The Triple Team: Three thoughts on Utah Jazz vs. Miami Heat


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LAS VEGAS — Welcome to the Triple Team! After every game, I'll break down three topics from that night's game, flush with stats, highlights, quotes and more. Let's get started.

1. Dante Exum, Rodney Hood, and Justise Winslow sat out tonight's game.

That's the lead story in an otherwise forgettable game. On paper, this looked like an intriguing matchup, but with the 3 biggest stars out of the game, the sizzle was lost.

Justise Winslow sat out the game with "general soreness", according to the box score, a malady I had yet to see used as an explanation for why a player was held out of a game. It may have been more explicable had the Heat played yesterday, but they did not. Maybe he had too strenuous of a Friday night in Las Vegas?

Dante Exum's ankle injury is real, though, and the Jazz see no reason to push him, especially with a decision on whether Bryce Cotton will make the team looming. It wouldn't be a wild surprise to see him sit out for the rest of the summer league, though depending on swelling and soreness. We'll learn more at practice tomorrow about the Jazz's plans.

Rodney Hood's shoulder soreness is real, too, but is pretty minor in the scheme of things. The Deseret News' Jody Genessy reported that Lyles is likely to play in Monday's game, which should help the starless situation.

2. The Jazz got outworked tonight

This was the biggest reason the Jazz lost tonight's game: they got out-physicaled on offense and defense, and never really ended up executing in the way they wanted to. The Jazz lost the rebounding battle 45-37; only Jack Cooley had more than 5 rebounds.

"It's one of our mantras to defend in a certain way, and then finish the possession by blocking out," summer league coach Alex Jensen noted. "And we kind of didn't."

But the effort wasn't just limited to the rebounding battle: one reason that Cotton was able to be so successful on the offensive end was that the offense grinding to a halt forced him to create on his own in more possessions. Despite Cotton's 28-point performance, the Jazz shot just 25-66 from the field overall.

The Heat did this by doing a nice job of using their traditional high trap on the pick and roll, and disrupting the Jazz's off-ball movements through physicality. The Heat bench was very vocal, encouraging their guys to continue their effective play. Essentially, this short-circuited the Jazz's offense, and they aren't cohesive enough to have effective counters yet. That might be a subject of tomorrow's practice.

Again, I'll let Alex Jensen sum it up: "They were a little more physical and we just shortcutted everything tonight, I think."

3. Trey Lyles really struggled.

Lyles finished with just 2-10 shooting, 0-3 from the 3 point line, and only 4-11 from the free throw line. That's very bad, obviously. Worse, it means Lyles is shooting just 5-19 overall in summer league, hasn't made a 3 pointer yet, and is below 50 percent from the line.

When we asked him about it after the game, a frustrated Lyles explained, "My shot wasn't falling, so I tried to get to the free throw line, and the free throws weren't falling." That sums it up pretty effectively, I would say.

It's a little bit evocative of another Trey, namely Trey Burke, who shot just 24% in his rookie season in the Orlando Summer League. While Burke hasn't ended up a 24 percent shooter, he's done a great job of giving us a great sample size that shows he's about a 38 percent shooter at the NBA level. That's still disappointing, and if Lyles follows that path, he won't live up to that #12 pick.

The good news for Lyles is that he has at least four more games to improve on his play, whereas Burke has likely played his last summer league game. In particular, Lyles will be a better free throw shooter than this: there's no reason he can't shoot at least as well as the 74 percent he shot in college.

The three point shooting, though, still feels pretty far away. While he made 25 of 40 corner threes in the Jazz's pre-draft workout with Lyles, the above-the-break threes he's taken so far have largely landed short. It looks like he's struggling with that added couple of feet of distance.

Lyles is doing some nice things that will make more of an impact in actual NBA games. In particular, his skill in getting out in transition hasn't really been taken advantage of yet. Because of the Jazz's shaky guards, those fast break opportunities will reveal themselves more in the regular season. His skill as a pick-and-roll ball handler will also be more useful there, as the Jazz design plays around that ability. For now, they're just not really in the playbook.

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Andy Larsen

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