Thunder’s Lu’s Dort outstretches Donovan Mitchell for three quarters – then Mitchell finally gets a laugh

1. Donovan Mitchell – finally – wins Lu Dort’s matchup in the final six minutes

This was one of the worst games of Donovan Mitchell’s career. Well, for three and a half quarters.

After a 3-15 start from the field, Mitchell made five of his other eight appearances to carry the Jazz to victory. In fact, those baskets, and a couple of free throws, were the only points the Jazz scored in the final six minutes of the game, keeping them away on the offensive side of the floor.

Through it, he was largely defended by Thunder second-year man Lu Dort, who was already considered one of the top defenders in the NBA. And Dort really closed, as much as we’ve seen any defender Mitchell has. I mean, this is beautiful – Mitchell ends up getting underneath for a scoop layup, but he ‘s far enough away from the basket that he’s really sad.

I think the turning point came when Dort started to tighten up a bit. Check out this play: Mitchell is just moving down the court, but Dort is too. He never gets a full face, and the imbalance means Mitchell ends up with an easy open draw.

Dort got a little careless on the winner of the match, too. Conley drives, and Dort turns his body away from Mitchell, opening some separation. Mitchell gets a starting kick at Conley, and Dort has to jump out long on the edge to try to stay connected. Just as Dort moves on, Mitchell takes advantage of the balance lost by driving to the paint.

It was solid stuff, with things to learn for both players. Clearly Mitchell tried to overdo Dort early, even going up some open looks to get controversial ones. But Dort’s sled in focus in the final six minutes ended the game’s cost for the team, even with a brilliant 42 minutes before that.

2. Mike Conley, saves the Jazz

Mike Conley had 20 points, 10 rebounds, and nine assists Monday night – one of the Jazz ‘s best chances yet to finally get a regular season double.

Remember, the Jazz haven’t had one of those since Carlos Boozer he made it inside 2008 the face of the Supersonics Seattle, which remains my favorite running Jazz stat. I mean, the NBA has players doubling the average triple now, and some pretty awful players have picked up one. Somehow, he still avoids Jazzman in regular season action.

Anyway, it seemed like Conley was the only one not involved early on, as Mitchell and Bojan Bogdanovic struggled hard to open the game. With the ball in his hands, the Jazz were getting very good possession, like the Gobert alley-oop:

You can easily see Conley setting up rookie guard Theo Maledon there. Move to baseline, miss it on the screen, know it’s going to be too late to the rotation, and bam, alley-oop.

I think Conley will have a lot of situations like this throughout the season. The fact is that it is very difficult to defend Mitchell, Bogdanovic, and Conley all with good defenders; and Conley is likely to get a number of matchups against a team’s third-best defender. (Royce O’Neale is likely to get the fourth best defender.) If Conley can consistently win those matchups, the Jazz will always have a response that goes offensive.

On Monday, Conley’s play was the difference between holding on to the rope and losing it completely, giving his players time to climb alongside him. Ultimately, the result was another production once in a decade: the first regular season at the Jazz in Oklahoma City since 2009.

3. Danger vs reward in help defense

One reason is that the Jazz were in real danger of losing this game a little defensively. At times, he thought it could be a strategic choice – the Jazz are not the only team that has tried to neglect Lu Dort to help against Thunder drivers, and no doubt other teams will trying it too.

But I think it was a calculation that the Jazz were a little too enthusiastic, giving the Thunder three wide openings again. Yes, the Thunder has some weak shooters, but it could be mathematically worse to give three openings even to iffy hunters compared to some controversial interior stuff .

The Thunder actually took advantage of this on their first play of the game. Darius Bazley sets an extremely low screen on Mitchell for his team-mate Dort, and while it would be a lot easier to just go over and follow Dort, Mitchell goes under anyway. The result is an open three.

Or this play, where Mitchell, Rudy Gobert, and Royce O’Neale fall on Shai Gilgeous-Alexander. Eventually, O’Neale and Mitchell collide, but it seems Mitchell was too far from the strong corner to get a tough contest anyway. Al Horford is open on the play as well, and even Jordan Clarkson is taking a step towards SGA in response to the drive.

Now heck, I might be doing too much work on a 5-7 5-7 point shooting night from Dort; it may not happen again. But he was a 35.7% 3-point shooter on open scenes last year, which equates to 107 points per 100 possessions – good enough for the half-court! The extra rotations seem to be away from it.

I once had an NBA coach tell me that the name of the defensive game in the league is to reduce rotations: obviously, drivers are open to the bad edge, but if you can count the number of times you need to reduce external assistance. , you will be in better shape throughout property.

The main advantage of Gobert is being on your roster as that paint protector, so the edge guys don’t have to leave their man. Gobert was doing his job indoors, but I think too often the Thunder find a place on the outside because of the Jazz’s decisions.