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SALT LAKE CITY — Welcome to today's Jazz Daily! Today, the Utah Jazz held a single, nearly-four-hour long practice rather than holding two practices as they have in previous days of training camp. Afterwards, media spoke with Thabo Sefolosha and Ricky Rubio, along with head coach Quin Snyder.
Ready for the Hill
The Jazz have their first big scrimmage of training camp Friday at 2 p.m in front of military servicemen at Hill Air Force Base. While the public is not allowed, Snyder is still interested to see how his players perform differently.
"It's not a game, but the lights are different. I'd like to see how we defend in a game situation, I'd like to see our habits, where they are, and offensively I'd like to see how we function," Snyder said. "I think it will be good for us to play and go up and down with a clock and a score is always a little bit different. Guys will probably be a little bit excited, and we'll see some mistakes because of that."
It's the second consecutive year that the team has held the annual training camp scrimmage at a private location. Last year, the team surprised Granger High School students expecting an all-school assembly by showing up for a scrimmage.
Draft, resting rule changes
On Thursday, the NBA Board of Governors approved two rule changes to the game. First, the NBA lottery odds have changed, to make it less likely that the worst teams in the league earn the first pick. That passed by a vote of 28-1-1. The team that voted against the measure was Oklahoma City, and Dallas abstained, according to ESPN's Adrian Wojnarowski.
These don't take effect this upcoming draft, but will in the 2019 NBA Draft. The measure seeks to remove incentives for bad teams to become worse, but may add an incentive for mediocre teams to become bad.
Second, the player rest rules have been approved. The measure allows NBA commissioner Adam Silver to fine teams that rest players without injury for marquee, national TV games, or on certain road games. That will go into effect in the upcoming 2017-18 season, according to reports.
Donovan Mitchell response
The University of Louisville has been squarely in the crosshairs of an FBI corruption investigation that has resulted in the indefinite leave (it appears to be a firing for all intents and purposes) of their head coach Rick Pitino. In particular, it seems recruits were paid to attend Louisville, though by no means are they the only school who engaged in such behavior. For a full update on the story, these two articles are good places to start.
Naturally, people have wondered whether Donovan Mitchell, a highly-touted Louisville recruit, also received payment which would have violated NCAA rules. We've requested to Jazz PR to speak to Mitchell, but they've declined, citing that Mitchell spoke to media on Monday, before Pitino was fired.
That being said, Mitchell responded to Pitino's firing on Twitter:
We'll see what happens with this one. Mitchell's right: it's hard to blame any of the players involved in this situation.
High-energy, pressure defense
This hasn't been a stated big focus so far in training camp, but it's come up enough times in passing that I'm eager to watch for it in the scrimmage and in the first preseason games.
It seems that a few members of the Jazz have been using a really high-energy pressuring style of defense to good effect so far. Take what Snyder said about Mitchell's defensive efforts Thursday:
"If you're on the wing and you want to get open, you better be ready to try hard. Because he's going to make it hard for you to catch the ball."
Rubio, too, said he's pressuring more than he was able to in Minnesota.
"With this coach, he gives me a lot of freedom," he said. "I go out there and pressure the ball and be aggressive."
And when Thabo Sefolosha talked about his defense today, he said, "there's a lot of it that's technique, there's a lot of it that's sheer will."
You may notice another commonality between those three players: they're new to the Jazz. In the past, a lot of Utah's players have talked about how playing with Rudy Gobert has freed them up to be more aggressive on the wing, knowing that Gobert is there to deal with anything at the rim. It seems like the newcomers are starting to realize the potential of playing with that force on the perimeter.
