Rubio Wants Jazz To “Man Up” On Defense

Rubio voiced frustration after Utah fell to 0-2 in the playoffs. (Bill Baptist via ESPN.com)

Shots were fired from the postgame podium in Houston on Wednesday night. And unlike many of the shots taken by Jazz players that evening, these ones landed.

Minutes after the Jazz suffered a wire-to-wire Game 2 beatdown, a frustrated Ricky Rubio took the microphone. The point guard delivered a pointed message, giving the impression that his team isn’t completely on the same page when it comes to their defensive strategies against elite scorer James Harden.

“It’s about us believing in what we do, and I think we haven’t bought in 100%,” Rubio said after the 118-98 loss. “If you’re not 100%, you already lose the battle.”

Rubio continued: “We just have to really be the team that we are. We are a pretty good team and with great guys, but it’s about: man up and play defense.”

The Jazz have (somewhat infamously) been taking a radical approach to slowing Harden, one that has been criticized as they’ve lost two games by a combined 52 points. But in Rubio’s eyes, the failing speaks less about the defensive game plan than about the level of adherence and commitment to it up and down Utah’s roster.

“We’ve got to play, play by play. We can’t be thinking, ‘Oh we gave up a three? I’m not going to keep doing our game plan.'”

That’s a rather scathing critique on a team whose identity has been defensive togetherness. Rubio seems to think that there are some in his locker room who have decided to abandon the game plan and do their own thing on defense.

Guarding Harden can be demoralizing. He’s the second player in the last half century to average 36 per game in a season, and he has an uncanny ability to dissect defenses. The Jazz know they can’t shut off every option for Harden or the elite Houston offense, so they’ve made a data-driven decision to try to make Harden a less efficient scorer, even if that means compromising the defense elsewhere.

By forcing Harden to drive to his right at all costs, they know that their on-ball defenders are going to get beat. They’re relying on Rudy Gobert’s help in the paint — but him stepping out to challenge Harden means someone has to help contain the Clint Capela lob threat, which in turn leaves shooters open and requires perimeter rotations to be precise. In short, a lot has to go exactly right for Utah’s approach to hold up, and so far the abundant breakdowns have defined the series.

For example, take this play. Rubio correctly denies Harden his drive to the left, and Gobert steps out to prohibit the reigning MVP from getting to the rim. While Gobert helps on Harden’s drive, Crowder pulls in from the weak corner to neutralize the Capela lob. But one mistake negates all of that good work. 

Mitchell’s initial positioning is correct. When Crowder leaves PJ Tucker to help in the paint, the Jazz need Mitchell to drop down and cover the two weak side threats almost like a safety in zone read coverage. So he’s roughly where he’s supposed to be. But he’s watching. He’s not actively trying to read and disrupt the passing lanes, and in fact he’s still even with the free-throw line when Tucker catches Harden’s pass. That just won’t cut it, regardless of the defensive scheme.

There were also plenty of times that the defense worked roughly as designed and Harden just scored anyway. Again, he’s just that good.

Rubio does a great job there. He pesters Harden and even selectively pokes at the ball, but all without surrendering Harden’s left side. He stays connected through all the fakes and dribble moves, and ultimately forces Harden into a left-to-right step-back, not his preferred right-to-left version. And he contests both shots without fouling. They go in anyway.

Harden made five step-back threes in all. Those are just tip-your-hat plays, ridiculous shots by one of the most unguardable scorers of this era. From Quin Snyder’s vantage point, these plays aren’t evidence of a busted scheme; they’re evidence that no matter what you do, some possessions will end with a Houston score.

“That’s part of playing the Rockets,” Snyder said. “Things are going to happen during the game: Capela’s going to get a dunk, Harden’s going to hit a three, you’re going to foul him, all the things you don’t want to happen. The adjustment to that is to keep competing.”

Snyder’s whole approach to defending Harden is based on finding a way to force outcomes that are less reliable over time. It’s a numbers game. Snyder didn’t pick this defense to be cute, or in some Dr. Frankenstein-style moment of mad wizardry. He and his staff researched the outcomes of various scenarios over time, and made a data-driven choice to make this gambit a part of the defensive toolkit against an elite offense.

“You can’t be everywhere,” explains Rubio. ” You’ve got to give something up and play with the odds, and I think we have one of the best coaching staffs looking for the best odds to put us in a place where we can win the game.”

In other words, Rubio and Snyder still believe the strategy can work — if everybody will “buy in,” as Rubio put it.

