Take a knee everybody. Look, we get that the plan is to lose, but that was unwatchable. You gotta do better.
The Jazz started Friday night’s game as if to follow their fun-but-fail formula from the very competitive opening-night tangle with the Grizzlies. For four minutes the Jazz pushed the ball against the Warriors defense, crisply ran their simple perimeter hand off offense, and made shots.
And then all that came to a screeching halt.
The Warriors simply stiffened up a bit, started collapsing on Jazz drives, doubled Markkanen on the high post and Utah wilted like a basil leaf on top of a nice marinara.
There were the signature Jazz flaws: bad ball control, the Jazz broke the 20-turnover barrier again; and awful pace, Utah registered zero fast breaks and played most of the night out of their sad set offense.
But, It was the rest of the stuff leading to a 41-point loss that bothers us. The Jazz were consistently out of position defensively with players losing sight of their man for easy Warrior open 3’s. They were incapable or just reluctant to recognize passing options when Golden State doubled or when they collapsed onto Utah drivers. All Jazz players were either too slow making the dribble-pass-shoot decision or they just were set on putting their head down and going. Either way, the result was almost always a stripped ball leading to a fast break, a blocked shot, or one of the five jump ball possessions in the game.
And then there was George’s botched dunk and thoughtless hanging from the rim negating a Flip put back. Bad look Keyonte… very bad look.
Even coach Hardy lost patience, benching the starting five three minutes into the second half. But that just meant more time watching John Collins and Jordon Clarkson, and that really isn’t much fun anymore. We’ll take Flip at this stage, over either of ‘em; it couldn’t have turned out any worse.
So, gents, you’ve rewatched the game… Hardy made you re-live that nightmare instead of practicing on Saturday. Let’s all promise to never let this happen again. Let’s just go with the two-handed chest pass. Let’s actually make contact with a defender when we’re setting a pick. Let’s not take three seconds to determine that you have been double teamed and should have passed the ball 2.5 seconds ago. And lets get a fast break bucket next game… for the love of Pete.
Sure, you’re going to lose to the Mavs Monday night, but you can do better than this.