Five Things: Despite Dominance, Utah Continues To Be Questioned | Utah Jazz

In a battle between two of the hottest teams in the league, ironically it was the team experiencing a snowstorm who caught fire late. After nearly a foot of snow dropped downtown Salt Lake City on Tuesday night/Wednesday morning, causing a slight delay to Utah’s pregame shootaround, it was the Jazz who finished strong.

Thanks to a dominating 16-2 run late in the fourth quarter, Utah ran its winning streak to eight games following its 124-103 win over the Los Angeles Clippers on Wednesday night.

“We want to be great. We want to be great at every facet,” Donovan Mitchell said postgame. “We don’t want to just have the best record, it’s how can we be great at every single facet of the game. We’ve got really good games, but I can’t say we’ve had a great game. I think we are all holding ourselves to a high standard.”

Here are five things you need to know following the win:

1.) Utah Continues To Be Questioned
Following the 21-point loss on Wednesday, Clippers forward Marcus Morris Sr. — one of the more outspoken players in the league — had some very pointed words to say about the Jazz as a whole.

“Yeah, they’re still the same team. Ain’t nothing changed,” Morris Sr. said. “(Gobert) protects all of them. None of them really can defend. Just funnel it to him and it’s tough to — he’s a great player and he does a great job of anticipation, staying down, being real solid. So you know who they are.”

While it was nice that Rudy Gobert was acknowledged as one of the premier defensive players in the league — especially after comments by Minnesota last week — Morris’ comments opened another can of worms, a can of worms that Mitchell refused to acknowledge directly postgame.

While everyone is entitled to their own opinion, Morris’ comments appear way off base. 

Royce O’Neale is one of the best wing defenders in the league, while Mitchell, Mike Conley, and Jordan Clarkson have all taken huge strides on that side of the ball. And that’s not even mentioning the versatility of Rudy Gay, the intelligence of Joe Ingles, and the paint-presence of Hassan Whiteside.

Utah has the league’s fifth-ranked defense, which jumps to No. 3 in the second half of games. They’re giving up an average of 104.1 points per game (fourth in the league), with a net scoring average of +11.5 that ranks second in the game. 

“We’ve done a lot well in the regular season. We are a pretty solid team, now we gotta go out there and prove it, and then this will stop,” Mitchell said.

2.) Mitchell’s Offensive Maturity Took Center Stage
Throughout Utah’s eight-game winning streak, Mitchell has been playing some of the best basketball of his career. He entered Wednesday night averaging 29.4 points on a 54/45/90 shooting split during the streak.

Against the Clippers elite defense, the three-pointers that had found their way consistently through the net were doing anything but that. Mitchell finished the game 2-for-7 from beyond the arc, but another part of his game allowed him to finish with a game-high 27 points.

As his game has matured throughout the years, Mitchell has evolved into a highly effective player within the arc. He has become a very well-rounded player on offense using his elite quickness, explosive athleticism, or strength at the rim.

So what he did on Wednesday was further evidence of how much he has worked at perfecting his craft, especially when he can’t rely on three-pointers. Whether it was a pull-up jumper or coming hard off a screen to the rim, he finished a perfect 8-for-8 from two-point shots.

“Just trying not to be predictable is the biggest thing. … Just trying to find balance between explosion and what I did in the playoffs last year and staying grounded because I had no choice,” Mitchell said. “I fell in love with how I played in the playoffs as far as the pace and change because it’s a sense of maturity for me.”

He added six assists and two steals to go along with his game-high +29 rating.

3.) Gobert Makes Statement — Even If He Won’t Admit It
It wouldn’t come as a surprise if this game meant more to Gobert considering what happened last season in the playoffs. 

After taking a 2-0 series lead, the Jazz lost the next four games to the Clippers — with many in the media believing that Gobert was the main culprit for the season coming to an end. While that narrative is both overplayed and untrue, Gobert admitted early in the season that he heard the criticism and that it didn’t bother him — he knew the truth and so did his teammates, those who matter most to him.

So when asked the question postgame if this game mattered more, Gobert admitted to being human but said that this was just another step in the journey.

“It’s human obviously when you lose to someone in the playoffs,” Gobert said of the extra motivation. “First of all, PG (Paul George) didn’t play and Kawhi (Leonard) is hurt, so it’s not the same team we played in the playoffs. But for us, it’s about getting better. Obviously we want to win every night, but we understand the big picture that we got to be better.”

Better is precisely what Gobert did on Wednesday. 

He finished with his 21st double-double of the season with 20 points and 17 rebounds, adding three assists, two blocks, and a +12 rating. But he had two plays late in the fourth quarter that are sure to make his highlight reel at the end of the season.

First came a no-look pass to a wide-open Bojan Bogdanovic in the corner following an offensive rebound, a short Bogdanovic buried that sent the Vivint Arena crowd into a frenzy.

Just a minute later, Gobert emphatically had a one-handed dunk as Los Angeles’s Keon Johnson was holding his other arm. Not one to show much emotion, Gobert let out a massive scream to the rafters afterward.

“It was cool. … Just having fun and trying to enjoy the moment,” Gobert said of the dunk and the ensuing scream.

4.) Utah Dominates The Second Half… Again
In what’s become a significant theme throughout the winning streak, the Jazz have dominated teams in the second half of games. That proved no different on Wednesday as Utah outscored the Clippers by 15 in the final 24 minutes.

With more emphasis on defense in the second half, Utah held the Clippers to 44 points over the third and fourth quarters as they shot 42.5% from the floor and 14.3% from beyond the arc. The Jazz did a much better job reacting on transition defense and running to protect the paint, while communication allowed them to be more aggressive, leading to eight Los Angeles turnovers.

“We felt like we could do better in that area (defensively),” Gobert said of the second half adjustments. “Throughout the game, you can feel individually that we can do better, and we do it. We try to hold each other accountable, but at the same time, it has to come within ourselves. … It’s good to see that we are all on the same page.”

With the defense thriving, the offense held up its end of the deal as Utah used a 16-2 run late in the fourth quarter to put the game away. Getting stops on defense allowed Utah to get out in transition, resulting in open three-pointers as the Clippers failed to match up properly. Apart from two Gobert dunks, the Jazz sunk four shots from beyond the arc in the run.

“The correlation between us playing on defense and going on runs offensively, it’s not one-to-one, but it’s pretty close,” Snyder said. “I think our understanding of when we do gets stops we can take advantage on the other end, that’s something we’ve talked about and seen progress with. We don’t let up with our concentration and our execution.”

5.) It’s Not About The Winning Streak, It’s About Getting Better
Utah’s eight-game winning streak is tied with Milwaukee for the NBA’s second-longest winning streak of the season. 

The Jazz have dominated the competition throughout it, with seven of the wins coming against teams currently in the playoff picture. Six of those victories have come by 20+ points as well, including a 124-point outing Wednesday against Los Angeles and its No. 4 ranked defense.

While the winning streak is something to be proud of, it’s not something the Jazz are focusing on. Instead, the team is staying locked in on improving each game, using each opportunity on the court as a way to get better and closer to achieving their ultimate goal of winning a title.

“I think this is probably the first time that we don’t really care about the winning streak; we just care about getting better,” Gobert said. “There might be some games when we play really well and we might not win, and there’s going to be games when we don’t play well but we win. So it’s all about the mindset and getting better every night.”

With that sort of mentality moving forward, Utah is proving to be a very dangerous team as they get deeper into the season.

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