A shift in the game created space. Now Will Hardy’s UtahJazz squad is filling in the gaps. TakeNote
The ball starts in Mike Conley’s hands. At 35 years old, he no longer possesses the quickness to beat defenders off the dribble, and sometimes even struggles to get a step on his guy in pick-and-roll situations. When he’s coming downhill, it’s often with a defender at his hip that nags at his ability to find passing lanes to shooters and lobs to his roll man.
Clarkson has an immense amount of gravity around the 3-point line because of his constant threat to pull the trigger. The Jazz can use this to their advantage in a few different ways, but here, Clarkson’s defender has to hedge, pulling him farther out on the floor. Neither Clarkson nor Conley are immediate threats downhill, so the default strategy for an opponent is to attack the pull-up three-point strength between the two players.
Of course, you could run this same set with Markkanen instead of Vanderbilt, but that would extinguish the advantage Utah has in the weakside; Vanderbilt has the same prowess as a roller/cutter as Markkanen but Markkanen has added value to beat his assignment both as a shooter and as a release-valve cutter.
In the front office, the background behind decisions seems to be ever-delicate. Olynyk was introduced to remove rim pressure for the offense and create dish-down actions. If teams opt away from defending him with their center, Utah will attack with the pick-and-pop or handoffs. Where Bojan Bogdanovic offered a skillset already available to the team but to a higher degree than others, Olynyk removes a layer of redundancy and introduces a layer of optionality.
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