Home Blowout Features Turnovers, Poor Shooting, Ugly Jerseys

February 22nd, 2020 | by Mark Russell Pereira

Mitchell displays a frustrated look and an unpopular jersey during Utah’s home loss on Friday. (Melissa Majchrzak via espn.com)

For over two months, the Jazz have neglected to wear their mustard pineapple butter corn yellow Nike “Statement” jerseys, despite having scheduled to wear them.  They swapped them out for other jerseys in numerous games, a result of fans’ vocal distaste of the uniform — likening them to your choice of various human refuse — and the fact that Utah was 1-6 while wearing yellow. Rumors also circulated that Donovan Mitchell forced the team to switch to any of the Jazz’s excellent other jerseys on planned “Statement” game nights.

The case against yellow will continue to grow, as the Jazz wore the duds on Friday night at home against the San Antonio Spurs and tossed up their own kind of dud. While the jerseys are obviously not a reason the Jazz lost, they made an ugly loss look even worse.

First Quarter

Utah was without Mike Conley, due to planned rest of his hamstring on the front-end of a back-to-back. (The Jazz host Houston for a game tomorrow night.) The cautious approach is understood, since the slightest haste in bringing Conley back into the fold the first time immediately caused a reaggravation of the injury. With that said, wins are also very important for the Jazz to ensure ideal playoff positioning—the Jazz hope that they don’t look back on these healthy rest games as costing them a top seed in the Western Conference.

With Conley out, the Jazz went to their most common starting five: Donovan Mitchell, Joe Ingles, Royce O’Neale, Bojan Bogdanovic and Rudy Gobert. Ingles and Gobert had great chemistry early, as Utah went 3-for-3 in converting Ingles’ passes to Gobert in pick-and-rolls: one dunk by Gobert and Gobert drawing two fouls on LaMarcus Aldridge in only five and a half minutes. Ingles was able to routinely get into the lane, and he found a couple of easy buckets for himself too:

However, the Jazz committed four turnovers–three of them in a two-minute stretch early, including a pair of tunnel-vision passes by non-Ingles Utah drivers. This problem would persist throughout the evening, which would be exacerbated because the Jazz were not expected to (and ultimately didn’t) impart their own turnover issues onto San Antonio: the Spurs commit the fewest turnovers per game in the NBA, and the Jazz are dead last in the NBA at forcing steals. Meanwhile, Aldridge’s foul trouble didn’t benefit the Jazz, as Jakob Poeltl admirably protected the rim, forcing bad misses by Bogdanovic and Mitchell in particular (with some assistance from good Spurs guard defense):

The Jazz were down 27-21 after the first quarter.

Second Quarter

The Spurs extended their lead to 11 early in the second quarter, and Tony Bradley had a rough stretch. He dropped a pass, committed a bad foul on Mills, got hopelessly cooked by Aldridge in the post, and finished off with getting bullied by Derrick White, a point guard, on a driving layup straight into his chest that sent him nearly into the stanchion.

It’s a harsh critique of Bradley—who has improved this season—because the Jazz clearly still need to find a solution for non-Gobert minutes. Against a relatively small opponent frontcourt, this could have been an opportunity to see Bogdanovic play some minutes as the largest Jazzman and/or give Juwan Morgan some experience. In the playoffs, non-Gobert minutes will be far fewer, but they will still substantively exist. And no, Trevor Booker, Ekpe Udoh, or Jarrell Brantley are not solving this issue.

Gobert and Mitchell returned, and the Jazz had one of their best runs of the game, which included this classic Mitchell dunk during a 12-2 run:

After a great find by Jordan Clarkson to a cutting Gobert for a dunk to cut the Spurs’ lead to four points, the wheels came completely off the Jazzwagon. The Spurs closed out the half on their own 17-2 run, aided in part by the Jazz missing very good looks, but also a trio of turnovers, including this enraging Gobert backcourt turnover that immediately prompted a Quin Snyder timeout:

The Jazz’s poor shooting and turnovers allowed the Spurs to casually respond with their own 38 points. Bryn Forbes was particularly effective from deep with medium-level resistance from the Jazz—he had 4 three-pointers in the first half. The Jazz would have to fight back from a 19-point deficit in the second half.

