Jazz Trae Young closed unexpectedly, Donovan Mitchell features in a beat win vs Hawks

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1. Jazz locks down Trae Young in impressive fashion

The Jazz ‘s biggest problem in what they lost in the final year of the junior season is defensive tackles. So when Trae Young came to town, there was real cause for concern – Young scored 30 points in the game last year, and although he spreads the ball around a little more this year, he still gets an average of 25. So what happens when a force inevitably hits a soft defense?

Apparently, that is not what you would expect.

The Jazz were impressive against Young defensively Friday night, allowing him to score just four points on a 1-11 shot. He is tied for the lowest winning game of Young ‘s career – the only other time he had four points in the second month of his rookie season, playing the Warriors’ defensive line.

So what made Jazz so good at turning the script around? Staff were the first – Jazz have usually put Royce O’Neale on scoring guards as the first choice, but tonight they used Mike Conley directly – Quin Snyder O ‘ Neale on the John Collins much bigger.

Conley defended Young with energy throughout the game, denying him the ball at almost every opportunity, and defending him 94 feet for most of the game. Conley’s movement patterns, even at age 33, are the Jazz’s closest to Young’s water-movement – he plays the same as Steph Curry at times with the ball in his hands.

The fact that Curry is not Young makes the gene move off-ball. The Hawks don’t have much off-ball stuff for him in their playbook because he’s so responsible for everything the offense does – he’s their creative juice. So when you take the ball out of his hands to that point, he can’t kill you by running off screens and doing as much damage as Steph in general can.

Of course, Young has been defended by ball defense before, but I’m not sure if he happened to this point in the NBA. The Jazz threw different shots at him, but had he ever just been flat with two feet 80 feet away from the basket before? Everything was in the playbook for the Jazz.

The other thing Conley did brilliantly on Friday night was protect Young from getting dirty. He gets an average of nearly 10 free game throws, and often draws a lot of frustration from opponents just because he gets so many easy points. Conley put him to the line once.

“It helps to play for 14 years,” said Conley. “After playing for so long, people like Trae who are as cunning as they can get to the line are very easy. For me, it was so good to count those times that he would try to do it, and I thought right tonight. ”

Finally, putting O’Neale on Collins meant that the two men who were defending young screening partners were capable of defense. If Collins screened for Young, O’Neale could help in situations like this:

And if Clint Capela screened for it, Rudy Gobert could help like this:

It’s very nice all the way. The Hawks scored just 91 points per 100 possessions tonight despite an average of 113 points per 100 possessions, making this perhaps the best defensive game of the season at Jazz.

2. shooting Donovan Mitchell

Donovan Mitchell has been very good in all four Jazz winning games:

Particularly important are his 3-point numbers there, 19-34 combined for 55%. That’s great – probably too good to maintain.

But it’s worth noting what Mitchell’s catcher and sled has been all his life. Coming in tonight, he has shot 51% on threes for catch and shoot – wow! But last season, he was at 43% on catch-and-shoots, still awful, and in his first two seasons he shot at just 40%.

Here’s an idea of ​​how that compares to other hunters around the league.

Mitchell is legally good at laying down those scenes. I think it’s reasonable to expect a drawback this year – shooting above 50% from depth on catch-and-shoot would be a laugh, but it’s a huge asset in his game.

Another thing to consider when deciding on Mitchell ‘s future position with the Jazz, too: is he better on or off the ball? He’s definitely developing as an awful threat on a ball, and at the end of close games, he’s definitely going to have it in his hands. But it’s nice to have a point guard that will give Mitchell this type of food as well, because it’s very effective on them.

3. The last sign that it is not your night

To be clear – the Jazz totally deserved to win tonight. They were excellent on both ends, working together as a 5-man unit to stomp across the Hawks, leading the entire game. It was, in my opinion, their best performance of the season.

But man, I also felt like the Hawks had reason to feel a little snake. First, that ugly 3-point percentage: 5-28? The Hawks are full of good enough shoes that just went 0-fer tonight: Young, DeAndre Hunter, John Collins, Kevin Huerter – I mean, the Jazz defended them well, for sure, but you would expect yet these boys have to make at least one of their 14 appearances.

There was nothing worse than this play, however. The Hawks were still trying their best at this level in the fourth quarter, down 16 but in the middle of a very good defensive possession. They ran Miye Oni off the 3-point line and took on this kind of unbalanced view, which went against the edge.

Except that he was going against the edge so hard that he stood there. A surefire version of the Hawks fire was turned into a leap ball at the center court. Rudy Gobert won it, got it and one ten seconds later, and even made the free throw this time.

On average, there are around 40-50 “wedgies” like this in the 1230 games we usually play in a regular season, but many are from tighter angles or closer views below the edge. This one came from far-flung locations, and turned the Hawks ’transfer potential into three Utah points.

There are definitely worse times in a game, and of course, if a little bad luck is going to come your way, you’d want to be in a 16-point game rather than a close one. But it’s a little unfortunate that the NBA has tried to reduce unnecessary player communication during the pandemic, because after that play, the Hawks would be justified by needing a hug.