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SALT LAKE CITY — For the sixth time in eight games, Donovan Mitchell stood and answered questions following a loss. Losses that started out as reasonable — a close defeat sans Rudy Gobert to Milwaukee — but have spiraled into more and more head-scratching and disappointing performances.
“We’ve been saying the same thing for a week and a half,” Mitchell said following the Jazz’s latest defeat to the Thunder on Monday.
That part is true. If the Jazz have been consistent in anything over the last two weeks, it’s what they've been doing wrong.
Miscommunication on both the offensive and defensive end, poor transition defense, and bad bench play. They aren’t connected, they aren’t running back with urgency, and they aren’t playing well.
Mitchell, Gobert, Jazz head coach Quin Snyder, and just about everyone else can point to what is happening that has led to the Jazz losing the six games during their current stretch by an average of 15.1 points per game. But maybe more concerning is the Jazz seem to be at a loss when it comes to actually knowing how to fix it. They know what's happening on the court, but the "why" seems to be escaping them.
“It’s not an easy thing to do,” Mitchell said. “It seems easy because of the personnel that we have.”
That personnel created unparalleled excitement for a Jazz team. Mitchell, Gobert, Bojan Bogdanovic and Mike Conley were supposed to form the core of a dominant offensive team, with Gobert being able to mostly make up for some perceived defensive issues.
“We’ve been saying the same thing for a week and a half...” pic.twitter.com/lfGlYxeUDB
— Ryan Miller (@millerjryan) December 10, 2019
The thing is, that’s mostly been true. When those four have shared the court (Conley has missed the last three games due to injury), the Jazz have an offensive rating of 112.9, which would be good enough for fourth in the NBA, and a defensive rating of 102.3, which would be second.
During the current losing stretch, that lineup has even upped their offensive rating to 114.1. The defensive rating, though, has slipped considerably to 113.3.
That slippage paired with the fact the Jazz at some point have to play their bench (a unit which has seriously torpedoed the team) has made for some disheartening losses.
Over the last two weeks, the Jazz are 21st in the NBA in defensive rating and an even worse 24th in offensive rating. Those are numbers of a lottery team.
“We've got to be really connected in order to defend, and that means everybody doing their job,” Snyder said. “And it's kind of a chain reaction at times, but there's nothing about our team that doesn't own the performance. We are going to keep working and see what we're doing, and do it better and try to improve.”
But as the losses pile up, it's giving more opposing teams the scouting report on how to beat the Jazz — and beat them soundly.
“Every team will be physical with us because they watch the game,” Gobert said bluntly. “Teams that watch tonight, they are going to see that every time someone's physical with us, they just take us out of what we wanna do; so they're gonna keep doing it. It's on us to, you know, to be tougher mentally and physically.”
It's up to the Jazz to prove them otherwise.
It’s a cycle. The physicality takes the Jazz out of their offense, which leads to being bad on defense, which leads to getting blown out. The question is: how do they break it?
"Move the ball?” Gobert said. “That's a good step. And do it with force. And then defensively, the same — communicate, be physical.”
It sounds so simple, so easy. But if the Jazz have proven anything over the last two weeks, it’s that the simple can be very difficult.
“We do it for one game, and then we go back to doing the same stuff,” Gobert said. “Maybe it's just because when we get tired, we just forget about what's important and we fall back into our demons. I think we just got to stick together, and it's got to be communication. Gotta be honest with one another even if it's hard, even if sometimes it's a little harsh, we gotta do that. And, you know, I think that's the only way to move forward.”
