Utah Jazz forward Georges Niang (31), Utah Jazz center Rudy Gobert (27) and Utah Jazz guard Jordan Clarkson (00) celebrate a point near the end of game with the Portland Trail Blazers in Salt Lake City on Thursday, Dec. 26, 2019. Utah won 121-115. | Jeffrey D. Allred, Deseret News
LOS ANGELES — December has been a good month for the Utah Jazz.
The team went into Saturday’s contest against the Clippers having won six of the last seven games, a stretch which included their longest win streak of the season — five games from Dec. 11 through Dec. 21.
“I know that we’re playing better, and usually that translates to winning more games but there are so many variables that go into it,” Jazz coach Quin Snyder said before the game on Saturday. “I think we’re playing better because we’re getting more comfortable with each other.”
That comfort level is something that Snyder is much more concerned with these days than the specific number of consecutive wins or using games as a measuring stick.
Though Saturday’s matchup with the Clippers puts the Jazz against one of the league’s top teams — and one of the top players in Kawhi Leonard — Snyder is more interested in seeing his team incrementally becoming more of a cohesive unit.
“We need the whole to be greater than the sum of the parts and that requires continuity on some level,” he said. “That’s a process and hopefully one that keeps happening.”
That process depends of course on health, the variable that has likely been the hardest to contend with for the Jazz during first months of the season. A small stretch without Rudy Gobert and now the nagging left hamstring that is keeping Mike Conley sidelined are contributing factors to the Jazz needing extra time to feel like they are all on the same page.
Add the health variable to the fact that the Jazz incorporated so many new pieces this season, and then again shook things up this week with the addition of Jordan Clarkson, and the last part of the necessary equation is time.
Time is not always a friend to the NBA despite the length of the 82-game season, but the good news is that things are looking like they are trending in the right way for the Jazz, and the word out of the Jazz locker room is that Clarkson is going to pick up on things very quickly
“You wouldn’t know that he’s only been here a couple days. It doesn’t feel like that,” Snyder said.
Donovan Mitchell said the same on Friday after practice. He noted that it took him more than a year to learn the defensive schemes and different sets that Snyder implements. What surprised him the most was that just after a few hours of time with the Jazz on Thursday, Clarkson made some reads, switches and moves in his first game that proved he had already picked up on some of the pertinent information.
“He really has a passion on both ends of the floor,” Snyder said. “And that’s really good to see.”
The next seven games for the Jazz following Saturday’s game in L.A. are all against sub-.500 teams, which may not be the same kind of measuring tool like a game against the Clippers, but it does give the Jazz an easier road to making the continuity equation work for them while being able to get a fair number of wins in the book.
from Deseret News https://ift.tt/2Q7DAOs
No hay comentarios:
Publicar un comentario