LOS ANGELES — Three thoughts on the Jazz's 97-95 win over the Los Angeles Clippers from KSL.com's Utah Jazz beat writer, Andy Larsen.

1. Joe Johnson and his buzzer beater defeat the Clippers

Seven years came down to one moment. That's how long it had been since the Jazz last won a playoff game, and with 13 seconds left, Johnson got the ball when the game was tied. That's when this happened. Sorry for the bonus Titanic theme.

BUZZER BEATER ALERT!!! 🚨🚨🚨 JOE JOHNSON AT THE BUZZER IN LA GIVES THE JAZZ A 1-0 LEAD!!!! IT'S EVEN BETTER WITH TITANIC MUSIC!!! 🏀🚢🎶 pic.twitter.com/DiXVxVatmJ — 🚢Titanic Hoops🏀 (@TitanicHoops) April 16, 2017

Two things set this play up. First, that Quin Snyder didn't call timeout meant that neither team had a chance to adjust the unit on the floor. That meant Jamal Crawford was on the court in a critical possession. Jamal Crawford is [one of the 10 worst defenders](http://www.espn.com/nba/statistics/rpm/_/page/12/sort/DRPM) in the NBA. Second, Joe Ingles recognized this, and wanted to get a switch so that Crawford was the one guarding Johnson, the ball-handler and Utah's best scorer Saturday night.

I asked Ingles what he was thinking on that play.

"Obviously, with Blake on him, it's not as easy to back down, or get to the spot he wants to get to. I knew Jamal was on me, and thought if I can, I'd try to make them switch," Ingles said. "They'd been switching a lot one through four, and so I set a half-decent screen. They switched it, and we got him with eight seconds to go with an iso."

Think about how smart this is! The Jazz didn't really have a play call here that they were planning on. It was just the players involved, especially Ingles, noting the situation in three seconds and sprinting over to set a screen to give Johnson enough time to take advantage. It's incredible.

Again, credit should also go to Snyder for believing in his players to get a good shot. Timeouts generally hurt the offensive team there, not help them. Snyder's actually one of the best coaches in the league at drawing plays after a timeout, he was fourth last year at 0.95 points per possession.

That's certainly well short of the value of a no-timeout, semi-transition possession that the Jazz got. Even after a made basket with no timeout this year, the Jazz are at 1.05 points per possession.

"Getting the ball in at that point is difficult," Ingles said, when I asked him about going with no timeout. "There's holding, it's for the game. We feel like we've got smart enough players to get a good shot off without calling one. On that one, coach trusted us to get a good shot off, and we got a layup."

Johnson, by the way, was typically understated. "I just saw the clock going down so I knew I had to make a play. I just wanted to get as close as I could to the basket, and it was a good thing it went down."

Yes, Johnson's talent carried the day. But the Jazz got that look because they're one of the smartest teams in basketball.

2. Rudy Gobert's knee injury

Let's say you were writing a movie script, and you really wanted to indicate a team was cursed in the most dramatic way possible. You might, to inflict maximum pain, wait until the team had made the playoffs for the first time in many seasons, and then injure that team's best player. That'd really rub it in, after all.

If you did it in the first game of the playoffs, critics would tilt their heads. "A little too on the nose," they'd say. Your Oscar for screenwriting is probably gone at that point, just with that one mistake.

Injuring the team's best player on the first play of the first game? That's just preposterous. That earns you a Razzie, and you're fired. It's the last movie you'll ever write.

Well, guess what? That's actually what happened to the Utah Jazz tonight. Rudy Gobert hit knees with Luc Mbah a Moute as he went around a Gobert screen, sending Gobert to the floor and out of the game in the game's first 17 seconds. It's incredible.

Utah Jazz center Rudy Gobert injures knee on first possession of Game 1 between Jazz, Clippers. MORE: https://t.co/Y56wQ3D43tpic.twitter.com/c7JKXnwuAp — NBA.com (@NBAcom) April 16, 2017

Here's what we know about Gobert's injury:

• He was initially diagnosed with a left knee sprain, and was announced out of the game around the second quarter.
• At halftime, Gobert's teammates saw him in street clothes, walking around the locker room, though obviously limping. He had an ice pack on, but wasn't using crutches.
• He was taken to the hospital for precautionary reasons to get an MRI.
• Shams Charania of Yahoo! Sports reported that Gobert's MRI revealed a hyperextension and bone bruise in his left knee, but no structural damage.

Hood sat out for 12 days with his knee injury before coming back, but then played just three games before it flared up again. Then, he missed seven more games, then came back after the All-Star break.

I'll be curious to see what the Jazz do. Obviously, this is the playoffs. The Jazz will need Rudy Gobert in the future to have a chance, even in this series with a 1-0 lead. But Gobert's long-term future is the most important part, and he's under Jazz control for the next four seasons.

We'll let you know as soon as we hear or know anything about the injury, of course. For the very fastest updates, Twitter is usually the fastest method of finding out info, you can follow me @andyblarsen. Of course, any updates will also be posted to KSL.com.

3. Clippers' offensive predictability makes them easy to defend

The Jazz held the Clippers to just a 99.5 offensive rating in tonight's game, and again, that was without their defensive player. That reflects incredibly well on the rest of the Jazz's lineup, especially Derrick Favors.

That's the first time Favors has played over 24 minutes, over half the game, in over two months. He was great all night tonight, switching out when necessary, defending the rim (Clippers were five of 10 down there with Favors defending) and keeping the DeAndre Jordan pick and rolls in check.

But the best part of the game was how the Jazz defended Blake Griffin. Sure, you can look at the box score and see 26 points. But it also took him 21 shots to do so, and he had six turnovers. The Jazz did an incredible job defending him. Joe Johnson deserves a lot of credit for the initial defense, and not being run over by Griffin quickly. He even pulled the chair, one of my very favorite basketball moves.

PLAYOFF JOE JOHNSON PULLING CHAIRS OUT pic.twitter.com/RfR0AQbc81 — Michael Gallagher (@MikeSGallagher) April 16, 2017

But the Jazz did an even better job of doubling down from the perimeter onto Blake, forcing more turnovers and bad shots. They were able to do that because they felt confident leaving Mbah a Moute in the corner, and indeed, they weren't burned by that pass.

"We're picking who we're going off, choosing between Jamal or Mbah a Moute," Ingles said. "At the end of the day, the ball is what we have to stop. We have a few different coverages to go into. We keep mixing it up, keep him thinking. We made it pretty tough on him."

It would be a lot harder if the Clippers weren't so predictable. For the Clippers to dribble the ball up the floor, then find a multitude of ways that all find Griffin in the post, just isn't that hard of a matchup for the Jazz to defend. The Jazz had many more problems with guarding Chris Paul when he kept the ball, or even things like Mo Speights playmaking.

I sort of expect the Clippers to change it up after Game 1. I think they expected to have a huge advantage with Griffin in the post against the Jazz's smaller lineup, and they didn't. Instead, it played right into the Jazz's hands.

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