Danger! Danger Will Robinson! Danger!
The Utah Jazz, with a squeaker 115-113 win over the Dallas Mavericks, have dropped to 5th place in the Cooper Flagg sweepstakes. Danger!
Remember fans, in the NBA draft lottery, the three teams with the worst record at the end of the season earn equal, and best, lottery odds (14%) of obtaining the #1 pick (and equal odds of being assigned picks 2, 3, and 4–see below). Only the team with the worst record is guaranteed to be assigned a top 5 pick. The Jazz want to have the worst record in the league at the end of the season. That’s the first and best outcome this season… it’s just that simple.
The victory against the Mavs, although exciting for the crowd and those watching elsewhere, does nothing for the Jazz come draft time.
Remember a couple of weeks ago? The Jazz were 0-6 and in the driver’s seat, looking good. Since then, they’ve won three of their last five games including two road games… what the heck fellas? And they beat the Mavs last night without Kessler (hip) and with Markkanen absent in the fourth (left the game after a blow to the face).
How did this happen?
Ball went in the hoop.
Utah, for the season, has the worst offensive rating in the league (105.9 points per 100 possessions) and rank 26th in effective field goal percentage (50.5%). The Jazz don’t run great set offense and they can’t shoot. But from nice dunks off of back cuts and pick and rolls to late-in-the-shot-clock heaves (a Jazz specialty), the ball went in the hoop more often than usual last night–the Jazz offensive rating for the game was 120 and they shot a 58.2% EFG.
Everybody (except poor Cody Williams) stroked it confidently. John Collins continued to roll. Even Keyonte George looked like a shooter logging a 50% field goal percentage for the first time this season.
We’d like to say that the Jazz also helped themselves by miraculously taking care of the ball last night, but we can’t. It looked like we were going to be able to write about that until an eight-turnover fourth quarter (twenty turnovers for the game). Keyonte George, who had not logged a turnover in the first three quarters of the game, dialed up three horrendous giveaways in the fourth in a last-ditch attempt to lose the game.
It wasn’t enough.
After the Mav’s tied the game at 113 on a Clay Thompson three (how one of the the greatest 3-point shooters of all time was so open is another sad story) with 26 seconds left, the abundant crowd at the DC rose as one and deafened the arena. Clarkson brought the ball up the court and yo-yo-ed at the top of the key for what seemed an eternity. Then a bullet pass zoomed by Luca to an amazingly wide-open Collins under the basket for a dunk, leaving the sluggish Doncic watching flat-footed.
The Mav’s would miss the last second potential game winner.
Cheers erupted and high-fives flew, and the Jazz slid just a bit farther away from the real prize.