LOS ANGELES — The Jazz face the Clippers in the Western Conference's 4/5 playoff matchup, featuring two teams that finished with identical 51-31 records. How will the teams match up against each other? Let's dive into the world of individual matchups as we try to learn something about the series to be. Fourth in the series: power forward.

Power forward

Jazz: Derrick Favors, Joe Johnson, Boris Diaw, Trey Lyles, Joel Bolomboy

Clippers: Blake Griffin, Brandon Bass, Paul Pierce

There's a reason this position has so many names: the modern power forward position is so flexible and variable that it seems like nearly anyone can play at the spot. Want to space the floor around one or even zero bigs? You can do that. Want to have a bruising strongman grabbing rebounds, setting screens, and hitting short shots? You can do that too.

And both teams can play in both directions. Blake Griffin and Derrick Favors are great examples of traditional power forwards: both are strong, best when they're bullying in the post and rolling to the rim. But both are showing the impact of the game changing around them, trying to adapt to the direction of much of the rest of the league.

Griffin's been pretty successful at this. He's expanded his game to be viable behind the 3-point line: he shoots nearly two a game from out there, and hits it at a 33 percent rate. That's just good enough that you have to worry about defending it.

He's also one of the best ball-handling bigs in the game. In particular, he averages 4.9 assists, and might be the second-best passer on the Clippers. Honestly, if I were them, I'd probably run more of my offense through Griffin's playmaking ability. The Warriors have shown what an advantage having a playmaking four is with Draymond Green, and the Clippers should be using it more.

Meanwhile, the Jazz have three very distinct looks they can go to to counter Griffin.

Derrick Favors is the traditional power forward choice. He's big, bulky, a good screen setter, a force on the boards. He's been injured in some ways all season long, but I was really impressed with his movement and energy on the court in game 82 against the Spurs. Favors often found himself matched up with guards and wings who might usually be able to be drive past a big, but Favors moved his feet well enough to stay in front and force difficult shots or a pass. He does a ton of work on this possession, moving all over the floor and ending up with the steal.

Here's Derrick Favors moving his feet to stop a pick and roll up high, then sprinting back to get a steal down low: pic.twitter.com/iGJgUPQHga — Andy Larsen (@andyblarsen) April 15, 2017

Boris Diaw has started 33 games for the Jazz this year, including the stretch at the end of the season. Diaw is actually pretty inconsistent: sometimes the defensive effort is there, and other times it looks like he skipped his pregame espresso, and he looks very slow to react to some pretty basic stuff.

But he does consistently give the Jazz a playmaking option from the post, and they've found some creative ways to use that. The Jazz probably have better options with everyone healthy, though: Gordon Hayward, Rodney Hood, George Hill holding the ball and running pick and roll and dribble handoffs are more efficient than Diaw post-ups, even if they usually end up as kickouts.

And then there's Joe Johnson at the four, which has been the Jazz's best option from a statistical point of view all season long. Joe Johnson playing power forward lineups have scored 119 points per 100 possessions while giving up only 107 points per possession on defense. Johnson allows the Jazz to space the floor around Rudy Gobert, giving plenty of room for Gobert to roll to the rim, or find open shooters if teams help too much.

Johnson's not a bad defensive option, either. He's strong enough to defend Griffin credibly early in a possession, though the Jazz prefer to bring help when Griffin starts going to work in the post. The Jazz are typically very good in rotations, and while Griffin is a good passer, they're usually able to mitigate the problem and even cause havoc in the resulting rotations.

And here's Joe Johnson doing work on Blake Griffin early, then getting some help from a fellow Joe to force the miss: pic.twitter.com/m1N1FIe6qQ — Andy Larsen (@andyblarsen) April 15, 2017

In the end, that's actually the option I expect the Jazz to play most. The team has been really cautious with Joe Johnson minutes all season long, trying to save him for this moment. And Quin Snyder has been hinting for weeks that Johnson was used incorrectly when he played backup SF, and power forward is the way to go.

I don't expect Lyles, Bolomboy, Bass, or Pierce to get many, if any non-garbage time minutes in this series. First of all, all of those players found themselves largely out of the rotation by the end of the season, all of them have such significant weaknesses that they become targets as soon as they step on the floor. The Clippers don't really have a natural backup PF option, then, but they're better if Luc Mbah a Moute plays those minutes, or they simply just play with four guards.

All positional previews:Point guard, shooting guard, small forward, power forward,, center.

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