Jazz tie series with Rockets
Utah takes cue from its hosts, exploits defense
The Rockets come back from a 19-point deficit, but Utah rallies in the fourth to tie the series at 1-1.
There were Utah Jazz adjustments to address. There were breakdowns in coverages to correct. The Rockets’ defense, the area in which they had improved so greatly and taken so much pride, needed retooling. But the Rockets, for the most part, could do that.
At some point, it would come down to the most basic requirements of any defense.
The Rockets had to stay in front of the guy in front of them. Their terrible defensive first half might have given the Jazz confidence. It might have let shooters find a rhythm. It certainly forced the Rockets to climb a long way out of a 19point hole. But with Game 2 on the line in the final eight minutes, when the Rockets needed stops, their defense betrayed them.
The Jazz picked the Rockets apart with drive-and-kick basket after basket, surging to a
116-108 win Wednesday night at Toyota Center that evened the second-round series at a game apiece.
“We give up a bunch of layups, a bunch of wide-open shots,” Rockets forward P.J. Tucker said. “Give them credit for that. But we definitely got to look at ourselves first.
“We didn’t play hard enough. They outplayed us. They played harder than us. They played smarter than us. Our communication was terrible. And a bunch of stuff piled on us.”
The Rockets lamented their terrible defensive start, and it would be impossible to ignore the damage that caused. But the deficit was gone barely three minutes into the second half. With eight minutes left, Eric Gordon put the Rockets in front with a 3-pointer.
Over the next six minutes, the Jazz took the Rockets apart, nearly all with Donovan Mitchell driving, forcing the Rockets to send defensive reinforcements to cut him off in the lane and leaving shooters open to roast them.
“We take away from what they like to run (on) offense,” Gordon said of the usual benefits of the Rockets’ switching defense. “Now, it’s almost like one-on-one defense. We just have to hunker down and play good team defense and good individual defense. We can’t just let them break us down and get a wide-open 3 or an easy dunk.”
The lone exception came when Mitchell put up a runner missed it, and then the rookie guard went up to spike it back home. On the other possessions in the run that took over the game, Mitchell drew the defense and set up Dante Exum, Jae Crowder and Joe Ingles (twice) for 3-pointers in a 16-2 charge that led to a 12-point lead.
The Jazz had built their lead by repeatedly burning the Rockets on pick-and-roll, splitting the screens to send Rudy Gobert or Derrick Favors to the rim before the Rockets switched to get a defender in position to stop them. This was nothing new in the Utah offense, but rarely has it worked as effectively against the Rockets’ switches.
The Rockets largely corrected that in the second half. But down the stretch, when the Jazz went right at the defense, the Rockets’ defense broke down.
“He was breaking us down,” coach Mike D’Antoni said of Mitchell. “He was getting in there and he wasn’t finishing. He was getting guys (shots) in the corner and they made all their shots. He’s a handful. Whether he’s scoring or not, he’s a handful. There’s certain things in a game you can live with. Some things we have to stop.”
James Harden, who had 32 points, 11 assists and seven rebounds, pulled the Rockets within six points with 1:46 remaining. But the Rockets never could make the 3s to mount another last-chance rally.
While the Jazz made 15 of 32 3-pointers, the Rockets hit just 10-of-37. But the Rockets preferred to blame their shoddy defense for giving up all those 3s and their terrible start.
“I just don’t think that we should even be in that situation,” Rockets forward Trevor Ariza said. “They came out with unbelievable energy and they played harder than we did, and we can’t let that happen.”
When they did, they had to get the win in the final minutes but were burned once again.