Third Quarter

The Jazz have shown an ability to tear out chunks of a big deficit this season, but they did not take out a big enough chunk in the third quarter to make a comeback feasible. This was in part due to the Jazz committing another five turnovers (officially four in the box score: one was ruled a Derrick White “block” when White got a hand on an out-of-control Mitchell drive).

After an errant Mitchell drive on Trey Lyles that led to an unnecessarily difficult baseline fadeaway, the Jazz looked back to Ingles as a primary facilitator to some pretty solid success. He continued to find Gobert on easy pick-and-roll opportunities:

But the bench could not keep any defensive clamps on the Spurs with enough consistency to make a real gash in the deficit. This issue was once again highlighted by Bradley’s ineffectiveness, such as a really rough foul on White, and in this play, hanging back way too far against the notorious lightning-chucker and Jazz-killer Mills:

The Jazz made just enough plays to not make the game completely out of reach, such as a pair of nice driving layups by Mudiay and a pair of nice three-pointers by Georges Niang. The Jazz required a small 7-0 run late in the period just to keep the game within 18 points to start the fourth quarter.

Fourth quarter

As seen a few times this year, Mudiay and Clarkson can microwave some 8-day old leftovers you forgot about from before the All-Star Break and give you some real sustenance. Ingles passes up a wide-open three here (in a strange flashback to 2015 Ingles) for a Mudiay three-pointer:

Mudiay had nine of his 18 points in the fourth quarter, which certainly helped, but he also pitched in two more turnovers (including biffing a pass to Gobert on a clean fast break attempt). Meanwhile, Clarkson added another 8 points, aided by lead official Marc Davis calling a questionable three-shot flagrant foul called on Forbes. And yet, at the last stage of the game where Utah might have had a chance, Clarkson sagged off White to help Gobert’s post defense against Aldridge (obviously unnecessary) and gave up a White three-pointer.

Alas, 17 total turnovers did the Jazz in as the most damaging factor (Gobert is credited with five in the box score, but three of them were at least only partially his fault), and the best path to overcome them would likely involve Bogdanovic converting more of his open shots and layup attempts and/or Mitchell to getting better looks to begin with. Ingles and O’Neale also missed several relatively easy shot attempts.

The final score: Spurs 113, Jazz 104. Don’t let the single-digit deficit fool anyone: the game was never really close for most of the final three quarters.

A note on the Jerseys

The yellow jerseys were always going to make a comeback in a few games to close out the 2019-2020 season. Teams have a little flexibility when it comes to what uniforms they wear for certain nights (based off of some of the gameday jersey switches this season), but Nike has manufactured jerseys for purchase by fans and needs them actually on display on the court to help such sales; accordingly, there are probably minimum amounts of games that a team needs to wear each jersey in its arsenal.

That said, as a self-proclaimed sports uniform aficionado and critic, I completely agree that these jerseys are the worst Utah has ever had (and there have been some other… interesting decisions). Yellow is a mere accent to the Jazz’s color scheme, and this specific hue of yellow was used solely to best complement the dominant navy color. On top of other design flaws—green should be completely extricated from the uniform if you’re even going to attempt this, for example—it also completely clashes with the Jazz’s home court that includes a colorless paint area and a brighter shade of hardwood.

There may have been a way to make yellow as a primary work (integrating purple would be a good start, Lakers comparisons be damned), but the best we can hope for is that the Jazz improve on their 1-7 record in these jerseys. Ultimately, the Jazz simply look best when they’re winning.

Up Next:

Utah hosts again tomorrow night to finish the back-to-back against Houston. Over the past few days, Houston added old Jazzmen DeMarre Carroll and Jeff Green to shore up their “big wing” rotation while they continue to experiment not using any viable traditional centers.

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