Utah Jazz vs. Milwaukee Bucks score and analysis

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

1. Jazz’s poor defense — can it get better by the end of the rebuild?

The good news — after becoming the worst defensive team in the league last season, the Jazz are now No. 29 this season! Congratulations to the abysmal Washington Wizards on the last-place accomplishment… because it truly take a lot to be worse at defense than this Jazz team.

What went wrong tonight, as the Bucks shot over 60% from the field on the Jazz? Here’s Will Hardy:

“We’re getting beat way too easily at the point of attack, and it’s putting a lot of pressure on the weak side. With a player like Giannis, with a guy like Dame, if you get blown by in a straight line, you’re in a really, really tough spot. Everybody to a man, has to do a better job guarding individually,” Hardy said. “The second piece of that is the weak side is late, and is part of that because there should be more resistance at the point of attack, sure. But we also have to have a proactive mindset on the weak side of the floor defensively.”

If both the point of attack defense is poor and the help defense is poor… well, that’s pretty much just defense.

I think the biggest problem is the defensive roster. The Jazz have one good defensive player, in my book: Walker Kessler. He didn’t play tonight. After that, who reasonably would you expect to guard his man?

Markkanen, unfortunately, isn’t much of a one-on-one defender, especially on switches. And below him, you have about eight dudes who made their path to the NBA via scoring. Elijah Harkless is the only one who really cares about the defensive end, and he’s 6-3, athletically limited, and was smashed into smithereens by Khris Middleton tonight, because, well, obviously.

I am a little worried about it for the future, too. The model for the Jazz’s rebuild, the Oklahoma City Thunder, bottomed out at 24th in the league defensively; they were even 18th one year in which they won just 24 games. The Jazz haven’t been close to league average.

Now, I’d be curious what would happen if Taylor Hendricks were healthy and Kessler were playing; that’s a starting place defensively. Right now, the Jazz are starting from scratch.

2. How much of the defensive woes are due to the Jazz’s offensive rebounding strategy?

The Bucks are an interesting counterpoint to the Jazz: they’re the worst offensive rebounding team in the league, but are eighth in the league defensively. The Jazz, meanwhile, are the third-best offensive rebounding team, and, as noted above, the second-worst defense.

We know the Jazz’s offensive rebounding strategy is to send as many people to the offensive glass as possible, but that naturally results in fewer defenders back to defend in transition. Is the tradeoff worth it?

Here’s one way to look at it: the Jazz get 15.1 second chance points per game, about 1.2 points per game above the NBA average. But they give up 19.6 fast break points per game, compared to a league average 15.5. That’s -4.1, so much worse.

But that doesn’t take into account the Jazz’s penchant for a ridiculous number of turnovers — fast break points against those shouldn’t be considered the fault of the Jazz’s rebounding strategy. So we have to use numbers like those from CleaningTheGlass, who take into account where transition defensive moments come from.

After an opponent rebounds the ball, the Jazz give up a huge percentage of transition opportunities: a whopping 36% of the time, teams run after a defensive rebound on the Jazz, most in the league. Interestingly, they’ve defended those opportunities pretty reasonably, though: allowing 117 points per 100 possessions, just 19th worst in the NBA. The combined total places the Jazz 21st in the league in overall transition defense after rebounds — bad, but not catastrophic. In fact, they’re just 0.4 points per 100 possessions worse than the league average after those situations.

Meanwhile, the Jazz get 24 points per 100 reboundable shots, according to CleaningTheGlass, good for 6th in the NBA and higher than the 20.6 league average. Now, there aren’t 100 reboundable shots in a basketball game, more like 50, so you can divide that number by approximately two to get an estimation about how many points above league average the Jazz are on the offensive glass: about 1.6.

So with these estimates, the Jazz net about 1.2 points per game due to their offensive rebounding strategy. Cool! But also pretty clearly it’s not playing a big role in the overall defensive problems.

Sorry for the math.

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

With the team back in town for a couple of days, and my own very recent escape from the snowstorm in New Orleans, I was able to ask around more on Keyonte George’s move to the bench.

The Jazz elevated Isaiah Collier in George’s stead, but it’s pretty clear from the conversations I had that the move is less about wanting to promote Collier and more about the Jazz sending perhaps 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 the little things in the game. He needs to improve his on ball defense. He’s still going to be involved in a ton of actions. He’s still going to be playing a bunch of minutes, but it’s really about just right now, him recognizing which things are most important for him to be focused on,” Hardy said.

“Individual defense is one, team defense is number two, and both of those things are sort of encapsulated by just the overall competitiveness on every play. His talent is obvious. We can all see that when we watch him play. And I think right now this is what’s best for him and the team,” he said.

In other words, he’s asking for a significant jump in competitive focus on defense.

I think we saw some of that tonight — but ultimately George was again pretty ineffective. I think this play against Damian Lillard sums it up nicely:

You can see a really improved level of effort here: George has his hand against Lillard, moving his feet to stay within arms length nicely. And then… Lillard gets by him pretty easily in the end. The help defense definitely should have come as well, but Markkanen was distracted — it’s exactly what Hardy talked about in point No. 1.

Still, the effort is an important first step from George. I suspect he was on the court at the end of the game as a reward for at least that, even if the results weren’t always there.

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