TORONTO — Three thoughts on the Jazz's 101-93 loss to the Toronto Raptors from KSL.com's Utah Jazz beat writer, Andy Larsen.

1. Raptors shoot 18 more FGAs than Jazz to win game

There's so much that happened in tonight's game that I want to get to, but let's just look at the box score first. Despite holding the Raptors to under 40 percent shooting, the Jazz allowed the Raptors to score 101 points and 118.7 points per 100 possessions, an excellent total.

How? Well the Raptors turned the ball over only four times, and picked up 21 offensive rebounds. In the end, they shot the ball 91 times in 90 possessions (remember, offensive rebounds don't count as a new possession). That's crazy, and had more shots gone down from DeMar DeRozan, or had it been a faster tempo game, we'd really be appreciating what the Raptors accomplished from an offensive standpoint.

They did it by changing up their starting lineup. Rookie Pascal Siakam had started every game for the Raptors, until tonight, but played only four minutes off the bench tonight. Instead, Toronto coach Dwane Casey started Lucas "Bebe" Nogueira and Jonas Valanciunas together, and got what he wanted: an incredible number of offensive rebounds.

I mentioned that the Jazz only forced four turnovers, but that's more a product of the Raptors not making any mistakes than anything. But the Jazz turning the ball over 19 times overall was really, really damaging. They had eight turnovers in the fourth, which keyed the Raptors' comeback.

Shelvin Mack played a really excellent first three quarters, then subbed into the fourth with 5:12 left. Then, he let Lowry get a three, then fouled Kyle Lowry for an and-one, then turned the ball over, then fouled again, then turned it over again, then let Lowry get open for a three again. Snyder called a timeout, and Mack left the game with 2:42 left. In that two and a half minutes, the Jazz lead went from four points to negative six points.

I don't blame Snyder for making that substitution, because before that, Mack was excellent: his 17 points was the team high for the game, and he was shooting efficiently and taking care of the ball. But it's abundantly clear that it would have been a different story if George Hill was available.

(By the way, Hill's still recovering from his concussion. The word today was he wasn't able to eat anything beyond liquid or rice since his getting stitches in his lip, which obviously is not conducive to solid basketball playing.)

After the game, Snyder was short and to the point. "We played really good defense. We just didn't get rebounds and we turned the ball over." Simple enough.

2. Let's talk about refereeing

The refereeing was really frustrating tonight, where both players and fans tonight felt that the whistle was really inconsistent.

Here's what I saw happened in both the third and fourth quarters. Early in the quarter, the Raptors committed a lot of ticky-tack and off-ball fouls to get in the bonus very early in the quarter, before the six-minute mark in both cases. The crew called them. But after the Jazz got in the bonus, the referees stopped calling clear fouls on the Raptors, so that the Jazz wouldn't go to the line on every possession. That let the Raptors hold and grab inside and on the perimeter, hurting the Jazz's offensive motion and ability to rebound.

Meanwhile, on the Raptors end, they weren't yet in the bonus, so the crew started calling touch fouls on the Jazz. Lowry, in particular, was very effective in drawing the officials' whistles by throwing himself to the floor. That's part of what makes Lowry a great player! But it's also part of what makes Gordon Hayward a good player too, and it was discouraging to see Lowry get to the line for 11 FT attempts while Hayward only got 2 FT attempts.

Rudy Gobert was asked about the refereeing after the game. "They're allowed to do things that we're not allowed to do, so it's tough to play," Gobert said. "We turned it over 20 times, it's not the refs fault. We've got to keep playing through it. We know we're the Utah Jazz, we've just got to play, and we still should have won this game despite that."

The funny thing is, I don't think the referees were biased, particularly. I think they were just trying to manage the game. It's a tricky balance, because calling fouls every time a foul technically occurs would result in really boring basketball games. I mean, ending possessions by sending a team in the bonus to the FT line? Yawn.

But the problem is that this "game management" style of refereeing leads, necessarily, to missed calls and inconsistency across the 48 minutes. This debate is a real battle between the NBA and the league's officials right now.

Here's an example. Last week, SBNation's Tom Ziller wrote an editorial column in favor of the league's Last Two Minute report. The National Basketball Referees Association responded as follows:

That "a focus on stats promotes stat-oriented officiating rather than game-oriented officiating that better balances game flow and fair play" line reveals a lot, in my opinion. The stat being kept here is "What percentage of the calls are you getting right?," and the league's refereeing association says that stat is less important than the flow of the game.

And maybe it is! In the end, it comes down to which aspect of the experience you think is most important: the entertainment value of the game, or the win-loss decision. Tonight's game was incredibly entertaining. It was also just very frustrating from a competitive point of view because it didn't necessarily put the two teams on the same level for all 48 minutes.

3. Jazz ball movement excellent throughout

What makes the first two points here so frustrating is that the Jazz played very well to be able to have a chance to win against the Raptors. After all, playing the league's second-best backcourt without George Hill would normally be a recipe for disaster.

I was most impressed by the Jazz's offensive execution and ball movement, making extra passes to get open 3-point looks for their teammates. Here's an example (I apologize for the bad video quality... I'll get it fixed):

Gobert sets the screen for Hayward who begins to drive. Raptors send their team to cut him off, so he throws it back out to Mack, who then drives and collapses the defense. He passes it back out to Hayward, who also drives and collapses the defense. Then it's Mack's turn, and Mack forces the defense to come over before swinging it to Joe Ingles for the open corner three. He misses, but that's exactly the shot the Jazz want.

A few other mentions here for players who did some nice things. Derrick Favors had an excellent first half, moving clearly with more bounce than he did on Monday or Tuesday. Dante Exum cut well in his first game back. Joe Johnson made the first part of the fourth quarter his, it was his fault the Jazz had the lead that they ended up letting slip threw their grasp. And Gobert was 9-10 from the free throw line, after a tough stretch from the charity stripe over the last couple of games.

It's funny: the Jazz now have lost two in a row after winning four in a row, and yet I feel like they've played better during the losing streak than the winning streak. The Jazz's level of competition just increased, and they got a little bit unlucky. Playing at Minnesota Saturday will be a good test to see if they can keep those improvements, despite the losses over the last two games.

Related topics