Three thoughts on the Utah Jazz’s 117-115 loss to the Sacramento Kings from Salt Lake Tribune beat writer Andy Larsen.
1. Lauri Markkanen’s eventful final seconds
Well, the Jazz’s best player was involved on both ends of the ball in the game’s final seconds — exactly what you’d want. Unfortunately, things didn’t quite go his way.
THIS KINGS-JAZZ ENDING WAS WILD 🤯
— Bleacher Report (@BleacherReport) January 4, 2023
FOX WITH THE GW LAYUP. MARKKANEN BARELY MISSES THE BUZZER. pic.twitter.com/GpSITyN1hy
First of all, Hardy’s been clear that, if there’s one possession left in a game, he’d probably choose Markkanen to defend the other team’s best player — likely after a switch. So that the Kings actually screened to have Fox attack Markkanen would have brought a smile to Hardy’s face.
But Markkanen does screw up here. As Hardy said, “We’d like to not see the fastest player in the gym go to his left hand and shoot a layup. Lauri is seven feet tall, so he probably shouldn’t be standing above the 3-point line guarding the fastest player in the gym. We let him get to his left hand and we knew Vando was going to double from the nail.”
It’s tough, because Fox has had 20 points, mostly on jump shots, so you want to be close to him. But you just have to send him towards the help, not away from it, and also away from his dominant hand — and Fox, a lefty, and an excellent player, just beat Markkanen.
He almost made up for it though.
First of all, Markkanen might be the player I’d take first in the league in that situation. You need someone very tall, long, and athletic to get the catch and shot off. Jokic is the other guy that immediately comes to mind, thanks to his ridiculous shot-making skill.
And Markkanen makes a ridiculous 3 — but just barely had not enough time to make it work. It’s truly a remarkable play anyway.
We should note that there probably should have been 0.5 seconds remaining — I’ve seen screenshots with 0.6 seconds, but I think the ball is just still slightly in the net right as it goes from 0.6 to 0.5. And truthfully, I’m not sure 0.5 seconds are enough... I’ve tried to count the frames of the release, but the video is just too fuzzy to know if 0.5 would have resulted in a made basket. It’s the home scorekeeper who maintains the clock, and maybe they were off by 0.1 second, but that’s so hard to really criticize. And then if they go to the monitor to review the time remaining, it gives Sacramento coach Mike Brown time to tell his guys to not allow exactly what happened.
It’s a tough loss, now five in a row for the Jazz by a combined 15 points.
2. Ochai Agbaji gets a chance
The reason the Jazz lost this game was a 21-3 run they allowed in the first quarter, when they looked quite lethargic on both ends of the floor. I thought they took iffy shots too quickly, not really giving themselves a chance to attack the weak Kings defense with more time. Defensively, they got out-physicaled.
So instead of going with his usual lineup, Hardy gave lottery pick Ochai Agbaji a chance. To me, that made sense: Hardy wanted to change the team’s energy level without adding more poor decision making to the mix — otherwise, I think the option would have been Talen Horton-Tucker.
Agbaji didn’t really do anything in his seven minutes on the floor, though: he missed his two threes, turned the ball over once, and didn’t have any rebounds, assists, steals, or blocks. He definitely has an NBA body, but he does look a little hesitant to make his mark sometimes.
Still, Hardy was optimistic about Agbaji’s chance to play more moving forward.
“Yeah, I think it’s time that Ochai finds some minutes,” Hardy said. “He’s worked really, really hard ... we need his physicality, we need his athleticism, especially on the defensive end.”
Agbaji has struggled at the G-League level so far, though: he’s shooting just 37% from the field and 30% from three, adding 3.4 rebounds, 2.0 assists, and 2.2 turnovers per game. He’s trying to figure out where he can consistently get shots in the pros — there’s 3-point shooting, sure, but he hasn’t been super consistent at that. Then, to what extent can he develop a secondary game is a real question.
Still, I welcome the Agbaji minutes to come, if they do. He’ll spend this weekend with the Salt Lake City Stars, with three home games at the Maverik Center.
3. Thinking about offensive rebounding
Kings coach Mike Brown was great to talk to pregame — telling all sorts of stories, and sharing some of his philosophy on coaching basketball.
In particular, he was asked about his attitude towards offensive rebounding. Should his teams crash the boards, or get back and play transition defense? Here’s what Brown said.
Well, for the longest time I was in the mindset that we’ve got to take care of transition, because if your transition defense is good, teams won’t get an easy basket against you. Because I think that especially come playoff time, defenses are so good, if you can score in transition that will best benefit your team. But as time has gone on, and I’ve been with certain teams — watching Andrew Wiggins offensive rebound for us last year when I was with the Warriors, he did it on his own. Well, he showed some success with it, and I just kind of stepped back and let him do it more. Then I realized well, this could be very effective for for us and and so that started getting me believing. Some of the guys on the staff believed in it as well.
Luke Loucks (former Warriors player development coach, current Kings assistant coach) is a guy I’ve known for a long time, he’s been pushing me on it and then I got here to Monty (McNair), to his credit, that’s something that he believed in. And then me doing some research. The national team in New Zealand, they were the first to come up with this thing called “Tagging Up” which is a way to offensive rebound, and so myself and Luke did a study on it together with the national team coaches in New Zealand — I don’t know, maybe this past summer, maybe the summer before. We tried some of it with the Nigerian national team. Once getting here and going through that study and all the other things, I’m a firm believer that you can do it, but you have to teach it and we do teach it a certain way.
How do you teach it?
From an area. So it depends on where your guys are. We have what we call crash zones.
You can go through the Kings’ offensive rebounds this season, since Brown became coach, and get an idea of where their crash zones are. Essentially, it looks like they want their guys to crash the boards from the paint and from the baselines — but if they’re already out up top, probably to get back on defense. Meanwhile, the Jazz are very aggressive on the offensive glass — Jarred Vanderbilt especially will often chase boards from even above the arc. (Relatedly, the Jazz are much better at offensive rebounding and much worse at transition defense than the Kings.)
While we’re here, I thought the “Slappin’ Glass” Substack had an interesting breakdown of that New Zealand “Tagging Up” system. Essentially, it asks all five offensive guys to find the guy defending them and immediately push them into the paint when a shot goes up — no reserve transition defenders whatsoever. The thought process is that, by doing so, you put all five players in the mix for offensive rebounds, and make all five defensive rebounding players focus on boxing out, which means that they’re not going to be able to get out in transition quickly, anyway. If they do get in transition, you never have to communicate on who’s guarding who — you get the guy you just tagged.
It’s hyper-aggressive, but kind of fun. On the other hand, the tagging doesn’t allow for Vanderbilt-style athleticism to go get offensive rebounds in the in-between spaces. You want a bunch of thick dudes — a bunch of position-equivalent Steven Adamses — to make this work best. In the NBA, it’s a little rough.
Still, it’s cool how basketball ideas work, and how NBA head coach Mike Brown will spend time studying a random idea from the New Zealand team to see if there’s something the Sacramento Kings might use.
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