CHICAGO — Utah Jazz head coach Will Hardy has said that in the early days of an NBA season, it is difficult to put any real stock in lineup data and some other metrics, so rather than become reactionary based on a small set of numbers, the Jazz coaching staff looks to identify trends and tries to correct things before they become problems.
"It's about trying to recognize trends and trying to recognize what is the majority of the issue," Hardy said, "and can we address the kind of bigger rocks first before we get to the smaller things."
Well, there is a boulder-size trend that is crushing the Jazz right now.
After a 130-113 loss on Monday night to the Chicago Bulls in which the Jazz coughed up 23 turnovers that led to 30 points for the Bulls, Utah moved to the top of one of the worst stat columns in the league — turnovers per game.
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And the Jazz are committing turnovers in a variety of ways. They're getting caught in traffic without an exit strategy, they're committing offensive fouls for turnovers, they're over dribbling, they're picking up dribbles to early, they're getting caught by weakside defenders, they're making bad passes, they're dribbling it off their own feet, they're literally dropping the ball in some instances.
You name a way to turnover the ball, and the Jazz are doing it.
There are some turnovers that are fixed by just increasing the care factor. You have to be more patient and more careful and more focused in some instances, and that's not something that is easily coached or fixed in a film session.
But there are also some miscues that the Jazz can clean up with better situational awareness and an understanding of the offensive principles.
Let's look at a couple of examples:
In this clip you can see that Talen Horton-Tucker has the right plan. He wants to pull the defense into the paint and kick out to Lauri Markkanen , who is a great shooter that is very open.
But, Horton-Tucker (and Collin Sexton and Jordan Clarkson ) sometimes gets caught either too deep in the paint by over dribbling, or by picking up his dribble too early, allowing the defense to close him off from his passing lanes.
This next clip shows how important spacing and the off-ball players are.
Clarkson drives into the paint and admittedly does the same thing that Horton-Tucker did, by picking up his dribble in a disadvantageous position. But Clarkson is more experienced in that spot and is known to use pivots and pump-fakes to create room for a shot or a dump off pass.
In this instance though, John Collins cuts to the basket, allowing DeMar DeRozan to become essentially a third defender on Clarkson, which cuts off his ability to pass or to pivot effectively.
Additionally, Markkanen doesn't relocate to a spot that would be easy for Clarkson to pass to in order to bail out of the situation.
Both of these plays resulted in turnovers. While these are just two examples and they don't cover the entirety of the problem, the point is that there are instances when the Jazz are giving up the ball that they can fix.
But on a road trip with a lack of practice time doesn't make things easy in that regard.
