Jazz unexpectedly shut down Trae Young, Donovan Mitchell impresses in the explosive victory vs. Hawks

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1. Jazz blocks Trae Young in an impressive way

Jazz’s biggest problem in terms of losses in the last year or so has been the defense of the guards. So when Trae Young came to town, there was a real cause for concern – Young averaged 30 points per game last year and while he spreads the ball a little more this year, he’s still averaging 25 So what happens when an irresistible force collides with a soft defense?

Apparently, not what you would expect.

The Jazz were phenomenal against Young defensively on Friday night, allowing him to score just four points at 1-11. He is tied for the lowest score in Young’s career – the only time he had four points was in the second month of his rookie season, playing the praised Warriors defense.

So what made Jazz so good at overturning the script? The first thing was the staff – usually Jazz put Royce O’Neale on guard as the first choice, but tonight they used Mike Conley directly – Quin Snyder put O’Neale on John Collins much bigger.

Conley guarded Young energetically throughout the game, denying him the ball on almost any occasion and guarded 94 feet for much of the game. Conley’s movement patterns, even at the age of 33, are the closest Jazz to Young Waterbug’s movement – he sometimes plays similarly to Steph Curry, sometimes with the ball in his hands.

What Young doesn’t have on what Curry does is the gene for moving out of the ball. The Hawks don’t have too many off-ball things for him in the playing card because he’s so responsible for everything they do to their offense – he’s their creative juice. So when you take the ball out of his hands to that degree, he can’t kill you by running away from the screens and generally wreaking havoc, like Steph can.

Of course, Young was defended against the denial of the ball, but I’m not sure it happened to this degree in the NBA. Jazz took a different look, but has there ever been a double team 80 meters away from the basket before? Everything was in the Jazz textbook.

The other thing Conley did brilliantly on Friday night was Young’s free-kick defense. He has an average of almost 10 free throws in the game and often attracts huge frustrations from opponents just because he gets so many easy points. Conley sent him to the line once.

“It helps to play for 14 years,” Conley joked. “After playing so much, there are guys like Trae who are so cunning and can easily get to the line. For me it was a way to guess those moments when he will try to do it and I guessed right tonight. ”

In the end, O’Neale’s placement on Collins meant that both men defending Young’s great screening partners were capable of defense. If Collins selected Young, O’Neale could help in such situations:

And if Clint Capela selects him, Rudy Gobert could help:

It is very beautiful all the time. The Hawks scored just 91 points per 100 possessions tonight, despite averaging 113 points per 100 possessions, which means it was probably Jazz’s best defensive game of the season.

2. Donovan Mitchell’s shooting

Donovan Mitchell was very good in the series of the four Jazz games:

A special note is his 3-point numbers there, a combined number of 19-34 for 55%. This is obviously very good – probably too good to support.

But it’s worth noting what a great guy Mitchell has been throughout his career. Coming tonight, he shot 51% on the catch and shoot in threes – wow! But, last season, he was at 43% in case of capture and shooting, still great, and in his first two seasons he shot exactly 40%.

Here’s an idea of ​​how this compares to other shooters in the league.

Mitchell is legitimately wonderful at knocking down those blows. I think it’s reasonable to expect a regression this year – shooting over 50% of the depth on catches and throws would be ridiculous, but it’s a big plus in his game.

It’s another thing to consider when deciding Mitchell’s future position with Jazz: is he better on the ball or off it? He certainly develops as a huge threat to the ball and, at the end of tight games, he will definitely have it in his hands. But it’s also great to have a guard to feed Mitchell with such photos, because he’s very effective at them.

3. The ultimate sign that it’s not your night

To be clear – Jazz absolutely deserved its victory tonight. They were fantastic at both ends, working together as a 5 man unit to step over the Hawks, leading the entire game. It was, in my opinion, the best performance of the season.

But man, I also felt that the Hawks had reason to feel a little snake. First, there is that ugly percentage in 3 points: 5-28? The Hawks are full of pretty good shooters who just got 0-iron tonight: Young, DeAndre Hunter, John Collins, Kevin Huerter – I mean, Jazz defended them well, for sure, but you’d still expect those guys to make at least one of their 14 appearances.

However, nothing was more deflating than this play. The Hawks were still trying their best at the moment in the fourth quarter, down 16, but in the middle of an extremely good defensive possession. They drove Miye Oni off the 3-point line and forced this kind of unbalanced look, which clung to the rim.

Except that it stuck so tightly to the rim that it stuck there. A good return from Hawks’s midfield resulted in a free kick. Rudy Gobert won it, got it one or ten seconds later and even made the free throw this time.

On average, there are about 40-50 “wedgies” like this in the 1230 games we normally play in a regular season, but many of them are from tighter angles or closer photos under the rim. He came from afar and turned a Hawks transition opportunity into three points in Utah.

Certainly, there are more moments of deflation in a game, and of course, if a bit of bad luck comes, you would want to be in a 16-point game, rather than a close one. But it’s a little unfortunate that the NBA tried to reduce unnecessary contact between players during the pandemic, because after that game, the Hawks would have been justified in needing a hug.