As the strangeness of the 2020-21 NBA season surges forward through postponements and the ripple effect of a global pandemic, the Utah Jazz prepare for another unique part of this already weird season.
The Jazz beat the New Orleans Pelicans Tuesday night in Salt Lake City and they’ll play them again Thursday night at Vivint Arena.
In an attempt to reduce travel and the risks therein, consecutive games against the same team in the same market were built into the schedule. So this trend isn’t going to end with the Pelicans. The Jazz will round out their six-game homestand with another two-game series against Dallas on Jan. 27 and 29.
“You kind of treat it like a playoff series,” Donovan Mitchell said after Tuesday’s 118-102 victory over New Orleans. “In a sense we won Game 1. They’ll make adjustments to what they (did) and be ready for Game 2 and we’ll do the same. I think with a game like this, you’ve got to be ready for a lot of energy from them in the second game.”
Mitchell is right that, much like a playoff series, these consecutive games against the same team allow for more nuanced game planning and for adjustments to be made based on the previous performance. And, with the truncated 72-game schedule, each game carries more weight toward end-of-season playoff positioning.
But, unlike a playoff series, where the main goal would be to win every game by any means necessary in order to move on to the next round, teams are approaching these regular-season games, especially during the early part of the season, as a chance to fine tune.
Rather than treating these two-game sets like the chess match that the postseason becomes and trying to be one step ahead by focusing on what adjustments the other team might make, coaches and players are more concerned with the trajectory of their own team.
“It’s about continuing to make adjustments in our system and improve what we’re doing to get better to play in the last 59 games of the year, not just Thursday night against Utah,” Pelicans coach Stan Van Gundy said. “Not that it’s not important, obviously we want to win the game and we’ll try to do some things differently. But, it’s about trying to build ourselves system-wise and get better.”
For the Pelicans, defensive problems are the main focus. They allow the highest volume of 3-point shots in the league, and that can be lethal against the Jazz, who have the fourth best 3-point percentage of any team at 40.1% per game this season.
While the Jazz were on the winning side of things Tuesday, Jazz coach Quin Snyder is hoping his players enter Thursday’s game as if Tuesday’s game didn’t even happen.
“We were fortunate,” Snyder said. “We shot the ball well, I thought we moved the ball to get good shots, but we made a lot of shots, and they missed them. So you can’t rely on the ball going in the basket. We’ve got to flush this game, forget about it, and be ready to play the next one.”
That sentiment seemed to already be working by the time Tuesday’s game was over as Rudy Gobert echoed what his coach said and emphasized the need to focus on the Jazz’s strengths rather than anything the Pelicans might do.
“It’s all about us to keep getting better as a team,” Gobert said. “It’s one game at a time.”
from Deseret News https://ift.tt/3o9LpRS
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