Experience helps Rockets vs. Jazz
Chris Paul swatted back the discussion as thoroughly as Utah center Rudy Gobert blocking an underhanded scoop at the rim. But before he was a Rockets guard, taking turns with James Harden at the controls for the offense, Paul was the face of the Los Angeles Clippers franchise, carrying his former team for seven games against the Jazz.
Players never know an opponent as well as they do after a seven-game series. Surely, there are things Paul takes from the experience.
“Does their roster look anything like it did last year?” Paul said.
There are some similarities, especially in schemes and style. Some players remain. “Tell me, who?” Paul said. Well, Gobert. Derrick Favors. Joe Ingles. OK, the Jazz roster has changed a lot since then.
“Was Donovan (Mitchell) there? Was (Ricky) Rubio there?” Paul said. “That’s a totally different (team). Gordon Hayward was there. Joe Johnson was there. Joe’s with us, now.”
Paul could have kept going. Jae Crowder and Royce O’Neale were not in that Clippers series either. The roster changed extensively last offseason and again at the trade deadline.
Still, the Jazz were among the best defensive teams in the NBA last season, too. They ranked second this season, third when Paul went against them a year ago. They had Gobert protecting the lane and the rim, with defenders funneling the ball-handler toward him this season and used the same schemes and strategies last season.
The defense Paul and Luc Mbah a Moute faced for seven games a year ago might have had different parts, but reduced to Xs and Os, it was virtually identical and Paul was sensational in the series, taking the Clippers to a seventh game after an ailing Blake Griffin went out in the first half of Game 3.
“You still have Rudy there, so you’re obviously going to be a drop (defense) where he is going to be in a drop, where he is going to be back in the lane,” Paul said. “They try to funnel things to him. I think we know them pretty well.”
Jazz coach Quin Snyder said his team needed to go against the Rockets to better conceptualize all that he tried to describe. Paul’s seven-game series against the Jazz would seem to offer similar benefits.
But his reluctance to publicly draw on his experience against Utah could be driven by humility or an aversion to thinking too much about a series his team ultimately lost.
Paul had averaged 25.7 points, 9.9 assists and five rebounds in that series, hitting 49.6 percent of his shots.
In the first half of the Rockets’ 110-96 victory Sunday, when Paul made 6 of 9 shots with five assists, he maneuvered as comfortably and confidently through the Jazz defense as he had last season. More than that, he seemed as certain about how he wanted to attack.
“We talk hoop all the time,” Paul said. “If you watch basketball enough or play it enough, you sort of get a feel for what they like to do. I don’t think we can really do anything that is going to surprise them. Same thing with (playing against) them.”
Paul also might have been too concerned with Sunday’s second half, when he had five turnovers in 14 minutes, to consider his stellar play a year ago. He immediately cited the Rockets’ 10 second-half turnovers, leading to 16 Jazz points, as the area the Rockets needed to improve upon in Game 2 on Wednesday.
“I had seven turnovers myself in the game,” Paul said. “I don’t know what it is. I don’t know how many times I had seven turnovers in back-to-back games.”
Including two playoff games, Paul had as many as seven turnovers in a game nine times in 974 games in his career, never in consecutive games. There is little reason to think he would come close to that again.
But there is something else he can count on as he faces a similar challenge in his first season with the Rockets as in his last season with the Clippers.
“They’re a tough team,” Mbah a Moute said when asked what he took from last year’s series. “They do not quit. They do not back down. If you come out and beat them by 40 (points); the next game is going to be completely different.
“Their coach is unbelievable. His game-plan adjustments are amazing. His game-after-game adjustment during the series are amazing. From going against them last year seven times, I can tell. I know how much they change from game to game. Every time we did something defensively, he’d always come back and have a counter for it. I’m sure he’s going to have some stuff for our switches.
“We’re going to have to play better, defend better because they’re going to make some adjustments, some pretty good ones. I think it’s going to be a good challenge. I know that (after) playing them last year, for sure.”
Still, the Rockets have insisted all season they read every defense and adjust to attack. Whatever familiarity Paul might have from facing the same opponent would not change how he viewed the task at hand.
“We just hoop,” he said. “We figure it out as we go.”