NBA playoffs analysis: Jazz drop Game 1 to Grizzlies on cold shooting night

The Utah Jazz dropped Game 1 of their first-round playoff series to the Memphis Grizzlies with a 112-109 loss at Vivint Arena on Sunday.

Low Notes

• The Memphis Grizzlies are the best team in the league at forcing turnovers, they are amazing in transition, come up with a bajillion steals and the Jazz knew that about them coming into the game. And yet…..The Jazz turned the ball over like they were trying to gift the game to the Grizzlies. Fifteen points off turnovers and 12 fast-break points might not seem like a lot in a game with a cumulative score of more than 200 points, but those were huge moments in this game. Those plays come in bunches and they snowball. The defense gets confidence when it gets a couple steals, and then players are feeling good winning in transition. The last thing the Jazz want to do is give this Grizzlies team confidence. Well, it’s too late for that.
• The Jazz had one of their worst shooting performances of the season, shooting 22.5% from 3-point range. If the Jazz make more shots, they probably win this game. That’s the silver lining, if you want it. But really, the Jazz need to find another way to live. Don’t stop shooting the ball. Take the open shots when you have them, but there are other ways to punish this Grizzlies team and the Jazz didn’t find that.

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• It took a little too long for the Jazz to get their energy up to the level that it needed to be at on Sunday. This was Game 1 of the playoffs. They started out the game just fine. Not great, just fine. It has to be better than that,  because when Memphis was going full tilt, the Jazz fell behind and then got sloppier with every minute. They should have been mad, they should have been incensed through the latter part of the second quarter and into the first half, and instead it took them until the final minutes of the game to look like they were trying to match what Memphis was doing.

“Just so many live turnovers and they were able to run through our backs and had easy buckets. I think that we came out with energy, but we lost that that energy in the middle of the game. I don’t know the reason. Like I said, a lot of turnovers, but live turnovers.” —Bojan Bogdanovic

• Bojan Bogdanovic got things to start rolling a bit in the fourth quarter and we saw him get really fired up, clapping and yelling after a few plays. But as I said, it was too, little too late and it was Boganovic and Clarkson that accounted for half of the Jazz’s 16 turnovers with Bogdanovic committing three in the opening minutes of the game.

High Notes

• The Jazz’s usual suspects were aggressive with the ball and shooting early on. Even Royce O’Neale was taking shots in the opening minutes of the game and driving hard to the basket, taking what the defense left open. The aggressive approach was exactly what you’d like to see out of the Jazz. But, as you read in the above section...taking the shots is only half the battle.
• Derrick Favors played his best minutes of the season on Sunday and it’s a shame he didn’t have the offensive support around him for the Jazz to pull out a win when he really did everything he could. The Jazz needed Favors desperately when Gobert picked up his fourth foul in the third quarter. Favors had already been playing pretty impressively up to that point, matching the physicality of Jonas Valanciunas and guarding the rim well, but he picked up his play when Gobert got into foul trouble and was a lone bright spot during a bad stretch for the Jazz.

• On the Memphis side of things, Dillon Brooks had the kind of game that the Jazz would have loved from one of their own guys and he went on a run where he was seemingly unguardable with all the confidence in the world. The same goes for Ja Morant, who punished the Jazz with his floater after getting the first step on multiple defenders. The two combined for 57 points.

“He was unreal tonight. Basically was unguardable there for a few where he was making everything. Obviously it’s Game 1 and he performed very well. We’ll have to adjust things for next time and just try to slow him down.” —Mike Conley on Dillon Brooks

• Down three points with just seconds to play, the Jazz got a stop and started to run down the court, but the Grizzlies made the smartest play they could have in a high-pressure moment. With the Grizzlies already over the foul limit, Kyle Anderson fouled Bojan Bogdanovic with 6.4 seconds left before the Jazz could take a 3 and tie the game, putting him at the line with two shots and then giving possession to the Grizzlies. 

Flat Notes

• When Jazz guard Donovan Mitchell was unexpectedly ruled out for Game 1, it was disappointing for all the reasons that first come to mind. Obviously the Jazz would play better and have more firepower with him on the court, and obviously it’s disappointing for him not to be able to be on the court for the first game of the postseason, but there’s something about this matchup with the Grizzlies that feels like it would bring out the best from Mitchell. The Grizzlies like to talk a lot of trash, and at the top of the list of players who do so is Brooks. Mitchell and Brooks already have a history of going at one another when they play and Mitchell notoriously is fueled by that kind of interaction. Things were chippy and of course Joe Ingles had a part in all of that, but it would have been that much better with Mitchell on the court. 
• It wasn’t just a surprise for the fans and everyone on the outside that Mitchell wouldn’t be playing on Sunday. The Jazz players didn’t find out until late in the afternoon on game day and that kind of a shock, not matter how much they want to downplay it, can’t have been easy to deal with when they thought they’d be starting the playoffs at full strength.
• Rudy Gobert fouled out of the game and he wasn’t the only one who had foul problems. Mike Conley also racked up five and had to sit for a bit. Without Mitchell and with Conley on the floor, the Jazz were disjointed and unsettled on the offensive end. They need those guys.