Jazz unexpectedly put Trae Young down, Donovan Mitchell impresses in a blow to Hawks

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1. Jazz concludes Trae Young in an impressive way

The Jazz’s biggest problem with their losses over the past year or so of the young season was defense of the guard. So when Trae Young came to town, there was real reason to be concerned – Young averaged 30 points per game last year, and although he’s spreading the ball a little more this year, he’s still averaging 25. So what happens? when an irresistible force collides with soft defenses?

Apparently not what you would expect.

The Jazz was phenomenal defensively against Young on Friday-evening, scoring only four runs on 1-11 shooting. It equates to the lowest-scoring game in Young’s career – the only other time he had four points was in the second month of his rookie season, playing the Warriors’ famous defense.

So what did the Jazz do so well to flip the script? The first was staff – typically, the Jazz have put Royce O’Neale on the scoring guards as the first option, but tonight they used Mike Conley right away – Quin Snyder actually put O’Neale on the much bigger John Collins.

Conley guarded Young with energy throughout the match, refusing him the ball at almost every opportunity, and guarding him 94 feet for much of the match. Conley’s movement patterns, even at the age of 33, are the closest thing to the movement of Young’s water bug – he sometimes plays the same way Steph Curry does with the ball in his hands.

What Young doesn’t have that Curry does is the off-ball motion gene. The Hawks don’t have a lot of off-ball stuff for him in their playbook because he’s so responsible for everything their offense does – he’s their creative force. So if you take the ball that far out of his hands, he can’t kill you by running off screens and generally wreaking havoc like Steph can.

Of course, Young has been defended with ball denial before, but I’m not sure it happened to this extent in the NBA. The Jazz gave him several looks, but has he ever just been flat double teamed 25 meters from the basket? Everything was in the script for the Jazz.

The other thing Conley did brilliantly on Friday night was defend Young without fouling. He gets an average of nearly 10 free throws per game and is often very frustrated with getting so many easy points. Conley sent him to the line once.

“It helps to have played for 14 years,” Conley joked. “After playing for so long, there are guys like Trae who are so smart and can get on the phone very easily. For me, it was a bit of a guess when he would try it, and I got it right tonight. “

Finally, putting O’Neale on Collins meant that both men who defended Young’s great screening partners were defensively capable. If Collins were screened for Young, O’Neale could help in situations like these:

And if Clint Capela were screening for him, Rudy Gobert could help:

It’s just great fun everywhere. The Hawks scored just 91 points per 100 holdings tonight, despite averaging 113 points per 100 possessions, meaning it was probably the best defensive game of the season for the Jazz.

2. Donovan Mitchell’s shooting

Donovan Mitchell was very good in the Jazz’s four victory series:

Of particular note are his 3-point numbers there, a combined 19-34 for 55%. Obviously that’s very good – probably too good to sustain.

But it’s worth noting what a great catch-and-shoot man Mitchell has been throughout his career. Tonight he comes for 51% and shoots three – wow! But last season he was 43% on catch-and-shoots, still great, and in his first two seasons, he shot exactly 40%.

Here’s an idea of ​​how that compares to other shooters in the competition.

Mitchell is rightly good at taking those shots down. I think it’s fair to expect a regression this year – shooting above 50% from deep on catch-and-shoots would be ridiculous, but it’s a big asset to its game.

It’s another thing to consider when deciding Mitchell’s future position at the Jazz: is he better on or off the ball? He’s definitely developing as a huge threat on the ball, and he’s sure to have his hands on it at the end of close games. But it is also very nice to have a point guard that Mitchell can also give these kinds of shots, because he is very efficient at it.

3. The ultimate sign that it is not your night

To be clear – the Jazz definitely deserved their win tonight. They were fantastic on both sides, working together as a 5-man unit to stomp the Hawks and lead the entire game. In my opinion it was their best performance of the season.

But man, I also felt like the Hawks had reason to feel a little bit of a snake bite. First of all, is there that ugly 3 point percentage: 5-28? The Hawks are full of pretty good shooters who just went 0-fer tonight: Young, DeAndre Hunter, John Collins, Kevin Huerter – I mean, the Jazz defended them well, to be sure, but you’d still expect those guys at least one of their 14 looks.

However, nothing was as empty as this piece. The Hawks were still doing their best at this point in the fourth quarter, trailing 16 but in the middle of extremely good defensive possession. They took Miye Oni off the 3-point line and forced this kind of unbalanced look, which rattled against the edge.

Except it rattled against the edge so hard it got stuck there. A certain Hawks rebound turned into a jumpball on center court. Rudy Gobert won it, got one-and-one ten seconds later and even made the free throw this time.

On average there are about 40-50 “wedgies” like this one in the 1,230 games we normally play in a normal season, but many of them are from a smaller angle or from close-range shots below the rim. It came a long way and turned a Hawks transition chance into three Utah runs.

There are certainly more deflationary moments in a game, and if a bit of bad luck happens to you, of course you would rather play in a 16-point game than close. But it’s a bit of a shame the NBA tried to cut down on unnecessary player contact during the pandemic, because after that game the Hawks would rightly have needed a hug.