ATLANTA — Three thoughts on the Utah Jazz's 104-90 loss to the Atlanta Hawks from KSL.com's Jazz beat writer, Andy Larsen.

1. Offense can't open the mid-range gift

Atlanta's defense came into Monday night's game with a very clear game plan: sink the pick and roll defender all the way into the paint, and force the Jazz to take midrange jump shots. Here's an example of how they were playing defense:

The Hawks gave every Jazz pnr player, not just Rubio, lots of space to take midrange jumpers pic.twitter.com/Upr8Xl8seS — Andy Larsen (@andyblarsen) January 23, 2018

Famously, midrange jump shots are the least efficient shots in basketball. With Rodney Hood out, only Ricky Rubio among the Jazz's ball-handlers feels comfortable taking that shot. Also famously, Rubio's shot is very inconsistent. Meanwhile, Donovan Mitchell, Joe Ingles, Raul Neto and Alec Burks chose to attack the rim anyway. That meant they had to make tough plays in traffic: either contested finishes or needle-eye passes.

In the "contested finishes" category, it's fair to say the Jazz didn't do well. The Jazz actually got 29 attempts at the rim during the game, a really good number, and even got fouled on nine other attempts. 38 combined forays to the rim is actually pretty good, it's a 93rd percentile performance among all NBA games this year, according to Cleaning the Glass.

But they only finished 14 of those shots and only shot 71 percent from the free-throw line, not enough to base an offense around. That's an ugly efficiency.

And then they certainly turned the ball over enough on those drives: the Jazz had 17 turnovers during the game. Mitchell had six of them in one of his worst games of the season, as he misguidedly drove into traffic repeatedly.

Triple Team videos: with the way the Hawks were defending, Mitchell faced a lot of bodies when driving to the rim. pic.twitter.com/QnDdzVV5d2 — Andy Larsen (@andyblarsen) January 23, 2018

Even when the passes did find their target, the big men didn't reliably finish down low. Rudy Gobert seems like he's still playing a little bit off-balance, where he has trouble finishing after slight contact.

Again, because of the way Atlanta was playing defense, the Jazz also never had good looks from downtown. They ended up with only 15 3-point attempts on the game and made only four. That's another source of offense that the Jazz need in order to succeed.

This is a game where Hood, as a midrange specialist, would have really helped. But when the Jazz came out and missed their first 10 shots, five of them from Rubio, that showed just how successful the Hawks' game plan was going to be.

2. Defense may have been worse

So while the offense was the culprit from a statistical point of view (a 93 offensive rating is a lot worse than a 110 defensive rating), from watching the game, I felt that the Jazz's defense was perhaps the bigger issue. Time and time again, the Jazz allowed penetration on the perimeter, giving Dennis Schroder and others a lane to the rim.

Sometimes, the culprit was communication. Check out this play in the third quarter: Schroder is baseline and controlled until Mitchell jumps towards the screen.

Here's both Favors and Mitchell jumping to the same side of the screen, leaving Schroder to drive freely to the rim: pic.twitter.com/gSCyGvOs0A — Andy Larsen (@andyblarsen) January 23, 2018

I think I know what Mitchell is going for here: he's trying to get around the screen quickly so he can stay in front of Schroder if he goes left. But if he's going to commit that much, then Derrick Favors needs to be between the ball and the rim for obvious reasons. While it's a quick move, Mitchell can't be that off-balance.

At other times, though, there were simple blow-bys. Like here, Ingles just gets beat by his man. Gobert comes over to help, but it's not surprising to find an Atlanta teammate there for the easy finish despite that.

Ingles gets blown by here: pic.twitter.com/EonR4uw7XE — Andy Larsen (@andyblarsen) January 23, 2018

Ingles wasn't the only one this happened against. In fact, I don't think there was a player who consistently held his man in front of him. The Jazz's perimeter defense just needs to be more solid than that.

Finally, the Jazz just gave up way too many corner threes (12 overall) through lackadaisical rotation. Here, Royce O'Neale is trying to help, but completely loses track of his man.

Here, Royce doesn't keep his head on a swivel, and his man is no longer where he thinks he is: pic.twitter.com/gRIlbyW2oA — Andy Larsen (@andyblarsen) January 23, 2018

This stuff can be fixable, but there's a lot of work to do. I think a clearer direction for the team after the trade deadline would help.

3. Calling out one player specifically

In my mind, though, the biggest culprit in terms of lack of defensive discipline is Joe Johnson. He hasn't been anywhere near active enough on the defensive end this season and it's costing his teammates points repeatedly when he's on the floor.

Salt City Hoops' Dan Clayton had this thread on Twitter with videos after the New York Knicks game, detailing some of the ways that they attacked Johnson repeatedly, especially down the stretch.

We saw this again repeatedly in tonight's game, too. I'd forgive this play below if Johnson made any impact on the ball, but, well, he doesn't. It's just that he sinks off of Dewayne Dedmon (admittedly, a new 3-point shooter, but he's shooting 37 percent) for the corner three.

And Joe Johnson is neither helping nor defending his man here: pic.twitter.com/4jZ9uREmCC — Andy Larsen (@andyblarsen) January 23, 2018

The other thing about Johnson is that he rarely gets back in the play to help rebound. With all of the defensive pressure the Jazz put on Gobert to help stop shots at the rim, Johnson needs help to get the ball on the backside. But he's done a horrendous job of that all season long: teams get 5.7 percent more of their offensive rebounds when Johnson's in the game compared to when he isn't. That differential leads the league and is worth a few points all by itself.

The offense has clearly let up a step, too. Overall, it feels like Johnson is forcing more shots than ever before without getting enough of the easy ones to make it worth it.

It all adds up to a tremendously negative impact. The Jazz are 12 points worse per 100 possessions when Johnson's on the floor. Even when taking into account the fact that he's mostly playing with the bench units (as ESPN's Real Plus-Minus does), the bad news holds up: he's 460th out of 472 NBA players this season. Tonight, the Jazz were outscored by 17 in the 16:19 Johnson was on the floor.

Some team might still want Johnson at this point, banking on an improvement in effort in the playoffs. And his expiring $10 million contract might be useful trade bait. But if he's not traded before Feb. 8, I wouldn't be surprised if the Jazz pursue buyout options.

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