SALT LAKE CITY — Three thoughts on the Utah Jazz's 97-90 win over the Dallas Mavericks from KSL.com's Jazz beat writer, Andy Larsen.

1. Mavs save the Jazz in too-close-for-comfort win

The Dallas Mavericks have admitted they're tanking.

"I’m probably not supposed to say this," Dallas owner Mark Cuban told Julius Irving on his podcast, "but, like, I just had dinner with a bunch of our guys the other night, and here we are, you know, we weren’t competing for the playoffs. I was like, 'Look, losing is our best option.'"

"Adam (Silver, NBA commissioner) would hate hearing that, but I at least sat down and I explained it to them," Cuban said.

The NBA fined Cuban $600K for those comments, and understandably so. And the Mavericks' players clearly don't want to go along with that, they're focused on their careers. Being bad on purpose doesn't help the size of their next contract.

That being said, the last two minutes of the game wasn't exactly played well. Yogi Ferrell hit a three to cut the Jazz lead to three. After that, the Mavs didn't score again, thanks to:

• Dennis Smith Jr. throwing the ball away here, well misjudging this pass to Wesley Matthews in the corner.
• Smith losing the ball out of bounds on a transition opportunity on the next play.
• Harrison Barnes passing up an open three to chuck the ball out of bounds.

Harrison Barnes' last minute TO: pic.twitter.com/kyXrYEoVc2 — Andy Larsen (@andyblarsen) February 25, 2018

- Down three, Yogi Farrell electing to drive to try to score two points. He missed the layup. I don't think the Mavs really *intended* to lose this game. You can argue that Smith was fouled when losing the ball out of bounds. Dirk Nowitzki said that Barnes' out of bounds play was his fault, and he should have been standing where Barnes threw the pass. The other plays were young players trying to make something happen.

But the iffy Mavs plays did make the Jazz's job much easier. After all, they didn't score in the last two minutes either until after all of those turnovers, when Dallas had to foul to get the ball back. The Mavs should get credit for how they defended down the stretch, too.

But it's hard to imagine that this game would have resulted in a win if the Jazz were playing a higher level of competition.

2. Defense gets credit for win, offense needs more shots to go down

While the Jazz did get the gift of turnovers at the end from the Mavericks, I thought their defense was quite solid throughout the game.

One way to tell: the Mavs had just 15 opportunities at the rim tonight, making eight of them and getting fouled on one more. The average team gets about 27 in one game, so allowing 12 fewer shots at the rim makes a big difference.

That wasn't balanced out by an increase in corner 3-point attempts, though: the Mavs only shot five of those all game (the average NBA team shoots about 6.5 per game).

That's the Rudy Gobert effect we talk about frequently: having Gobert in the game allows the Jazz to stay tight at the rim and on the perimeter, forcing teams to take difficult shots. The Mavs got a lot of threes up from behind the arc from beyond the wings (more than the Jazz would have liked), but still, when the Jazz force teams into that shot profile, they're going to have a tough time winning.

I thought the Jazz's offense, on the other hand, did a nice job at shooting the right kind of shots. They got 25 shots at the rim and were fouled there five times, and added 10 corner threes to the mix. They finished well at the rim, but the 3-point shooting wasn't brilliant, only 28 percent.

That was an underrated part of that 11-game winning streak before the break: the Jazz shot over 45 percent from 3-point distance in seven of the 11 games. In the other four wins, they played some miserable teams: Phoenix, Charlotte, Memphis, and Detroit, all lottery teams. In other words, they got hot at the right times and got cold at the right times.

Friday night, the Jazz were cold at the wrong time. On Saturday night, given the opponent, they were hot at the right time. We'll see what happens against the Houston Rockets on Monday.

3. Knowing your opponent

One thing I've begun to notice: the Jazz's opponents know some of their play calls. Take a look at this play:

AB drives and scores to save the play: pic.twitter.com/dBXdDTPmRI — Andy Larsen (@andyblarsen) February 25, 2018

The camera missed the signal from Ricky Rubio, but he called for the "flow" play by waving his hand up and down like a wave. At the very beginning of the video above, Nowitzki does the same motion, telling his team to watch out for the action.

And they do, and they snuff out the Jazz's motion until Alec Burks gets the ball at the half court line with five seconds left and scores on a mismatch.

To be clear: every team has this happen to them. The Jazz are an execution team anyway. Just like the Stockton and Malone pick and roll, they usually play with a style that they hope to execute to perfection to get baskets.

It's hard to tell when this happens from TV, and only slightly easier when watching from the top of the lower bowl (the media's new seats this season). But I've started to watch for this kind of sign knowledge ever since sitting next to a scout in Oklahoma City. There, the media seats are at the scorer's table on the second row.

That scout's only job was to watch and listen to Jazz head coach Quin Snyder's yells and hand motions, write them down, and the write the play that followed afterward. It was super interesting to "eavesdrop" (okay, screen peek) on the scout and learn more about how the scout watched the game in a very different way.

Related topics