The Utah Jazz kept their losing streak alive in their first NBA Cup game of the new season, as they dropped Friday night’s matchup vs. the Dallas Mavericks, 100-112.
It was a game that turned out to be largely a representation of how the Jazz’s first few games of this season have gone: there are some good stretches, some positives to take away, but just too many critical errors going against them that ultimately lead to the end result not falling in their favor.
And it was in this matchup against the Mavericks where the Jazz showcased their current rotation’s biggest weakness once again, as they have many times this season already: their inability to take advantage of the possession battle.
The Jazz finished this game with an ugly 21 turnovers to the Mavericks’ 15. Utah claimed only eight offensive rebounds to the Mavericks’ 21, and that led to an extra 11 shots on the Jazz because of it. Rookie Morez Johnson Jr. got a staggering 10 offensive rebounds in his 24 minutes on the floor.
Having those types of gaps within the possession battle is far from a winning recipe for any team in the NBA, and it hasn’t been for the Jazz to start this new season en route to a lowly 1-8 record.
Throughout the Jazz’s first nine games of the year, they currently rank 26th in the league for field goal attempts per game, 27th in turnovers, and 15th in offensive rebounding.
Jazz head coach Will Hardy addressed those woes in the possession battle after the loss on Friday.
“The possession battle was out of hand today,” Hardy said. “We had 21 turnovers, and they had 21 offensive rebounds. Defensive rebounding has been a calling card for us all year. I thought our physicality on the glass needs to be higher; we need everyone to participate.”
“The turnovers are a hard issue to diagnose. There’s a variety of things going on, but we’ve got to fight for our space, and we have to be solid with the ball. We need to recognize the situations that we are in and try to get off it a little bit earlier.”
The Jazz’s turnover issues and lack of winning the possession battle aren’t anything new for this roster. In fact, since Will Hardy took the reins as Utah’s head coach back in 2022, this team has sat in the bottom five of the NBA for turnovers per game.
But this season was expected to be different for this group.
The Jazz were gearing up to win more games than they have since this rebuild first started, the guards and other young players on the roster have matured another year, and Utah has had multiple seasons to get their turnover issues worked out since they first flared up four years ago.
Instead, the results have turned out to be quite the opposite. The Jazz’s turnover issues haven’t seemed to take any steps forward from last season. They’re losing games because of it, but only this time, the team thought they had turned the page from their excessive losing over the past several years.
Of course, the Jazz have a long season ahead to get their hiccups in the possession battle worked out. And once this rotation gets back to full health with Jusuf Nurkic and Jaren Jackson Jr., their offensive production and overall rebounding should see a lift as well.
But so far through nine games, things have been pretty nightmarish for this Jazz roster––and their issues within the possession battle are one of many concerns to work out in order to get back on track.
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