Jazz lose in a very ugly contest, 86-95

LeBron James made sure Utah didn’t leave LA with a win. (Via espn.com)

If you didn’t stay up to watch the Utah Jazz’s late West-coast game on Friday evening, you are probably better off just reading this and moving on. It was as ugly of a game as there has been in the Quin Snyder era. The final score 86-95 does not do justice to how ugly the game truly was. The Jazz were down by 22 at one point and were practically giving the ball away every other run down the floor. With 22 total turnovers, that’s almost not an exaggeration  

Other than Bojan Bogdanovic being out with injury, the story of the game is basically turnovers, poor execution, and overall sloppiness in general. The Jazz half court defense was good enough, for the most part, but they still botched some defensive rotations. And, of course, Mike Conley still has not found his form since joining the Jazz  

Jazz Twitter had many theories and reactions, of course. Some were borderline conspiracy theories, such as Mike Conley’s talent being stolen by a MonStar, and some were very upbeat and hopeful that the Jazz will figure things out very soon and are still a top-tier team. 

Personally speaking, and among some of the popular Jazz Twitter theories, is that what we are seeing is a combination of the precision requirements due to Snyder’s playbook and lack of chemistry with a new team. 

The Evidence

It isn’t clear if we can conclusively prove that Snyder’s playbook is so difficult to learn that it causes this kind of an early season barrier, but there’s some evidence suggesting this could be true. Last season, for example, the first three months of the season had a higher turnover rate per game than the remainder of the season. They averaged 15.9, 15.2, and 15.7 turnovers per game through those months. In the following months they averaged 13-14 turnovers per game.

It’s important to remember that last season, however, the team was running it back with mostly the same roster of the season before. And they still had some of those early season woes. 

They also had 7 games with more than 20 turnovers. The five worst of those were losses, unsurprisingly. But only two were higher turnover totals than what we saw against the Lakers. 

Mike Conley

There’s also the Mike Conley situation. Through his first two games, his eFG% is 16.7%. That is, um, quite terrible. Frankly, he has not looked like himself. At times, it looked like he almost forgot how to dribble the basketball. Without being too harsh on the guy, let’s look at it from his perspective. He spent 12 seasons in Memphis and played most of his career with Mike Conley and core of the Grit’n’Grind Memphis era. Now imagine being around the same staff, organization, fans, teammates, and system for that many years and then coming in to play for Snyder who expects a precision from his players that is unrivaled by any other coach in the league. 

Basketball is a game of feel. And when you spend too much time thinking about what you need to do, it can really mess up your rhythm. If Conley is so consumed with thinking about what spots he needs to get to and the exact spot on the floor he needs to hit (Quin Snyder expects precision within inches, I’ve heard), it means he may not be able to play as naturally as he has previously. 

The good news is that this will pass. For him, and for the team. Quin has been noted as an offensive genius and a brilliant mind. He’s never had the tools at his disposal for offense like he does now and it’s only a matter of time before we start to see things click. 

Luckily for the players, they get to wipe this game clean from their minds and get a fresh start with a back-to-back against Sacramento on Saturday night.