Estimated read time: 3-4 minutes
This archived news story is available only for your personal, non-commercial use. Information in the story may be outdated or superseded by additional information. Reading or replaying the story in its archived form does not constitute a republication of the story.
SALT LAKE CITY — Three thoughts on the Jazz's 92-85 loss to the Chicago Bulls from KSL.com's Utah Jazz beat writer Andy Larsen.
1. Jazz can't make shots, lose game
Looking up and down the Jazz's box score for tonight, here's the complete list of players who shot well:
1. Derrick Favors (11-18)
2. Raul Neto (4-5)
Shelvin Mack was decent, going 5-11, but overall, having seven other players go 20-63 (31.7 percent) won't get it done.
In particular, Gordon Hayward's 4-13 and Rodney Hood's 5-17 just meant that enough shots went wayward so that the Jazz didn't have a chance to ever catch up to the Bulls.
On the other end, it seemed like the Bulls were making all sorts of shots that had no real business going in. That's especially true of Derrick Rose, who had his highest shooting percentage of any game this season.
How big of a difference was the shotmaking? The Bulls took 33 uncontested shots, without a defender within 4 feet, and made 21 of them. That's 63.6 percent. The Jazz, on the other hand, took 38 uncontested shots. They only made 14 of them, for 36.8 percent. That's the biggest difference in the game.
2. Derrick Favors' roll game
Favors was great for the Jazz all night, scoring a game-high 24 points by rolling to the rim over and over again. Mack and Favors seem to have found a great chemistry in the pick and roll, more so than with Raul Neto or Trey Burke.
He's gotten better and better at that in each season. Last year, Favors had the same ability to catch the ball, take two gigantic steps, and finish at the rim. But this year, he's added increased proficiency at the mid-range jump shot, so he can catch, lean towards the paint, then pull-up and have a pretty good chance of making the shot.
The result is that Favors now has the eighth most points per game on the roll of any player in the league, according to data collected by Synergy Sports. Favors' roll game might be the Jazz's most reliable offensive weapon, and had the Jazz's wings been able to make more shots tonight, they could have won the game.
3. Back-to-back game tomorrow
The Jazz have a chance to make up this loss with a win tomorrow night against the Milwaukee Bucks. Usually, playing on back-to-backs with no rest is a bad thing for the team, especially with the depth issues that the Jazz have.
But, for whatever reason, the Jazz have been surprisingly good on back-to-backs this year. On the second end of a back-to-back, the Jazz are 9-6 through 15 opportunities so far. That's much better than the NBA average winning percentage on similar games: 43 percent.
So why is that? Interestingly, the scoring is about the same for the Jazz on back-to-backs: 97.5 points per game compared to 97.9 points on average. But the Jazz seem to play better defense against the shot when they have no rest than in any other situation. Again, that's unusual. We'll see if that trend continues Sunday against Milwaukee.
