Jazz closed Trae Young unexpectedly, Donovan Mitchell impresses in the burst victory against Hawks

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1. Jazz catches Trae Young in an impressive way

The biggest problem for Jazz in his defeats in the last year of the youth season was the defense of the guard. So, when Trae Young came to town, there were real reasons to worry – Young averaged 30 points per game last year, and although he’s spreading the ball a little more this year, he’s still averaging 25. So, what happens when an irresistible force clashes with soft defense?

Apparently, not what you would expect.

Jazz was phenomenal against Young defensively on Friday night, allowing him to score just four points from shots 1-11. He is tied for the game with the lowest score in Young’s career – the only other time he did four points was in the second month of his debut season, playing in defense of the Warriors.

So, what did Jazz do so well to reverse the script? The first thing was the staff – Jazz normally put Royce O’Neale on the guards’ score as the first option, but tonight they used Mike Conley straight – Quin Snyder actually put O’Neale on the much bigger John Collins.

Conley protected Young vigorously throughout the game, denying him the ball at almost every opportunity, and protected him at 94 feet for much of the game. Conley’s movement patterns, even at age 33, are the closest Jazz has to Young’s water bug movement – he plays similarly to Steph Curry at times with the ball in his hands.

What Young doesn’t have that Curry has is the gene for movement outside the ball. The Hawks don’t have a lot of off-ball things for him in their manual because he is very responsible for everything his attack does – he is his 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 usually wreaking havoc like Steph can.

Sure, Young has been defended with a ball denial defense before, but I’m not sure if it happened to this degree in the NBA. Jazz gave him different looks, but has he been flattened in pairs 80 feet away from the basket before? Everything was in the Jazz manual.

The other thing Conley did brilliantly on Friday night was to defend Young without fail. He hits an average of almost 10 free throws per game and often attracts great frustration from opponents just because he gets so many easy points. Conley sent him to the line once.

“It helps to have played for 14 years,” joked Conley. “Having played for so long, there are guys like Trae who are so cunning and can get to the line very easily. For me, it was kind of guessing the moments when he would try to do that, and I got it right tonight.

Finally, putting O’Neale in Collins’ place meant that the two men who defended Young’s great selection partners were capable of defending. If Collins selected Young, O’Neale could help in situations like this:

And if Clint Capela did the screening for him, then Rudy Gobert could help like this:

It is very good all around. The Hawks scored just 91 points per 100 possessions tonight, despite an average of 113 points per 100 possessions, which means it was probably the best defensive game of Jazz of the season.

2. Donovan Mitchell shot

Donovan Mitchell has been very good at Jazz’s four consecutive wins:

Noteworthy are its 3-point numbers there, a combined 19-34 to 55%. This is obviously very good – probably too good to support.

But it is worth noting how Mitchell has been a fantastic guy to catch and shoot throughout his career. Arriving tonight, he’s shooting 51% at catch and shoot three – wow! But last season, he was 43% catch-and-shoot, still great, and in his first two seasons he got exactly 40% right.

Here’s an idea of ​​how it compares to other snipers in the league.

Mitchell is legitimately great at taking down those shots. I think it is reasonable to expect a regression this year – shooting over 50% in footprints and shooting would be ridiculous, but it is a great asset in your game.

It’s another thing to consider when you’re deciding Mitchell’s future position with Jazz: is he better on or off the ball? He is certainly developing as a tremendous threat to the ball and, at the end of games played, he will definitely have it in his hands. But it’s also great to have a point guard who can give Mitchell that kind of shot too, because he’s very efficient at that.

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

To be clear – Jazz absolutely deserved the victory tonight. They were fantastic at both ends, working together as a 5-man unit to step on all 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 snakebite. First of all, is there a horrible 3-point percentage: 5-28? The Hawks are full of very good snipers who just scored zero tonight: Young, DeAndre Hunter, John Collins, Kevin Huerter – I mean, Jazz defended them well, for sure, but you still hope these guys do at least one of his 14 looks.

Nothing was more disheartening than this move, however. The Hawks were still trying their best at this point in the fourth period, losing 16, but in the midst of extremely good possession. They took Miye Oni off the 3-point line and forced that kind of unbalanced look, which rang against the edge.

Except it hit the edge so hard it got stuck there. A sharp rebound by Hawks turned into a bouncing ball on the central court. Rudy Gobert won, hit an e-one ten seconds later and even hit 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 planes below the edge. This came from afar and transformed the Hawks’ transition opportunity into three points in Utah.

There are certainly more discouraging moments in a game and, of course, if a little bad luck comes to you, you would like to be in a 16 point game instead of a disputed one. But it is a bit regrettable that the NBA tried to reduce unnecessary contact with players during the pandemic, because after that move, the Hawks would have reason to need a hug.