LOS ANGELES - Three thoughts on the Jazz's 96-94 win over the Los Angeles Clippers from KSL.com's Utah Jazz beat writer, Andy Larsen.

1. Exum's defense, wing rebounding wins game for Jazz at the end.

Coach Quin Snyder put Dante Exum into the game with under three minutes left, undoubtedly to get Exum some experience playing close minutes against one of the NBA's elite one-on-one wing scorers, Jamal Crawford.

The gambit worked: Exum's three defensive plays against Crawford in the game's final minute allowed the Jazz to turn a tie game into a win. The first, with 49 seconds to play involved Crawford actually pulling up and elbowing Exum in the face, which was enough for Crawford to miss the shot. The second, off an inbounds play with 30 seconds left, had Exum pushing the ball away from Crawford and towards the much more unreliable Austin Rivers, who turned it over.

But the game's best defensive play was also its final one. The Clippers had the ball with 15 seconds left and a one-point deficit, and gave the ball to Crawford to do his thing. Exum moved his feet perfectly on the play, stopped Crawford from getting to the rim, then stripped the ball cleanly as Crawford rose for the jumper. There's really nothing Exum could have done better, and it sealed the Jazz win.

The Jazz really missed Dante Exum's defense. He played Jamaal Crawford perfectly on this play. He has a chance to be an elite defender. pic.twitter.com/M9hI9EJzvI — Jeremiah Jensen (@JJSportsBeat) October 11, 2016

Exum's still struggling offensively. He was only 1-5 tonight from the field in 22 minutes, and still gets into the paint and jumps before really having a safe outlet for the ball. But his defense will keep him on the court, and maybe even get him critical minutes like the ones he played in tonight.

By the way, props to Jazz wings on their rebounding tonight. Last year, the Jazz had big problems in the clutch defensively. Exum helps the on-ball part of that, but a good 24 seconds of defense isn't enough: the Jazz also have to get the defensive rebound. Tonight, Chris Johnson picked up seven rebounds in his 12 minutes on the court from the wing position. Joe Ingles added five, including a free throw offensive rebound to seal the game. Point guard George Hill, who didn't play in the fourth quarter, collected eight rebounds.

2. Takeaways from starting group

Of course, you can make a case that this was an example of the fourth quarter actually being the least meaningful part of the game. After all, the best players on both sides (Chris Paul, Blake Griffin, DeAndre Jordan, Rodney Hood, George Hill, Rudy Gobert) all sat out crunch time. Those players stars all played over 20 minutes, so we got a pretty good look at them. What can we learn?

Monday night was the Jazz's first game without Hayward, and so we started to see how the Jazz are going to distribute possessions offensively without him. Interestingly, it was Joe Johnson who finished with the highest Jazz usage rate in the starting lineup, though not by a big margin and largely because of Johnson's four turnovers. Johnson's still struggling to find his fit, I have to say. He took two shots from behind the arc, but the other six were all pretty difficult mid-range looks that weren't really in the flow of the offense.

Rodney Hood and George Hill also took a bigger role and had much more success than Johnson. Hood, especially, was great, scoring 17 points and carrying the Jazz offensively for stretches. Under Hill's command, the offense generally ran smoothly, and he led the team with four assists.

Diaw's game was up-and-down. You can see what he contributes on the offensive end with spacing and smarts, but on defense, he was definitely bested by Blake Griffin, especially in the post. Griffin's a great post player, so that's not really a surprise, and you'd hope that Diaw wouldn't be guarding Griffin more more than short stints when Favors is healthy. Trey Lyles is probably a better player at this point, but maybe it makes sense to have him get more touches with the second unit.

3. Just two threes

The Jazz made only two 3-pointers all game long on 14 attempts. Last season, the Jazz had only one game out of 82 with only two 3-point makes (their fewest), and only four games out of 82 with 14 or fewer attempts.

It would be less notable, except it's been somewhat of a trend for the team so far. The Jazz are shooting just 15.3 attempts per game in preseason so far (last in the league) after averaging over 23 last season. In percentage terms, whereas 29.7 percent of their shots were threes last year, only 21.2 percent are this season.

That's a surprise, because the Jazz are a much better 3-point shooting team on paper this season. You'd think that'd be especially true with Boris Diaw making the start in place of Derrick Favors.

I think timing is a big part of the problem. Catch-and-shoot threes aren't usually the result of one action, but the cumulative result of a whole bunch of defense-shredding passes and movement. The Jazz aren't there right now as a team, and it's showing. Of course, there's no guarantee that they'll be there either by the beginning of the regular season, and especially with Hayward out, I'd bet against it. But I'd bet the Jazz's three-point rate rises throughout the season as the team figures out who they are, especially in some new 4-out and 5-out looks.

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