turning what was a Jazz deficit to a 9 point Jazz lead that they would never relinquish. He also played some really solid defense on Chris Paul over that stretch.

It was really important that Neto played well in that stretch, too. Trey Burke was ruled out for the rest of the game with back spasms, leaving Neto the only healthy Jazz PG. Neto got his extended stint, and took advantage.

3. Tonight was a good example of how the Jazz will need to win games

The Jazz's effort started tonight with their defense which was phenomenal against everyone on the team not named Chris Paul or Blake Griffin. Those two combined for 65 points on 28-38 shooting (73 percent!), but despite Los Angeles' stars having a great night, the Jazz played great defense overall.

Because of Griffin's and Paul's night, the Clippers ended up shooting 50 percent from the field. But the Jazz took away the easy shots for the Clippers. Utah held the Clippers to just 17 free throw attempts, usually they average 29 per game. The same was true at the 3-point line: the Jazz held the Clippers to just 12 attempts. Normally, they shoot double that amount, 23.8 per game on average.

The Triple Team: 3 thoughts on Jazz vs. Clippers

In the end, the Clippers were forced to take a whole bunch of mid-range shots. They did a good job of making them, to be clear, but still didn't have an effective offense.

The Jazz also did a good job of utilizing their length, in two ways. First, the Jazz worked well on the glass: the Jazz got 23 second-chance points tonight, while the Clippers only got 11. Secondly, they forced the Clippers to commit 19 turnovers, further short-circuiting their offense.

To be sure, Doc Rivers' team is responsible for their own failures in a lot of ways. More disciplined teams may have done a better job of holding on to the ball, or taking more efficient shots offensively. But the Jazz did a good job of making the Clippers' offense very, very reliant on just two players.

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Andy Larsen

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