And there have been plenty of examples of it working. Like on this play — here, Mitchell is far more aggressive in that zone coverage we talked about a moment ago. He stays mentally engaged so that, as his teammates conspire to limit Harden’s options, he can read Harden’s mind and cut off the pass.

That’s what it is supposed to look like. Or this play, where Houston adjusted the spacing so Mitchell couldn’t sit on both weak side shooters, so Georges Niang instead makes a great effort to deny the lob and still get out to challenge the shot on his original guy.

That’s what it takes: smart effort.

Another guy who has displayed that smart effort in droves is Gobert. Here’s a superb half-minute stretch where Gobert almost singlehandedly defangs the Harden drive with sheer instinct and smart containment, and both times it leads to transition buckets for Utah.

Royce O’Neale does a great shot forcing right both times, and then Gobert just sniffs out the play. The first time he challenges Harden into a missed floater, the second time he lets the superstar think he’s going to challenge again, but at the last moment leans back to deflect the lob pass. This is artful work by Gobert, primarily because he doesn’t commit to either guy until precisely the right moment.

So Utah’s scheme has worked here and there — especially when all five guys were on the same page. 

As both Rubio and Snyder talked about from the podium, Utah varied its approach a little more on Wednesday night, too. 

On this play, Rubio tries to deny Harden the screen (“icing”), with Favors hedging high to help. That becomes important when Harden responds to ice by driving hard away from Rubio and then attempting to cross back over to his left. Because Favors was playing aggressive defense, he’s able to stay with the Beard the whole way.

And here’s a play where Utah switches back to its typical “contain” defense on a pick-and-roll to Harden’s left side: Thabo Sefolosha goes over the screen, Gobert walls off the paint. Only in this case, Ingles come in to help take the roll away, and his man gets open for another three.

That play is a good reminder that even if Utah completely scrapped their gimmicky approach and went back to their conventional style of guarding, Harden and the Rockets would still find things they could exploit.

The reality is that Utah doesn’t guard just one way. They have some broad principles and they have a “usual” approach to pick-and-roll defense, but they devise specific game plans for different opponents. They had success this year against the likes of Steph Curry, Kyrie Irving and yes, even Harden by adapting defensively. That’s how they forged an elite defense, second in the league — not by applying the same cookie-cutter defensive strategies to everyone. 

Of course, it would be a gross exaggeration to say that their defense is working in this series, but it’s not as flawed as you’d think by watching TV guys cherry-pick certain plays so they can mock the strategy. When Utah was able to get Houston playing against their halfcourt defense, they were able to limit them to .93 points per non-garbage time possession, per Cleaning the Glass¹. That’s not a great halfcourt defense, but it’s far less problematic than the 1.7 points Houston averaged on transition plays following a live Jazz miss, or the 2.2 after a steal in transition.

The problem remains that Utah can’t get its offense to produce, and it’s much harder to defend after a long miss or a turnover.

“The way (the Rockets) set the tone, it wasn’t on offense,” Rubio said. “It was on defense.”

Utah had eight first-quarter turnovers, and went 20-for-59 on the night on uncontested shots. They missed THIRTY threes. Thirty. Three-zero. If a few more of those go in, then not only does that put more points on Utah’s side of the ledger, it also keeps Houston out of transition, and ultimately impacts the defense.

“I think we’re getting pretty good shots,” Derrick Favors said. “We’re just not making them right now… Once we do, things will be easier [and] we’ll play much better.”

Favors is right. Second Spectrum measures the expected value of every shot attempt based on factors such as shot location, defender distance and more. Per info shared with good friend and SCH alum Ben Dowsett, the Jazz’s expected field goal percentage on their shots on Wednesday was 57.4%. They shot 43.9%.

There’s no magical wand to get more shots to go down. This is just about performing. Maybe the familiar environs of their home court will help. Maybe somebody, like the struggling Mitchell or the bench, will step up. So far this series, Mitchell has used 48 possessions and has produced 30 points. Meanwhile, bench contributors such as Crowder (16.7%), Sefolosha (11%) and Kyle Korver (0%) are shooting well below their season averages.

If those guys get better, Utah will have a better shot at keeping pace offensively while also keeping Houston out of transition. If the Jazz get more guys to “buy in” to Snyder’s analytics-driven defensive approach, maybe they’ll tighten the halfcourt defense.

If they do do neither, there won’t be much basketball left for the 2018-19 Jazz.

“We played poorly,” Snyder said Wednesday, “and we’ve got to be better.