Three thoughts on the Utah Jazz’s 124-118 loss to the Los Angeles Lakers from Salt Lake Tribune Jazz beat writer Andy Larsen.

1. Dalton Knecht threes and the Jazz’s defensive urgency problem

Dalton Knecht scored 37 points tonight, including 9-12 from the three-point line. The worst part of the game came late in the third quarter, when Knecht made four consecutive threes, then got fouled on the next one, then made the next. He scored 18 points in a span of 3 minutes and 3 seconds.

“In the second half, it seemed like everyone in the gym knew Dalton Knecht was going to hit the next shot, except for a few people. The problem was those few people were on our team,” Will Hardy said.

It goes without saying that this is quite unacceptable. It’s not new for the Jazz, either: You may remember essentially the same thing happening in last year’s Jazz games against Keegan Murray and Donte DiVincenzo.

But when watching the film, the main issue was someone who wasn’t on the team last year. Cody Williams was given the Knecht assignment during this period and simply did not handle the shooting threat with the urgency it deserved.

Williams’ rookie status makes this a little less problematic, though it’s worth noting that the Jazz at least partially drafted Williams. They believed he could be a plus defender, and he hasn’t been one so far in his career. Maybe this is a lesson that will push him in the right direction.

My biggest problem is how little the Jazz think together as a group. In such a situation, there simply needs to be a collective recognition of what is happening on the floor, and then an idea of ​​how to stop it. But the Jazz don’t really have a defensive leader or defensive leadership on this team, especially with Walker Kessler out. No one really thinks about “how do we as a group defend what the Lakers are doing now?” Instead, players seem much more focused on playing their own role well.

We’ll see if that evolves over time. Clearly, the five men who were on the floor together when the Knecht explosion occurred will not be on the floor together on the next good Jazz team. But all five can improve their own roles And in working with others, and these can be transferable skills.

2. Breaking down the turnover

The Jazz are obviously a bad team, but there’s not much that makes them the worst team in the NBA. 3-point shooting? They are only 25th! Assists? 25th! Defensive rebounding? 26th!

One thing they are the worst in the league at, however, is turnovers. They rank last and turn the ball over 18.6 times per game, significantly more than even the second-worst team, the Portland Trail Blazers (16.9 times). The Jazz only had 16 tonight, but 11 of those came in the first half and were a big part of the reason why this one was never really close.

So what’s going on? Well, PBPStats.com uses the NBA’s play-by-play to categorize bad turnovers. Here’s where they rank in each category, and where that ranks in the NBA’s hierarchy.

I’m not sure I have great news here: it turns out that the Jazz are among the worst teams in the league in all kinds of turnovers. It’s not just turnovers that kill them, they’ve also figured out how to give the ball to the other team while the clock is stopped. They often lose the ball just by dribbling it, but they also lose the ball by going over it. They step outside the boundaries. Heck, they’re even more attacking goalkeepers than most teams.

Where do you start solving this problem? No idea.

3. Will Hardy and JJ Redick

Lakers coach JJ Redick ended his pregame press conference in a unique way tonight.

“I’m excited because this is my first time coaching against Will Hardy,” Redick said. “So I want to beat him.”

Since Hardy’s press conference took place just minutes later, we obviously had to ask about it.

“Yes, I’ve gotten to know JJ over the years. We have a lot of people in common. I always appreciated his general character and the way he performed his job. I admired him when he played, how he worked as a player. You know, I grew up in Virginia, and ACC basketball was really all we watched. And so I’ve watched JJ play a lot when he was at Duke and I was in high school, and I’ve just admired how he’s been on his journey as a player.

“And as I got to know him over the last few years, there was a lot more talk about basketball, the X’s and the O’s, and so I enjoyed picking his brain, and we had a lot of conversations. really fun conversations about playing the game, whether it’s offense, defense or anything like that,” Hardy continued. “His competitiveness is very clear. His tone is bad, but I’ll talk to him about that later. I wouldn’t say anything mean about him today. I wouldn’t stoop to his level.”

I’ll be honest, I was quite impressed with Redick and the Lakers’ coaching staff when I watched this game tonight: they ran their offense with a level of connectedness that wasn’t present in the Darvin Ham era. This was my favorite play, I think:

Getting Markkanen on the perimeter (so he can’t help with anything), then getting the ball into the hands of your best passer, then having Anthony Davis fake a screen to roll to the hoop for a potential lob while simultaneously running Knecht into the corner of a screen for a three? The defense has so many choices to make here, and they just can’t defend everything.

That’s good stuff. I’m known for being anti-Lakers… but that’s just a cool play.

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