Following the Raptors’ 93-89 loss to the Jazz on Wednesday, RR traded emails with Ben Dowsett of Salt City Hoops, debriefing on a game that made for plenty of tired eyes by the end. It’s a format for additional post-game content I’ve had in my head for a while, and tonight seemed like a decent night to give it a shot. Check out Ben’s game recap here, check out ours here.
Blake Murphy: Well that certainly was a game. A slow, somewhat disjointed game, but an entertaining one nonetheless. From the Raptors side, it looked like it could have been a “schedule loss,” the second night of a road-road back-to-back a night after playing The Champs. Instead, they played better than expected, which kind of serves to make the narrow loss more painful than a blowout one would have been.
Do the Jazz walk away from this one happy? They played mostly well, themselves, but they nearly let one get away against an exhausted, good-not-great team.
Ben Dowsett: The Jazz have never been much of a team to linger on anything under Quin Snyder, but those of us prognosticating (at least, this prognosticator) certainly came away with a feeling that Utah was a bit fortunate to win. The words “schedule loss” absolutely crossed my mind while watching the Raps play in Golden State last night in a game that came down to the wire, but there were long stretches Wednesday where the Raptors looked like the team with more energy.
Saying “the Jazz turned it on when it mattered” is technically kinda true in this case, but that’s not necessarily comforting from their end of the table. That simply won’t always be possible, and multiple lulls like the Jazz experienced in the middle parts of the game will often bite them in too large a way to recover from. They’re still working through various barriers early on in the year, and their inconsistent play looks to be the chief one in need of addressing.
Blake Murphy: It would have been nice for both sides, then, if the Raptors could have capitalized on those lulls to a greater degree and helped the Jazz out by teaching them a lesson. With a loss. The Raptors have lost three tough, close games to start their five-game road trip. It’s a disheartening stretch.
What’s worse, the endgame scenarios have all been fairly similar. Were you surprised to see the Raptors go so DeRozan-heavy in the fourth (he took 10 field-goal attempts and used 12 possessions), particularly since Gobert had gotten the better of that match-up in help scenarios and switches in the mid-range?
Ben Dowsett: I was a little, though at the same time, relying on their strong backcourt has been among their go-to moves in high-leverage situations over the last couple years, right? I do think a bit more involvement for Lowry as well could have been good, though he may have been most exhausted of all Raptors players from the night before. In his case, though, the ability to fill it up from deep would have been huge in the two-man game – it becomes a lot tougher for the Jazz to funnel penetration optimally in Gobert and Favors’ direction when they have to contend with a larger variety of options in the initial set up top.
One pretty consistent positive with this Jazz team is this: They can learn plenty of lessons from a win, and absolutely will tonight. Snyder is the last guy who’ll let his group rest on their laurels just because they came out with a W. Some of the most frustrated situations we’ve ever seen him in have come after wins, honestly (not all of them, of course). Process is and will always remain king for his team.
Blake Murphy: Glad you mentioned the impact multiple options up top can have on Favors-Gobert. I was pretty shocked the Raptors stuck with their starting lineup for the final six-plus minutes (less 48 seconds) for that reason – the starters with Cory Joseph in place of Luis Scola have been doing major damage, and the dual ball-handler approach, plus the additional floor balance that comes with it, seemed the best way to attack the Jazz late.
I’d imagine you were also looking to the scorer’s table waiting on the Raptors to add another shooter or ball-handler late?
Man, Snyder seems awesome. He was my preseason pick for Coach of the Year, and he’s a safe bet for Screencap Face of the Year at some point, too.
Ben Dowsett: While in the moment I was a bit more concerned with what the Jazz were doing rotations-wise, I definitely wondered about that upon review. I think Dwayne Casey got a bit too generous with Scola after his monster first half, even though the Jazz changed up their coverage on him in the 2nd and mostly neutralized the ways he’d been killing them. Plus, some of the only issues the Jazz have had defensively this year have been with those exact sort of multi-handler lineups that can move the ball and find a weak crease to attack.
