SALT LAKE CITY — In the wake of Utah’s three-game losing streak, the Jazz have made some changes, the first of which is bringing Joe Ingles off the bench and inserting Royce O’Neale back into the starting lineup.
Following a 131-111 loss to the Phoenix Suns on Monday, the Jazz knew that something was going to have to be done. By Wednesday, after lengthy film sessions and conversations, that something turned out to be a lineup change and a return to defensive basics.
“We have a team that has a lot of moving parts. We’re still getting used to people getting in and out of the lineups and a lot of things have been kind of changing over the weeks and guys are just adjusting.” — Utah Jazz guard Mike Conley
After a morning shootaround Wednesday, ahead of the Jazz hosting the Boston Celtics, Mike Conley pointed to the amount of change throughout the season as a possible cause for some of the recent lapses, change that will now continue with the latest move to take Ingles out of the starting unit.
“We have a team that has a lot of moving parts,” Conley said. “We’re still getting used to people getting in and out of the lineups and a lot of things have been kind of changing over the weeks and guys are just adjusting.”
In the early afternoon of Wednesday, The Athletic reported that a lineup change would be coming in the form of Conley coming off the bench. Less than an hour later, The Athletic then reported that the Jazz coaching staff had changed their minds after having notified the players and that it would be Ingles who would in fact be leaving the starting unit.
When asked about the day’s confusion, Jazz head coach Quin Snyder said that he wasn’t going to go into how lineup decisions were made and offered little insight into the process that led to Wednesday’s change.
“Our lineups have been fluid all year,” he said. “There’s been consideration all year for who we play, who we start. Both ends, not just who we start, but who finishes, us finding combinations on our bench that help us. ... Joe and Royce matching up with wings, they’re our two wing defenders, and trying to manage that stuff. Like I said, Joe has not started, Royce has not started, Mike has not started, those lineups and those decisions are always fluid.”
Though this is just one more move that the team will have to adjust to, the hope is that the the five-man lineup of Donovan Mitchell, Rudy Gobert, Bojan Bogdanovic, Conley and O’Neale will bring back a sense of defensive normalcy that the Jazz have been without lately.
Earlier in the season when Ingles had a stint of coming off the bench, he didn’t play particularly well. The Jazz are likely going to give this lineup some time before making another quick decision, though Snyder seems open to the idea of pivoting if need be.
“The overriding thought on our team right now is that we’ve got to get back to defending,” Snyder said of the lineup change. “That’s been our focus in practice. My decision to put Royce in the lineup is grounded in that, but he can’t do that on his own.”
During Tuesday’s and Wednesday’s film sessions, the team looked at the defensive problems plaguing it through the recent skid. One of the biggest things that stood out was a failure to consistently play transition defense.
“There were a lot of breakdowns when we shouldn’t have breakdowns,” Conley said. “Transition has been a big key for us the last few days. We’re allowing too many easy buckets. It’s tough to defend when you’re giving up layups and dunks in transition. Getting back and communicating is going to be big for us as we go forward.”
O’Neale is not only the Jazz’s premier perimeter defender but also their best defender in transition. Shifting him into the starting lineup is a move that signals the Jazz’s commitment to solving their recent issues.
As far as transition defense goes, it’s the little things that each player needs to focus on, like not getting caught watching plays in the corners, not lagging behind to argue with officials, making smart decisions when chasing loose balls, and communicating as the possession changes.
“All these teams these days like to run, they like to push it,” Conley said. “Guards, big men, all of us, we have to try to get back and communicate and get to a man and stop them from getting to the paint.”
It all seems a little elementary, but that’s how the team needs to operate in order to pull out of the rut it currently finds itself in.
“It’s on us to focus on the basics, which is transition defense and then communication,” Gobert said. “We have our absolutes — no matter what happens in the game, no matter how tired we can be, whatever, if the sky is falling down — that’s transition defense, physicality, communication. It’s got to be there every night.”
One of the more sobering and uniting themes of the Jazz’s film sessions is that everyone realized that they were collectively playing badly. It wasn’t any one person that was worse than the other. Every single player has made mistakes and they are all to blame for the losses.
Since everyone is to blame, it makes it a little easier to talk through the issues and try and motivate one another. For Conley, he hopes that his actions will speak louder than words and bring back the edge that the Jazz have seemed to lose.
“What can you think about personally that fires you up?” he said. “Things that you’ve done in the past that you’re not so proud of that you can improve on. You can say ‘every time tonight I’m going to box out, every time I’m going to run back, every time I’m going to get a loose ball when I see one,’ whatever it may be. Come in with goals and I think players will respond to the little things that you’re trying to do.”