Houston blew out Utah in Game 1 of their first-round playoff rematch Sunday night, and most of the resulting conversation has been about one end of the floor. Rightly so.
The Rockets decisively won this first battle between the NBA’s 2nd-best offense and its best defense during the regular season (figures per Cleaning the Glass), mostly by exploiting a highly exaggerated defensive scheme Utah attempted against reigning MVP James Harden.
To this eye, and those of several close to the team, the pendulum swings toward execution here. The Jazz have played a similar defensive style against the Rockets at times this year, even if the league seems content to credit the tactic to Milwaukee or San Antonio; it sure doesn’t look like what we saw on Sunday night, and can have some success when it’s properly calibrated.
Utah can and should be better on this end. They’ve actually held the Rockets below their average offensive efficiency figure in eight of the teams’ last 10 matchups dating back to last year’s five-game series. It’s clear they have the personnel to keep Houston in check, at least as much as anyone else in the league can.
If anything, Game 1 this time around should concern the Jazz more on the other end of the floor. They posted a putrid 89.1 points scored per-100-possessions Sunday night, per NBA.com, this after averaging exactly 100 against the Rockets in four regular season matchups. The Chicago Bulls were the only team in the league this season to post a worse efficiency against Houston’s below-average defense.
The Jazz also earned just a 100.4 offensive rating over five games against Houston the playoffs last year. Put it all together, and we now have 10 games and nearly 500 minutes of play telling us the Jazz simply can’t score on this Rockets team.
Why?
The answer begins with shot-making, that constant Jazz pest back to gnaw at them. Utah attempted 21 open or wide open threes Sunday night and made just six, per Second Spectrum data on NBA.com, for a 28.5 percent clip – they shot about 36 percent on these looks for the year.
Advanced tracking data provided by a source paints an even starker picture: The Jazz’s expected effective field goal percentage, a figure based on shot location, defender distance and other detailed factors, was second-best for any game played so far in these NBA playoffs (behind only the Rockets’ own figure during the same game, which was just decimals higher). But while the Rockets capitalized on their great shot selection and even outperformed their expected percentages for a dominant showing, the Jazz were over 10 full points below theirs.
“Make more shots” applies to most NBA teams when they lose, though. Utah’s offensive issues against Houston run deeper.
For starters, credit to the Rockets as a group. It doesn’t take a defensive juggernaut to spot and exploit the weak spots in Utah’s offense, and Houston has consistently done well here with varying personnel. Their scouting is strong – watch them totally shut down one of Quin Snyder’s favorite go-to sets, a little fake pindown screen that typically results in a Rudy Gobert dunk or a wide open corner three:
Or here, where a little extra pressure – and a lazily-run Jazz set – forces Ricky Rubio to travel after picking the ball up too early in the play, a theme that would be present for the entire night:
Utah’s “advantage” offense, one built on exploiting the small holes they pry open through Snyder’s precise scheme, can’t function when the ball stops like this. The Rockets know it, and they threw just the right wrenches into the machinery.
They did particularly well against Donovan Mitchell, crowding his space and making his decisions tough. Houston left the right guys open in help defense to make his life more difficult; Mitchell was facing multiple bodies every time he broke through, and began making his choices too early.
“Donovan got in the lane, but we’ve got to make better decisions,” Snyder said after the game. “When they do collapse, do better at finding each other. There are some things we wanted to do that we didn’t execute.”
The tracking data shows the Jazz got plenty of good shots; what’s less clear is whether they got their shots. Those 21 open or wide open threes they took are about 10 fewer than their season-long average, and some of them felt rushed by Houston’s pressure. Combined with 18 turnovers, the burden was too great to overcome.
It was also exacerbated by another trend that dates back to last year: The Rockets neutralizing Utah’s offensive rebounding. The Jazz collected nearly a third of all the offensive boards against Houston during their four regular-season matchups and over 34 percent of them during their two wins, a huge equalizer when shooters went cold.
Sunday night was a different story. The Jazz picked up just seven offensive boards, or 22 percent, and only 10 second-chance points – they averaged over 15 against Houston during four regular season matchups. They weren’t able to capitalize a year ago when Houston’s switch-heavy defensive scheme left guys like Gobert and Derrick Favors favorable rebounding matchups, grabbing just 21.3 percent of their misses; they’ll be in trouble if they can’t engineer more second chances from Game 2 on.
It’s not all doom and gloom, Jazz fans. Favors and Gobert should have a greater impact on the offensive glass when they settle into their matchups a bit more; Mitchell’s ability to quickly learn from mistakes, even between games in a series, is well-documented. Joe Ingles, another Jazzman who seemed to struggle with the sheer level of Houston’s pressure, has tricks in his bag. A few more shots should fall. And make no mistake, that defense will look very different.
If recent history is any lesson, though, this side of the ball is where the real concerns should be for Utah in this series.
