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Five takeaways from Warriors’ ugly road loss in Utah

By

Jacob Hutchinson

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One of the few defensive mistakes the Jazz made tonight

The Warriors and Utah Jazz just played one of the least entertaining games in the NBA season. The pace was pedestrian – to the point that three-second violations were a commonality – and the shooting and the passing were both poor. The Warriors tied their season low assist total of 18, which amounted to a disappointing 108-103 road loss for the Warriors before a four-game home stretch through Christmas.

Here are five takeaways from tonight’s game:

“Stay on the path that leads to the well”

For most of the game, there was only one path that led the Warriors to the well of points they normally have ease drawing from. That path, as The Killers’ lead singer lead singer Brandon Flowers (who spent some of his childhood years in Utah and moved to Park City recently) sang on “Wonderful Wonderful” was Stephen Curry, who had 32 points on 12-of-21 shooting and 5-of-9 shooting from deep.

Eventually, Kevin Durant came around and finished with 30 points on 10-of-23 shooting, with a host of those points coming in crunch time, but with Klay Thompson shooting 3-of-12, it was all for naught.

Meanwhile, the Jazz followed the path of Jae Crowder and Joe Ingles tonight. Crowder had 18 points and 11 rebounds was 5-of-9 from 3-point range, while Ingles added 20 on 7-of-13 shooting and 4-of-9 shooting from deep.

Anotha one down for KD

Kevin Durant passed another NBA legend on the all-time scoring list. A game after passing Larry Bird for 33rd, Durant passed Gary Payton tonight for 32nd on the list. Up next on the list? Clyde Drexler.

The question is, how far will Durant rise up this list? Of course, there’s no telling how long he’ll play or whether he’ll stay healthy. Many of the greatest NBA players hit a cliff late in their career, although Durant’s shooting ability favors consistent scoring if he chooses to keep playing.

In each season in which he’s played 62-plus games, Durant has scored at least 1,555 points. For his career, he’s averaging 27.4 points per game, and hasn’t ever scored less than 20.3 points per game (his rookie year), and hasn’t scored less than 25.1 points per game since the start of his sophomore campaign. Assuming Durant plays four more seasons (after this one) scoring at least 25 points and 65 games, he’ll at least pass Shaquille O’Neal for 8th all-time.

That’s a conservative estimate though, and would leave him just north of 29,000 points. You would imagine Durant would like to hit that crisp 30,000 point mark, which is likely to come when he’s 34 or 35, assuming he stays healthy and keeps up a similar level of productivity.

Was it good defense or terrible shooting? A lil’ bit of both

In the midst of an NBA season defined by a rapid pace of play, the Utah Jazz are a throwback. They keep the pace slow (20th in the league) and are defined by defense. They have the 7th-best defensive efficiency and 21st-best offensive efficiency, compared to the Warriors, who are defined by offense (1st in offensive efficiency, T-14th in defensive efficiency).

Tonight was a slow, defensive game. To start the game, the Warriors had scored just 11 points with 3 minutes left in the first quarter, thanks to Utah’s Rudy Gobert-led defense. But the Warriors defense was also solid, and by the end of the first quarter, the Warriors trailed the Jazz 24-21.

But there’s only so much that great defense can do in a league defined by its great offenses. A lot of the stagnation tonight came due to user error in the form of poor shot selection on both sides. Klay Thompson was 3-of-12 (and 0-of-4 from deep), Jonas Jerebko was 2-of-7, and on the Jazz’s side Donovan Mitchell was astoundingly inefficient (but more on that below).

This moment of vintage Warriors on a night of poor play

This is vintage Warriors before Durant joined the squad. Shaun Livingston, Andre Iguodala, Stephen Curry and Draymond Green in peak synchronicity. Livingston picks up a clever block. Iguodala snags it and wheels it to Curry to run the break with Green. Then Curry sends it to Green, Green sends it back to Curry, and Curry sends it back to Green for the easy layup.

The Jazz won with Donovan Mitchell at his absolute worst

With a minute and 37 seconds remaining, Mitchell had 14 points on 5-of-25 shooting and 2-of-10 from 3-point range The Warriors trailed by four points and the shot clock was winding down. Then, with Mitchell standing approximately 31 feet behind the arc, Klay Thompson fouled Mitchell (albeit questionably), who nailed two of his three free throws.

With about 18 seconds to go, Mitchell got the ball again, with Thompson guarding him again. This time, Mitchell dribbled the ball off himself and lost the ball out of bounds. But on the Warriors’ possession, Curry lost the ball after grabbing an offensive rebound, and Mitchell iced the game with a pair of free throws. He finished with 17 points on 5-of-26 shooting.

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