The Triple Team: 3 thoughts on Jazz vs. Warriors


Save Story
Leer en español

Estimated read time: 5-6 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 Information in the story may be outdated or superseded by additional information.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 106-99 loss to the Golden State Warriors from KSL.com's Utah Jazz beat writer, Andy Larsen.

1. Jazz show impressive fight in shorthanded loss

Is there such thing as a moral victory? If there is, the Jazz's loss to the Golden State Warriors definitely qualifies.

This morning at shootaround, the team announced that they would be without Gordon Hayward after aggravating his ring finger injury on his left hand in Tuesday's game against Phoenix. That meant Hayward would join the Jazz's rapidly expanding inactive crew: Rodney Hood due to a hamstring injury, George Hill due to a sprained toe, Derrick Favors due to a knee bone contusion, and Alec Burks due to his continuing recovery from three surgeries in the last 12 months. That's an entire starting lineup, gone.

And while after a tough game against the LA Clippers last night it seemed like the Warriors might rest many of their players, in the end, it was only Shaun Livingston that got the night off. That meant the best offense of all time went against a Jazz B squad, where Shelvin Mack and Dante Exum would be responsible for Steph Curry, and Joe Johnson for Kevin Durant.

And you know what? It went pretty well! Sure, the Warriors started the game on a 29-5 run, which is horrific. During that stretch, the Jazz made simple mistakes on defense, allowed offensive rebounds even when the Warriors missed, let the league's fastest team run on them, and got nothing on the offensive end.

But from that point on, the Jazz outscored them 94-77. They did a lot of good things during that stretch: they defended as a team, forcing the ball into the hands of some of the Warriors' lesser players. They got some turnovers (17, to be exact), predicting the Golden State passes, intercepting them, and turning them into 23 points.

And then all of a sudden, that 25 point first-half lead was trimmed to just five. From that point, the Warriors cruised relatively easily: Kevin Durant got to the line, as he does, and scored 11 in the fourth to really seal it. But that impressive run back matters, and will bring the Jazz's bench some real confidence in future games, even when the starters return.

"I give them a lot of credit. They're a very well-coached team," Warriors head coach Steve Kerr said. "They're a tough team even with all of those guys out. They still have guys that can play. We let our guard down a little bit and they took advantage."

2. Jingles sets career-high

Joe Ingles had probably the best game of his NBA career Thursday night, coming off the bench and playing 35 minutes for the Jazz. He finished with a career-high 21 points (on 13 shots), five rebounds, three assists, four steals alongside only two turnovers while doing a lot of the ball handling. In fact, when he was in the game, the Jazz outscored the Warriors by 11 points; only those pesky other 13 minutes slowed the Jazz down.

Jingles is just a fun guy to root for. Yes, a whole lot of it is because he looks nothing like an NBA player. But he's also clearly one of the most personable guys in the league, and I think everyone on the team considers Ingles one of their favorite guys on the roster. Hayward spent Thanksgiving with him, Boris Diaw drinks espresso before every game with him, Dante Exum literally wore an Ingles jersey as a kid, and so on.

But Ingles has also been showing he is a legitimate NBA rotation player this season. First of all, he's been an incredible shooter from 3-point land so far this season, shooting 46.6 percent from beyond the arc. Even if he were Anthony Morrow bad (which is to say, very bad) at everything else, he'd still have a spot in the NBA if he could just do that.

But that's not all he does. I wrote about his finishing at the rim, still weirdly effective. He can operate off the pick and roll, and is good at seeing the long-distance pass for his teammates to get wide-open threes. And defensively, he's solid against slower players, and gambles usually well enough to get steals. His four steals tonight were smart, anticipation steals, doing well to read Warriors passes.

Jingles' steal and save here was fun: pic.twitter.com/cLJoQFINwv — Andy Larsen (@andyblarsen) December 9, 2016

He's not a high-usage guy, certainly, and still probably turns the ball over too much (which he's improved this season). But he's going to get a nice NBA check when he's a free agent this offseason that will set his children and his children's children up for life. Good for him.

3. Money maker for the Jazz

I thought this was an interesting piece of information from 1280 The Zone's afternoon radio host, Spence Checketts:

> Was just informed by a high ranking Jazz official that tonight is the highest grossing ticket sales game in Utah Jazz history. > > — Spencer Checketts (@1280Spence) [December 9, 2016](https://twitter.com/1280Spence/status/807072577004965888)

On one hand, that's probably not surprising: when the best offensive team in history is only going to come to visit once, the demand for those seats is going to be high. The Jazz use variable pricing, so tickets for this game were more expensive than any other game this season. Of course, the game sold out. It's a bummer that nearly the entire starting lineup was out for the game for the Jazz, but the fans in attendance still got a pretty good show.

The Jazz have done pretty well from an attendance point of view this season: they've filled 98% of seats this year according to announced attendance, good for 15th in the league. Certainly, that announced attendance is a lie, and reflects tickets sold rather than actual people-in-seats. But every other NBA team does that too, so at least it's an even playing field.

The arena's capacity will decrease next season after the arena's renovation is done, so this is going to be the last season of 19,911 announced attendance at games. I'll miss you, weird nearly-palindromic number.

Most recent Sports stories

Related topics

SportsUtah Jazz
Andy Larsen

    ARE YOU GAME?

    From first downs to buzzer beaters, get KSL.com’s top sports stories delivered to your inbox weekly.
    By subscribing, you acknowledge and agree to KSL.com's Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.

    KSL Weather Forecast