Spurs-Jazz: Jazz Are Prepared for Postseason

Surprise, surprise! The Spurs were streaking towards the playoffs with eight straight wins. The Jazz were struggling on defense allowing 100 points to six of their previous seven opponents, with the Wizards the only team of the bunch fielding a winning record.

So what happens?

Naturally the Jazz hold San Antonio to their lowest point total in their history of course!

The game raised a number of questions about whether or not the Spurs can turn it on in the postseason, and revealed a number of answers about whether the Jazz can win come crunch time.

San Antonio

As always, the Spurs offense started with Tim Duncan. But though his stats look decent enough (6-12 FG, 3-6 FT, 10 REB, 1 AST, 3 TO, 3 BLK, 15 PTS), TD never found a rhythm thanks to Jerry Sloan’s varying defenses.

Not once was Duncan doubled on the catch. Instead, Utah chose to play him straight up with Mehmet Okur or Carlos Boozer and then either send help or fake sending help on his drives.

What the Jazz did so well is they never telegraphed where the help was coming.

Sometimes another big would crash hard on help defense. Sometimes the helper would cheat over and then scurry back to his man, giving Duncan the illusion that two players were guarding him. Other times, Deron Williams or Andrei Kirilenko would crash hard from the perimeter. And on one occasion with Duncan in the right box, Ronnie Price followed a cutting Tony Parker baseline around Duncan, then doubled back to rip Duncan from the blind side.

The Jazz also did a terrific job of ripping Duncan whenever he brought the ball low. When Duncan tried to bring the ball from one side of his body to the other, Carlos Boozer simply took the ball from him. Price’s steal also occurred when Duncan brought the ball low.

With Duncan sufficiently flummoxed, he uncharacteristically missed two relatively simple hooks while single-teamed, and his passing was a non-factor.

On the plus side, Duncan hit two of his three jumpers (something he hadn’t being doing with regularity this season), including one from 20-feet, and you can bet Coach Popovich and Duncan are already working on starting moves with the ball held higher.

It should be noted that the referees allowed both teams to be incredibly physical under the basket without blowing their whistles. As a result, Duncan was bumped and bullied on the majority of his drives, and outright hacked on others. But hey, the Spurs are a physical team who thrive on physical play in the playoffs. They should expect, encourage, and excel at the rough stuff.

Shame on San Antonio for not matching the intensity and physicality Utah brought to the table.

With Duncan neutralized, none of the Spurs stepped up to pick up the slack. In fact, not counting Duncan’s 2-3 or Kurt Thomas’ 2-3, San Antonio shot a combined  8-29 from midrange and beyond with Manu Ginobli only shooting 1-5, Tony Parker 2-6, Bruce Bowen 1-3, Michael Finley 1-4, and Ime Udoka 1-3.

The Spurs also missed a total of seven layups they should have made.

Tony Parker found some success splitting traps and making an array of spectacular shots, but all-in-all Deron Williams’ defense kept Parker from getting out of hand. Also, on the defensive end, Parker was repeatedly burned by Williams, and was posted ad nauseam by Kyle Korver.

Manu Ginobli was overplayed and forced to his right (are the Jazz the only team in the league that understand Manu is left handed?) by Andrei Kirilenko, and Kirilenko’s length took away Manu’s right-to-left spin moves at the hoop. As a result, Ginobli missed nearly all of his attempts at the basket and was a non-factor.

Fabricio Oberto was soft (instead of going up strong for a dunk after rolling to the hoop on a screen, he put up a meager finesse layup which missed badly), clumsy (he bobbled two passes under the hoop that would have led to layups), and defenseless (Deron Williams drove the ball right into his chest and knocked him staggering backwards before completing a layup).

Kurt Thomas meanwhile played effective defense, made a nifty reverse layup along the baseline, and blocked a Deron Williams layup.

I strongly doubt Oberto will be in Coach Popovich’s playoff rotation, and he certainly won’t start over Thomas.

While the Spurs were effective for a half in taking away Utah’s first options, they were beaten and bloodied on the defensive glass where Utah had 11 huge offensive rebounds when their offense was struggling.

While some of the Spurs mistakes are correctable, their perimeter shooting is a troubling concern heading into the playoffs,  as is their alarming lack of toughness, as are their rotations—where Ime Udoka has done an unsatisfactory job in big-time games, and Fabricio Oberto has been a complete dud. Where’s Robert Horry when he’s so desperately needed?

In short, the Spurs got dominated because the Jazz played more “Spurs-like” than the Spurs did.

Utah

The Jazz had their share of heroes, but first and foremost comes Jerry Sloan for his defensive schemes on Tim Duncan, and his instructing his players to force Manu Ginobli right.

Sloan also made sure his players took advantage of defensive mismatches, putting Korver in the post against Parker, Andrei Kirilenko in the post against Finley, and Matt Harping in the post against Manu Ginobli.

Mehmet Okur played (7-12 FG, 3-5 3FG, 16 REB, 3 STL, 1 TO, 17 PTS) heroic basketball, playing inspired defense on Duncan, showing on screen/rolls, hitting a brace of triples, crashing the offensive boards hard, and even muscling over defenders on a pair of lumbering drives to the hoop.

It was Okur’s physicality that set the tone.

After Deron Williams had a nondescript first quarter which included, of all things, a double dribble, Williams took over the last three quarters of the game. Sure his stats look ordinary (4-13 FG, 2-4 3FG, 6-6 FT, 2 REB, 11 AST, 1 STL, 4 TO, 16 PTS), but it was Williams’ brilliant passing that made the difference in the game.

When Williams ran middle wing screen/rolls with Carlos Boozer, he would get real low on his passes and drop impossible-to-deflect bounce passes which always bounced up into Carlos Boozers hands in stride. To get the kind of low trajectory on those passes, to read exactly where the defenders are when defending it, and to find the perfect angle with which to pass the ball is incredibly difficult.

Keep in mind, not only did Williams execute these passes with his right hand, he executed them with his left hand as well!

Given that Chris Paul is exclusively a right-handed passer, only Steve Nash makes better passes with his off-hand—and those precision left-handed passes multiply Utah’s offensive options exponentially.

Williams also threw a spectacular lob pass to Andrei Kirilenko on the break, and followed it up with a crisp bounce pass from the left sideline just over half-court through two defenders to Matt Harpring on the right baseline for a layup. Brilliant!

Williams did force a handful of passes early in the game, but his patience in the second half allowed his teammates to run their sets and find mismatches in the post. Williams’ defensive first step is also much faster than it used to be and he did an outstanding job defending Tony Parker.

Andrei Kirilenko played outstanding individual defense on Manu Ginobli and knocked down a handful of critical jumpers.

Ronnie Price closed out way too hard on defense allowing ball carriers to pump fake past him, but he knocked down a couple of big trifectas.

Matt Harpring (4-11 FG, 9 PTS) forced his requisite three defensive fouls simply by cutting ferociously without the ball. Harping’s totals would be more impressive if not for the four simple layups he botched.

While the Jazz gave up plenty of open jumpers defensively, they hustled throughout, and roughed up any Spurs who got in the vicinity of the basket. And despite their offensive sets not working proficiently in the first half, the Jazz simply outworked the Spurs, before the Spurs defensive was broken in the second half.

Okay, the Jazz can knock off even the best teams at home, but can they keep up their playoff intensity for four quarters on the road?

Doubtful, but still possible.

And can the Spurs simply turn on the switch in the playoffs?

Doubtful, but also possible.

And what a season it’s been—where there is one week left and no team is anything close to an absolute. Bring on the playoffs!