Defense, please?
Posted by colatina on December 9, 2007
In the Jazz current 3-game losing streak, they’ve shot 47, 52 and 60 percent over the Kings, Spurs and Mavs. They outscored the Spurs in the paint by a large margin and put up 117 points on the Mavs. For the season, they’re second in the league in team points per shot and in team FG%. But if last year was the year they got lit up by the league’s best shooting guards (Kobe, Redd, etc.), this year is the year they’re getting lit up by everybody. As one might expect, this recent slide has coincided with subpar defensive play from Andrei Kirilenko, who has only averaged 1 block, 0.5 steals, and 4 rebounds in the last four games.
Despite references to “tough, hard-nosed” whatever to the contrary, Sloan’s teams have never been defensive stoppers. They expend so much energy running the offense that defensive concentration isn’t what it could be otherwise. They have been able to keep scoring under control with a methodical, layup-oriented style which throws in a healthy amount of fouling on defense in order to slow down the opposing team’s fast break and prevent easy baskets. But with this season’s much faster pace (106 ppg), those traditional Jazz edges on defense aren’t there anymore. Unless they can replace those edges with outstanding weakside defensive play by Ronnie Brewer and Kirilenko, and get at least passable on-ball defense from Williams, Boozer, and Okur, the Jazz are going to continue to lose close games and high-scoring affairs.
UPDATE I: I should quaify the above statements, I guess. You can check out NBA.com’s Power Rankings from last week and see that in the past 7 days, only 1 team (the Celtics) allowed fewer than 100 points per game. (For season about half the league is allowing less than 100.) The Jazz’s 104.8 ppg defensive average in the past week is good enough for 8th in the league! That’s pretty remarkable, considering how fast their pace seems to be nowadays, and how well opposing teams are shooting. Indeed, for the season that Jazz make the bottom ten (though only just) in opp FG%.
Thankfully, the Jazz are not resorting to the hack as much as they have in years past. In recent times Utah has been the far-and-away leader in fouls in the NBA. This season they are so far only 3d, and in terms of *foul differential*, they’re a relatively respectable 11th, averaging only about half a foul more than their opponents. Ronnie Brewer is a big help, I’m sure.
