Jusuf Nurkic’s third straight triple-double sullied by Jazz’s blowout loss to Heat

In an ideal world, we would be talking about and celebrating Jusuf Nurkić’s third straight triple-double he posted Saturday night.

It’s the first time that a Utah (or New Orleans) Jazz player has ever logged three triple-doubles in a row and it’s truly impressive that he’s been battling illness the last two games and still managed to fill up the stat sheet.

But, while Nurkić was doing all that he could Saturday, there was a lack of effort and physicality from the rest of the Jazz when it came to grabbing rebounds that ended up giving the Miami Heat one of the most lopsided stats I’ve seen in a long time.

At halftime the Heat had 19 offensive rebounds and the Jazz had just two. By the end of the night the Heat had 26 offensive rebounds and the Jazz had seven. Overall, the Jazz were out-rebounded, 64-34.

Because of the Miami’s offensive rebounding efforts, they scored 23 second chance points and eventually beat the Jazz, 147-116.

“That was as big a physical loss as you can have,” Jazz head coach Will Hardy said. “Just got obliterated on the glass. You lose the glass by 30 and give up 26 offensive rebounds, there’s not really a pathway to winning in that game.”

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And Miami’s rebounding efforts are by design. Heat head coach Erik Spoelstra doesn’t have a specific philosophy on who should be crashing and who should be getting back to defend, but there is a mandate that nobody should be standing still.

“We want to make the efforts to go to the glass,” he said. “Anything that has to do with making multiple efforts. You can stand and watch, can stand and kind of shuffle back, or you can make an effort.”

The effort to crash is what keeps players on the court. It’s what proves they are willing to do more and want to contribute even in the not-so-glamourous moments, and the Heat players have bought in and tried lately to improve, especially in that area.

That’s something that goes for natural rebounders such as Bam Adebayo, but also for their smaller perimeter players.

“It’s so natural, especially for us perimeters, as shots go up to kind of drift back, so we’re just trying our best to focus on crashing at least to the elbows,” Dru Smith, who had four offensive rebounds said.

“Because those bounces, some of those balls that go over your head, if we can get to those and that can help our offense, then why not?”

Meanwhile, on the Jazz’s side of things, one bad thing led to another on Saturday night.

The Heat were racking up the boards, the Jazz were missing shots, then the score started to get away from them and before they knew it, there was a snowball effect of bad habits and poor choices.

“You get down, and the habits go south, and physicality totally went away,” Hardy said. “I felt like mentally, after the second quarter, it just felt like we were sort of dead.”

The Heat hadn’t had a game in which they’d logged 26 offensive rebounds since 1994, and Saturday’s game was just the eighth time in franchise history that they’ve had 26 or more offensive boards in a single game.

That’s the kind of stat and then final score that makes it nearly impossible for the team to celebrate an individual achievement. Nurkić only had one career triple-double prior to joining the Jazz and he’s now had three in the last week.

But a loss like this sullies the triple-double streak.

“That’s a hard one, because I recognize that statistical achievements in this league are important, and they indicate how special individuals can be in different moments,” Hardy said.

“I also think that there are times that individual achievements are highlighted in spite of the fact that you lose. While Nurk is playing really good basketball, we just lost by 30.”