Anthony Davis injured and out, plus a comfortable lead in the third quarter, and another 12-point gap with less than seven minutes to go… The Jazz seemed headed for an almost quiet victory in Los Angeles.
Then LeBron James scored 15 points in the final quarter and knocked down Utah. What feed regrets.
“The match was close and LeBron chained the actions”, says Quin Snyder. “But we had opportunities too. We put ourselves in this situation. You can’t leave a 13-point lead so easily (at the beginning of the last act). We have to force the teams to make an effort to come back. There, it was too easy. “
If it was so easy, it’s also because Rudy Gobert made bad choices in the “money time”. Still in difficulty against the “small ball”, the Lakers and Stanley Johnson had already made him suffer a month ago, the Frenchman, playing with fire, lacked lucidity in an important moment.
“We had absences on the pick-and-roll”, regret the coachwho would have preferred Royce O’Neal to continue defending over the Lakers superstar. “Rudy shouldn’t have changed on James. It was an absence. “
The “King” has clearly targeted the French…
The action that killed the Jazz was the one at 1:30 to go. The two teams are tied and Rudy Gobert changes on a screen to find himself facing LeBron James.
The Frenchman stays away from the “King”, who is hot and has already scored an award-winning basket 90 seconds before, as if to force him to shoot at 3-pts. Not really the right choice…
“He had just missed one, which was very short. So I challenged him a bit to shoot from afar”, defends the triple defender of the year, author of 5 points and 11 rebounds, who did not really have the same analysis of the defeat as his coach. ” Overall, I think we handled the pick-and-roll situations quite well. What hurt us was that they scored on our loose balls. “
The analyzes are different in Salt Lake City, while Rudy Gobert also explained that he was not 100%, but the observation remains the same: this Jazz still has so much trouble facing the “small ball”, and the Lakers have clearly identified these flaws. Especially since the Jazz attack also foiled as a whole, including Donovan Mitchell (4 points at 2/7 in shooting), who had nevertheless been brilliant for three quarters with 33 points at 11/17 in shooting.
