One of the major differences between this season’s Utah Jazz and last season’s team has been their improvement on the defensive end. That is, until recently.
The Jazz’s defense has dropped significantly. They have lost five of their last eight games and even through the three wins the defense has been questionable.
“We know with our record and the way we’ve been playing people are going to give us their best shot night-in and night-out, and then we haven’t been ready for it,” Joe Ingles said after the Jazz were beat 131-122 by the Washington Wizards on Thursday night. “So if we continue to not be, this is going to be a miserable second half of the year.”
“We know with our record and the way we’ve been playing people are going to give us their best shot night-in and night-out, and then we haven’t been ready for it. So if we continue to not be, this is going to be a miserable second half of the year.” — Joe Ingles
Through the first 32 games of the season the Jazz rocketed to the top of the NBA standings and had the second-best defensive rating in the league at 106.8 behind only the Los Angeles Lakers who posted a defensive rating of 106.0. Over the past eight games the Jazz have the 23rd defensive rating in the league.
They certainly didn’t look like a team that had one of the best defenses in the NBA on Thursday when they let the Wizards gain a 24-point lead in the first half.
“Starting out the game we were too casual getting back on a couple possessions, we got beat middle, we didn’t shift in from the weak side or we didn’t get back and hit somebody and get them off the glass,” Jazz head coach Quin Snyder said. “So it was a collection of things. Just the urgency that we have on defense needs to improve.”
That was the team message after the loss on Thursday. They lacked urgency and focus on the defensive end and they have to be more hungry to start games.
Lack of urgency and lack of focus are often blamed for defensive lapses, and that’s completely fair. But those are such abstract things that mostly have to be manufactured from within, on an individual basis. But there is one thing that Donovan Mitchell and Rudy Gobert both said could help the Jazz in getting back to where they were in the first half of the season: Communication.
“I think it goes back to communication and then having a sense of pride defensively,” Mitchell said. “I think that’s that’s really what it is, and we’re not going to get anywhere if we just try to outscore people.”
The Jazz have tangible evidence of what happens when they let their guard down on the defensive side of the ball. There are the losses and the stats from the last few games that can not be disputed or argued.
In Gobert’s mind, better communication can help refocus the defense and even save them on nights when they might be tired or missing a player or might have an off shooting night.
“We need to understand that it is important to do it every single night,” Gobert said. “Regardless of who we are playing, if we’ve got legs, if we don’t have legs, if it’s raining, sunny. We’ve just got to talk every night and obviously, it’s never going to be perfect, but I think if we talk it really helps us get locked in and get on the same page.”
The Jazz have been talking for weeks about knowing that they’re going to get every team’s best shot since they have the best record in the league and needing to be ready for it. Despite all the talk the Jazz have seemed caught off guard by the intensity and physicality that other teams are demonstrating in regular season matchups.
“We’ve still got a decent record regardless of the results and we need to play like we want to win a championship,” Ingles said. “Like we want to not get knocked out in the first round like we have been.”
That’s definitely something that the Jazz have to iron out before they reach the postseason, otherwise everything this season will have been all bark and no bite.