Jazz Crush Wizards 116-95 for Third Straight Blowout Victory

The Utah Jazz’s Georges Niang (31) celebrates his team easily capturing its sixth straight victory over the Washington Wizards. (Alex Brandon/AP Photo)

Story of the Game

The reigning Western Conference Player of the Week, Rudy Gobert, faced off against his Eastern Conference counterpart, Bradley Beal, in Washington on Monday, and Gobert’s Utah Jazz crushed Beal’s Washington Wizards 116-95.

While the Wizards managed to stay in the game for a while, even cutting the lead to five late in the first half, the Jazz controlled this contest from the opening tip.

Defensively, they held Beal — who was coming off back-to-back 40 point games — to 15 points on four of 12 shooting. He faced physical, well-prepared defenders all over the floor, as well as flashing help defenders off screens, and the league’s Defensive Player of the Year in Gobert whenever he braved the paint. The result was an end to his 47-game streak with at least one made three point shot. 

Denied their offensive catalyst, the Wizard’s offense progressively wilted until they finished the night shooting a mediocre 42 percent from the field and 30 percent from behind the three point line.

The Jazz offense, in contrast, did almost whatever it wanted. The Wizards’ lackluster defense, with energy even further dampened by the offensive slog through the game, provided little resistance to the Jazz offense, which hummed to the tune of 54 percent shooting overall and 38 percent accuracy from behind the arc, piling up 35 assists in the process.

Stars of the Game

Superstar: None

Often when the Jazz lack at least one player making this caliber of impact, it means a tough night for them. Tonight, it was the opposite: no Jazz player had to try hard enough to raise his game to this level given the team’s dominance.

Secondary Stars: Rudy Gobert (14 points, 14 rebounds, 3 assists, 1 steal, 2 blocks, +13) and Jae Crowder (18 points, 5 rebounds, 3 assists, 2 blocks, 2 threes, +17)

It was about as standard a Gobert game as they come: hyper efficiency in a strictly disciplined offensive role (14 points while making all six of his attempts from the field) while holding the Wizards to only 90 points per 100 possessions on the defensive end.

Crowder gave the Jazz a big 18 points off the bench, one off the game high shared by Donovan Mitchell and Jabari Parker. He rounded out his stat line nicely then topped the game off with a liberal dose of verbose toughness. Crowder and the Wizards have a history¹, and it was clear Utah’s grittiest player enjoyed stomping the hapless squad in the nation’s capital.

Secret Star: Ricky Rubio (8 points, 10 assists, 2 rebounds, 4 steals)

For much of the last two years, Rubio has been perhaps the Jazz’s biggest bellwether, an erratic scorer forced to put up lots of shots because of his role on this team. That’s been far from the case in March. Rubio’s seven field goal attempts tonight makes it five of the seven games in the month where he has taken fewer than ten shots. The Jazz won six of those games and Rubio contributed 49 assists and 13 steals in those contests, which is much more dependable production from the Spaniard than the offensive explosions Utah became dependent upon in their rush to the playoffs to end last season.

Stats of the Game

20 – Utah’s advantage in points in the paint (58-38), and that in a game where Derrick Favors didn’t play in the second half with a tight right hamstring.

Minus-21 – Beal’s game worst plus-minus. No stat better illustrates how thoroughly the Jazz controlled this game.

6 – Jazz free throw attempts, less than half their previous season low! This wasn’t a result of the refs swallowing their whistles so much as the Wizards abandoning all but pretense of playing defense for much of the game.

35 – Utah assists. The Jazz have now dished out 30 more assists 19 times this season and are 15 and four in those games.

Sundries

• The raw stats don’t fully communicate just how dysfunctional Washington’s offense was. Consider that Trevor Ariza scored 10 points in the first quarter, Jabari Parker added another 10 in the second, and Jordan McRae added another 10 in the fourth. That’s essentially those three players’ per game output for the season in three lone quarters. Without those three offensive bursts, this could have been reminiscent of the 47-point demolition at the hands of the Jazz last season.
• Favors’ hamstring tightness doesn’t sound horrible, especially given how conservative Utah’s coaching staff likely was upon learning the news given how this game proceeded. Hopefully that bears out, as Favors’ return to health over the past two seasons has led to arguably his best and most impactful stretch of play in his career recently.
• Ekpe Udoh and Thabo Sefolosha both played really well in limited minutes tonight. Udoh blocked a pair of shots and grabbed five boards in less than 10 minutes of play, while Sefolosha contributed six points, two rebounds, and two steals in under 12 minutes of burn. 
• Joe Ingles is shooting a full seven percentage points lower from three this season than in recent years. I don’t know if Washington made a calculated decision based on that or simply kept blowing assignments on Ingles, but the Aussie got more open shots and drives to the rim this game than he has in years. He had three or four long distance attempts that were so open it was comical to see him methodically set his feet, cock his arm, aim, and fire. Two even came on one possession, when he missed the first then canned the second off an offensive rebound. A few times he waltzed into the paint so freely that he ended up turning the ball over off passes assuming there’s no way he could be as open as he seemed after moving so slowly toward the hoop. He ended the night making four of his eight long-range attempts.
• Jabari Parker scored 19 on 13 shots and added seven rebounds. He just turned 24 a few days ago. There’s a really good basketball player there for a team with the structure, culture, and coaching to make the most of Parker as a project.   
• The Jazz team that lost to the Pelicans and Grizzlies now looks like a distant memory. Four straight wins by a combined 74 points will do that. 
• The Jazz may be the worst matchup for the Wizards in the entire league. In their last 42 contests, Washington has topped 100 points only eight times!

This easy victory, Utah’s third consecutive blowout win and sixth straight triumph over Washington, was the perfect way to start a four-game road trip against sub-.500 competition. The Jazz will be favorites in every game this trip starting Wednesday against the Knicks, and they’ll need to keep winning these games they should given the Spurs and Clippers have combined to win 17 of their last 21 games, including a Spurs take down of the Warriors tonight.