I have to curb myself from going too over-the-top on Snyder, both because I don’t want to sound too much like a homer and more importantly because I know he sees our stuff and I don’t want him to think I’m an obsessive nutcase. That said, though, this is flat-out one of the best overall coaches in the NBA. His player development behind the scenes is legitimately incredible – just over a year isn’t a large enough sample, of course, but if he maintains this rate of success with maximizing the skills of his young guys, he’ll be considered the best in the league in this area within a couple seasons. And he’s still developing as an NBA coach – his rotations will improve, as will his in-game playcalling. Jazz fans already have enough to be excited about with a great young core, but add Snyder in to the mix and they have among the most promising futures of any young team in the league.
Blake Murphy: The player development stands out, for sure, and it’s all the more impressive since the Jazz are competitive while serving that end. I’m still not a big Trey Burke fan, but I love how Rodney Hood’s come along, really enjoy the no-point guard lineups in response to the Dante Exum injury, and, of course, molding the raw material of Rudy Gobert into a topped-rank defense garners the coach a fair amount of credit.
It’s just too bad Gobert was postered into oblivion Wednesday…
Ben Dowsett: That was legitimately one of the best dunks I’ve ever watched in person. The dunks where a guy seems to jump, then crest, then somehow rise into the air again are always the best ones, and DDR added to it by throwing down a vicious tomahawk over the best rim protector in the league. Even Rudy acknowledged the leap with his hashtag on Twitter later: #thatboyusedthecallofdutydoublejump.
True to form, of course, Snyder didn’t even want to hear about Gobert on that dunk – he wanted to hear about the other guys, especially Hayward, who got blown by by DeRozan and left Gobert hanging out to dry. Both coach and players repeated the sentiment – they take those kinds of things personally as a team, and I think you could see their overall level rise after that play. The next time DeRozan had Rudy one on one, for instance, he forced a fallaway that airballed.
All this stuff does is fuel Gobert. He’s notorious for finding negative tweets about himself and favoriting them (he’s done it to me a couple times), nevermind if they come amid 10 other beaming positives about him. The guy is as competitive as they come, and in the end all he actually cared about tonight was that the team won. He was even laughing with Joe Ingles about the dunk in the locker room, he knows he got posterized.
Blake Murphy: So you’re saying DeRozan cost the Raptors the loss by waking the giant up from a brief defensive siesta? Excellent. So the answer to “how to score on Rudy Gobert” is “don’t, because if you do, he’ll get even better.” That doesn’t seem fair.
Any other parting thoughts on tonight’s game or what you saw from the Raptors in general?
Ben Dowsett: Yeah, basically. Remember that vicious Wiggins dunk on Gobert from last year that got replayed about 3,681 times on various national TV stations? What no one seems to remember is that Gobert went right back up with Wiggins under two minutes later in virtually the exact same situation and destroyed him (Wiggins ended up on the ground with Gobert flexing over him as the ball went the other way), then spent the rest of the game terrorizing the Wolves anytime they even got close to the paint. He feeds off it.
Not surprisingly, Lowry didn’t quite look like he had a full tank tonight after how hard he went the night before. That could have easily been the difference, honestly – if he’s full force, he and DeRozan would be a tough combo for a Jazz team that’s struggled with versatile and talented backcourts. Beyond that, only other Raptors-related thought I had was a bit of surprise that Patrick Patterson played only 16 minutes. The Jazz have also had the occasional issue with the “stretch-4” prototype while in their traditional 2-big alignment, so I was a bit surprised Casey didn’t look to Patterson for that sort of thing a little more frequently. I guess when Scola is performing like he was in the first half, you gotta ride the hot hand to some degree.
Blake Murphy: Yeah, Casey rode the Scola hot hand, and I’m not sure he trusts Patterson a ton right now. Save for a two-game bounce-back, he hasn’t shot the ball all that well and he looks hesitant at times (and isn’t adept at attacking closeouts). He rebounded well in small minutes against Golden State but so far this season he’s been boom or bust based on his shooting, and Casey’s not giving him as long to shoot his way through it now.
Thanks so much for doing this, Ben. I really appreciate it. Was nice to confirm what I saw on both sides was being noticed on the other side of the lines, too.
