Utah Jazz vs. Milwaukee Bucks Score and Analysis

Three thoughts about Utah Jazz’s 125-110 loss to Milwaukee Bucks from Salt Lake Tribune Jazz beat author Andy Larsen.

1. Jazz’s bad defense – can it get better at the end of the reconstruction?

The good news – After being the worst defensive team in the league last season, jazz is now No. 29 this season! Congratulations to the Abysmale Washington Trollers with the last place performance … because it really takes a lot to be worse in defense than this jazz team.

What went wrong tonight when Bucks shot over 60% off the field on jazz? Here’s Hardy:

“We get too easy on the attack, and it puts a lot of pressure on the weak side. With a player like Giannis, with a guy like lady, if you get blown off in a straight line, you’re in a really, really hard place. Everyone for a man needs to do a better job of protecting individually, ”Hardy said. “The second piece of it is the weak side is late and is part of it, because there must be more resistance at the place of attack, safe. But we also need to have a proactive mindset on the weak side of the floor defensively. “

If both attack defense is bad and help to help is bad … yes, it’s pretty much just Defense.

I think the biggest problem is the defensive list. Jazz has a good defensive player in my book: Walker Kessler. He didn’t play tonight. Then, who reasonably would you expect to protect her husband?

Unfortunately, the field can not be much of a one-on-one defender, especially on switches. And under him you have about eight dudes who made their way to the NBA via scoring. Elijah Harless is the only one who really cares about the defensive end, and he is 6-3, athletic limited and was smashed into blacksmiths by Khris Middleton tonight, because, yes, obviously.

I’m also a little worried about it for the future. The model of Jazz’s reconstruction, Oklahoma City Thunder, tied out on 24. In the league defensively; They were even 18. A year when they won only 24 games. Jazz has not been close to the league average.

Now I would be curious about what would happen if Taylor Hendricks were healthy and Kessler played; It is a starting point defensively. Right now, jazz starts from scratch.

2. How much of the defensive evil is due to jazz’s offensive rebounding strategy?

Bucks is an interesting counterpoint for jazz: They are the worst offensive rebounding team in the league, but are eighth in the league defensively. The jazz is meanwhile the third best offensive rebounding team, and as mentioned above the second worst defense.

We know that jazz’s offensive rebounding strategy is to send as many people to the offensive glass as possible, but of course this results in fewer defenders back to defend in the transition. Is the exchange worth it?

Here is a way of looking at it: Jazz gets 15.1 second chance points per. Fight, approx. 1.2 points per Fight over the NBA average. But they give up 19.6 quick pause points per Fight compared to a league average 15.5. It’s -4.1, so much worse.

But it does not take into account the penchant of jazz for a ridiculous number of revenue – rapid breaking points against them should not be considered the mistake of jazz rebounding strategy. So we have to use numbers like those from cleaning time that take into account where transition’s defensive moments come from.

After an opponent rebound’s ball, jazz gives up a huge percentage of transitional options: as much as 36% of the time, teams run after a defensive rebound on jazz, mostly in the league. Interestingly, they have defended these options fairly reasonable, however: Allows 117 points per day. 100 possessions, only 19 worst in NBA. They combined total places Jazz 21. In the league in the overall transitional defense after rebounds – bad but not catastrophic. In fact, they are only 0.4 points per 100 possessions worse than the league average after these situations.

Meanwhile, Jazz gets 24 points per 100 reboundable shots, according to Cleaningthelass, good for 6. In NBA and higher than the 20.6 league average. Now there are not 100 reboundable shots in a basketball game, more like 50, so you can share this number by about two to get an estimate of how many points over the league average jazz is on the offensive glass: approx. 1.6.

So with these estimates net jazz net approx. 1.2 points per Battle because of their offensive rebounding strategy. Cool! But also quite clearly, it doesn’t play a big role in the overall defensive problems.

Sorry for the math.

3. More about Keyonte George’s move to the bench

With the team back in town for a few days, and my own much newer escape from the blizzard in New Orleans, I was able to ask more about Keyonte George’s move to the bench.

The jazz raised Isaiah Collier in George’s place, but it is pretty clear from the conversations I had that the move is less about wanting to promote collier and more about the jazz that might be sending a bit of a wake-up call to George about, What it takes to earn minutes in the NBA.

Here’s what will Hardy said before the game:

“I want Keyonte to lean into the little things in the game. He has to improve his on ball defense. He will still be involved in a wealth of actions. He still wants to play a lot of minutes, but it really is right now that he recognizes what things are most important to him to be focused on, ”Hardy said.

“Individual defense is one, team defense is number two, and both of these things are kind of encapsulated by just the overall competitiveness of each game. His talent is obvious. We can all see that when we see him playing. And I think right now, that’s what’s best for him and the team, ”he said.

In other words, he asks for a significant leap in competitive focus on defense.

I think we saw some of it tonight – but in the end George was again pretty ineffective. I think this acting against Damian Lillard summarizes it nicely:

You can see a truly improved effort level here: George has his hand against Lillard and moves your feet to stay within the arm length neatly. And then … Lillard stays at him pretty easy in the end. Help the defense should certainly have come, too, but the field can be distracted – that’s exactly what Hardy talked about in point # 1.

Still, the effort is an important first step from George. I suppose he was on the field at the end of the game as a reward for at least that, even though the results were not always there.

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