The Triple Team: 3 thoughts on Jazz vs. Pelicans


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SALT LAKE CITY — Three thoughts from KSL.com's Utah Jazz beat writer, Andy Larsen, as the Jazz easily beat the New Orleans Pelicans 101-87.

1. By stopping everyone but Davis, Jazz get wire-to-wire win

Anthony Davis played excellently tonight for the New Orleans Pelicans, about as well as any one player can play. He picked up 36 points on only 18 shots. He got 11 rebounds. He even picked up three blocks and two steals for the Pellies.

Here's an incredible stat for you, though: Davis played nearly the entire game tonight, 44 minutes and 20 seconds in all. In other words, there were only 3 minutes and 40 seconds he didn't play. During those 3 minutes and change, the Pelicans were outscored by 15 points, 19-4 to be exact.

Those 15 points are pretty important in a game the Jazz won by 14. From the game's opening whistle, Davis was the Pelicans' only real threat. In the first quarter, Davis had 14 points. The rest of the Pellies: two total points. After that Herculean effort to keep his team in the game, coach Alvin Gentry thought he needed a break, so he subbed him out for two minutes. The Jazz immediately went on a 12-2 run.

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When asked about getting contributions from the whole roster tonight, Gentry said this: "It can't be done by one guy. I don't know of a team in the league that's been able to do that. Even the great teams all have guys that contribute and do things to help you win. I thought he played well and did a great job. Now we have to have some other guys step up and do the same thing."

Even ignoring on/off court stats, Davis' impact is remarkable. Davis picked up about 30 percent of the Pelicans' rebounds tonight. Davis shot 66 percent from the field, the rest of the team shot 33 percent.

By the way, this is the second game running where the Jazz have played good defense on a team, but allowed the superstars to get "theirs." We asked Quin Snyder, Gordon Hayward, and others, if allowing them points was part of the plan, in order to stop the rest of the roster, but it didn't really seem like it: all parties involved stayed away from saying that. And indeed, the Jazz did send help to Davis tonight, and Chris Paul and Blake Griffin last night. All three players were effective anyway. It's possible that the Clippers and Pelicans are just two very top-heavy teams.

2. Meanwhile, Jazz score with balanced approach

While the Pelicans were putting more responsibility on one player than any other team I've ever seen, the Jazz took the opposite approach, spreading the ball around to achieve their offensive success.

Alec Burks had what was probably his best game of the season, getting 21 points on 9 of 14 shooting, adding in five rebounds and four assists. Snyder explained what led to Burks' success

"The biggest thing with Alec, and we keep emphasizing it with him, is his decisions. When he makes high-percentage decisions, he can shoot it, he can pass it, he can handle, he can finish. It's just a question of what the defense is giving."

But Burks wasn't the only one who scored well for the Jazz. Hayward and Rodney Hood scored relatively well too, with 17 and 16 points respectively. And then the Jazz got even more help from Rudy Gobert, Joe Ingles, and Trey Burke, who scored 26 points combined on 9-14 shooting.

In the end, that's what the Jazz's offense is going to need to succeed, especially with Snyder's egalitarian system. Tonight, they got it.

3. On runs

There was a small amount of hand-wringing about the Jazz's inability to put the Pelicans away earlier tonight. The Jazz got really big leads three times, only to let New Orleans back into the game:

  • The Jazz were up by 21 by the middle of the second quarter, but then the Pelicans responded with a 14-2 run.
  • In the third, the Jazz got back up to a 16-point lead, then the Pelicans responded with a 9-0 run.
  • Then, in the fourth, the Jazz went ahead by 21 again, and then allowed the Pellies to go on a 22-7 run.
To be sure, you'd like to avoid this happening multiple times in a game, and the Jazz could have saved some miles on their best players' legs. But teams everywhere always do this, it turns out. Actually, one of the best predictors for how two teams will perform during a given stretch is how big the current score gap is.

This is a little bit of a complicated graph, but bear with me here:

The Triple Team: 3 thoughts on Jazz vs. Pelicans

See how, when a team is up by a certain amount of points, they actually start to lose points on the scoreboard? Whether it be for reasons of refereeing, or teams taking the foot off the gas, or whatever it is, teams perform much worse when they're at a significant advantage.

This also should mostly disprove the idea of "momentum" in basketball games. If you're winning, you probably have the momentum, right? But by and large, teams that are leading in a game start to play worse.

In other words, it shouldn't be surprising when the Jazz got a big lead tonight, then let the Pelicans back in. It also means that the Jazz's ability to then respond to those Pellies runs, despite still having the lead, shouldn't be ignored either.

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