Watching that night’s Lakers-Jazz, some fans of the Utah franchise may have thought back to Terance Mann. The back of the Clippers who had slammed the game of his life (39 points!) to take out the Jazz in the last playoffs. His performance had brought to light the difficulties of Quin Snyder’s men to respond to an opponent’s “small ball”.
This scenario repeated itself last night, to a lesser extent of course. While the Jazz seemed to take control of the match at the end of the third quarter, despite major problems with address, Quin Snyder’s men were completely derailed in the final period.
LeBron James saw ‘something’
Blame it on a tactical adjustment made by the Lakers and its general in chief, LeBron James. ” LeBron is a smart player. So when he says, ‘Do this’, ‘Okay, I’ll do that’, or ‘Do that’, ‘Okay, I’ll do that too’”, Stanley Johnson book. “He saw something. If you’ve watched basketball in the last two years, some teams have had success with smaller guys like me attacking (Rudy Gobert).“
The 2m01 winger, still on a ten-day contract, had had little opportunity to be responsible offensively since his arrival at the Lakers. He thus took advantage of the green light from the “King” to attack the Frenchman. Starting with a “drive” in transition, after a recovery pass from LeBron James, finished in “2 + 1”.
A few subsequent possessions, Stanley Johnson quietly dribbled closer to the free throw line to score. Rudy Gobert, embarrassed at the same time by a “screen” from LeBron James (him again!) and who asked Jordan Clarkson to change, could not hinder the shot.
The Lakers winger thus scored 10 of his 15 points (7/9 on shots) in the fourth quarter, on a sequence of about three minutes which allowed Los Angeles to regain the advantage. Less than three minutes from the end, the same Stanley Johnson even grabbed an offensive rebound, ahead of Rudy Gobert, before finding Avery Bradley in the corner for a decisive award-winning basket.
No adjustment in the attack of the Jazz
Struggling in defense, the Jazz also failed to respond on the other side of the field. As against the Clippers in the last playoffs, Utah did not really know how to punish the opponent’s “small ball” in attack. Defended by Dwight Howard for a good part of the match, the French pivot had wingers on his back throughout the last quarter. But he was only served twice by his teammates (his last dunk, when the match was already folded, doesn’t really count) who preferred to draw 3-pointers.
The Lakers played LeBron at center the entire 4Q vs. the Jazz with Gobert.
Lakers went on a 13-0 run and outscored the Jazz 29-17 in the quarter.
Same old, same old. pic.twitter.com/Z6i0h47CMB
— StanleyMuse (@statmuse) January 18, 2022
But when those shots don’t come in…” We were a little disconnected from the game and it started in attack., judges the best defender of the year in title. “We stopped passing the ball, we lost a few balls and they were able to chase us and get ahead. “The French still finished the game with 19 points (6/8 on shots) and 16 rebounds but he still saw his teammates strafe behind the 7m25 line in the “money time”.
Undoubtedly his hand errors at the start of the game, which cost his team several possessions, played a role. Nevertheless, the Jazz played in a caricatural way to end the meeting with an awful… 2/15 from behind the arc (on 23 shots) in the last quarter. Over the whole game, the infernal trio Donovan Mitchell – Bojan Bogdanovic – Jordan Clarkson accumulated 18 long attempts and not a single converted shot.
” I don’t know when was the last time Bojan, JC and I missed all of our 3-pointers, reacted Donovan Mitchell. So if we had brought in a few, that changes the game. The merit goes to them for having been aggressive on the defensive changes, for having blocked the racket. Unfortunately, we missed some shots.“
The back does not question the quality of the shots obtained, unlike his coach. ” I think we took too many difficult shots.”, Judge Quin Snyder. ” We could get some in but we made it harder for ourselves than it needed to be, getting better reads, spinning the ball faster and generating better shots.“
That was not the case for his team, the league’s best offense, limited to 17 points in the last quarter.
