Good morning. FYI, Substack’s “this email is too long” warning system is a little wonky sometimes. You might want to click the headline to read this in a browser; there are a bunch of clips in here, so it probably won’t all fit in the email. Anyway, let’s basketball.

As we start to spin up our eulogies for this era of Utah Jazz basketball, this might be the play imprinted on the coffin. Spencer Gray Dinwiddie, find some mercy for these poor souls.

TrashTalk @TrashTalk_fr

DINWIDDIE LE POSTER 💀💀💀💀

April 22nd 2022

141 Retweets773 Likes

Dinwiddie, a guard, comes down the floor. The Mavericks are playing small; the Jazz are not. The perimeter Jazz players are confused, apparently, as to who is guarding Dinwiddie. So no one guards him. Rudy Gobert is running around in the paint, rotates from the invisible person he goes to check on the left block and gets detonated upon.

It’s a lot of the problems with the Utah Jazz wrapped up on one tidy package, isn’t it? The Utah perimeter defense is abysmal, regularly looking like an All-Star Game effort. Look at this other play.

Mo Dakhil @MoDakhil_NBA

Man, Mitchell has become such a bad defender. This is simply too easy of a drive to give up at the end of the shot clock. Just no resistance on the Dinwiddie drive!

April 22nd 2022

61 Retweets276 Likes

It looks like Donovan Mitchell is playing pick-up against someone with a communicable disease. Strongside “helper” Jordan Clarkson looks like he’s trying to give Dinwiddie a high-five on his red carpet run to the basket. The weakside help from Hassan Whiteside and Bojan Bogdanovic consists entirely of a glance at a play. Like they are only looking to see if Dinwiddie is going to drop the hammer on another teammate. I’m surprised they don’t have those little bags of popcorn, maybe a soda. And by the way, you can’t blame this one on Gobert because he’s not on the court.

Back to Dinwiddie hammering on Gobert. There’s just no accountability on Utah’s repeated defensive failings. I don’t know exactly who blew the assignment. My read is that even though this wasn’t in any sense a fast break Mitchell felt like the teams were cross-matched so he picked up Maxi Kleber as Gobert came down and instructed Mitchell to pick up Jalen Brunson or Dinwiddie. Mitchell ignored him and pointed to the right, maybe telling Gobert to go pick up Dorian Finney-Smith, which is where Gobert heads, but Bogdanovic was on him. With Gobert searching in vain to find someone to guard, Dinwiddie had a wide open path to the bucket.

So what was Bogdanovic doing after his teammate got banged on? Talking with his teammates about the defensive confusion? Nope. He was complaining to the nearest official about a prior call.

What were Mitchell, the best player on the team, or Mike Conley, the veteran leader, doing? Figuring out what happened? Nope. Just looking like they wanted to be anywhere else, hands on hips, frustrated.

And Gobert? The man who has said before that he doesn’t get enough credit for his impact on the game? What does he have to say about being left out to dry by his teammates, assuming in fact he wasn’t the one who blew the coverage?

Nothing. Just resignation. Hard to blame him given how well accountability has gone with this team in the past.

Jazz coaching staff? Quin Snyder? Anything?

Nope.

The obvious vibe is that this team is just waiting to be eliminated and broken up. It’s sad.

Mitchell plays hard … on offense. He wants to jam on defenders (he had an absolutely gobsmacking dunk late), he wants to hear the roar on a bucket, he wants to put his imprint on the game. He’s pretty damn good, too … on offense. Just a complete zero on defense at this point. And completely lacking in self-awareness about it.

Eric Walden @tribjazz

Donovan Mitchell: "It starts defensively, and everything else falls into place." Notes that the Jazz's intensity didn't rally pick up until Eric Paschall checked in.

April 22nd 2022

22 Retweets324 Likes

Eric Paschall came in for Hassan Whiteside midway through the third with Gobert out. Snyder also pulled Gobert for Paschall for about two minutes in the back of the fourth; it didn’t go particularly well. Mitchell, a sieve, mentioning Paschall’s impact seems a little passive-aggressive toward Gobert. Which would be fair because over the past few years Gobert has consistently been passive-aggressive toward Mitchell and the Utah guards’ defensive intensity. This is mutual pettiness. This is that Adam Driver divorce movie meme mashed up with one of the many internally screaming memes.

Gobert plays hard and is a legitimately great defender. People (even NBA players) can say that scorers don’t fear him, and this Dinwiddie dunk will be an additional point of evidence in that direction, but there is plenty of proof that Gobert deters rim attacks and shots at the rim. He is a tremendous rim protector who occassionally getting banged on. He has value in the NBA. Maybe slightly less value in a playoff setting where match-ups take on new life. I would argue Mitchell and Bogdanovic and Conley have less value in a playoff setting where match-ups and switch hunting take on new life, too.

For the sake of Utah Jazz fans and the players themselves, barring a comeback in this series (as it appears Luka Doncic gets closer to a return), the franchise can’t run this team back for another minute. It’d be cruel to make this group run head-first into a brick wall of their own making again. It’d be cruel to make the fans pretend it’s any different this time. And Jazz fans are smart: they knew it was over sometime in the past year. You can sense it. The boos after the Dinwiddie dunk, the general ennui that is very unlike an SLC crowd. They know. It’s over. And it probably should’ve been over last summer.

The series is only 2-1 and yet, does anyone disagree that it’s over? Anyone?

So let’s bid goodbye to this version of the Utah Jazz, a tremendous disappointment that accomplished very little. Happy trails!...