Utah Jazz dominate Clippers 129-108 in biggest home opener victory ever

It was the biggest home opening win in Utah Jazz history. It was also certainly the most surprising.

The Jazz blew out the Clippers on Wednesday night by a final score of 129-108, never trailing and once leading by a whopping 37 points. The Jazz were projected to be one of the NBA’s worst teams, while the Clippers were projected among its best, so this result was doubly surprising.

That performance deserves a comprehensive recap, so let’s break down all we saw and all we learned in what Jazz coach Will Hardy called “a heck of a team win.”

Here are 21 points on the 21-point win.

Youth as an asset, not a liability

It’s no secret: The Jazz are one of the youngest teams in the NBA — and it’s why most prognosticators have seen them being among the league’s worst teams. The Clippers, meanwhile, are on the opposite end of the spectrum.

But the Jazz flipped that script by using their youth in their favor by getting into their offense sooner, hustling harder, making more defensive plays. The gap in athleticism was obvious, and the key element of their shocking win.

“We need to reframe that in our brains,” Hardy said. “If we’re a little short on experience, we can still be high on energy.”

Hardy’s off-ball high-low offense looks awesome

Keyonte George put it well: His job as the point guard is not necessarily to be the playmaker. It’s, instead, to put the ball in the hands of his team’s actual playmakers — that’s Lauri Markkanen, Kyle Filipowski, and even Walker Kessler now at the top of the key. They go through split action off the ball, making it hard to guard as teams don’t know what to expect from that movement.

What that meant was highly efficient looks at the basket. Markkanen cutting to the rim, Kessler lobs, Filipowski popping out for three.

An unshackled Hardy with multiple big men options has always been an effective offensive coach, and that was shown to the highest degree Wednesday night.

Lauri Markkanen: still very valuable

The biggest reason Hardy’s split-action offense works so well is the threat of Markkanen.

There’s no player in the NBA quite like Markkanen, one who is that tall a threat while moving to the rim or popping out for a quick three. (Remember, he’s the only player in league history to have put up a season with 200 threes and 100 dunks.)

Another aspect that helps: Markkanen’s resume makes him far and away the leading line on a scouting report. So opponents tend to panic about him getting open — meaning multiple defenders run to him. That leaves other Jazz players wide open.

Filipowski starting over Hendricks

One surprise for me was seeing Filipowski starting over Taylor Hendricks, who had gotten more reps in the starting lineup in preseason. But given that offensive vision from Hardy, it makes sense.

Hendricks is a stronger defender, but Filipowski showed a higher level than he did on that end in his rookie year.

Why Hardy started Svi

Fans were mad before the game, when Hardy announced Svi Mykhailiuk as the team’s starting shooting guard. (I did find one joke on Twitter, asking why the Jazz were starting a Wi-Fi password, to be pretty funny.) I don’t think that’s a permanent situation, but mostly due to Ace Bailey’s 15-minute restriction due to illness.

Putting Svi in the starting lineup does keep Brice Sensabaugh out of it, but I think the Jazz want to keep Sensabaugh as the team’s sixth man off the bench. I don’t expect Svi to be in the rotation with Isaiah Collier back and Bailey at full strength, but we’ll see.

Cody Williams out of the rotation

Meanwhile, Cody Williams found himself out of the rotation entirely, only getting two minutes in garbage time at the end of the game.

The unfortunate truth about Williams right now is that he is not an NBA-caliber player, nor is he particularly close. The shooting alone is prohibitive — even in practice he’s not hitting enough threes. The lack of impact at the other aspects of the game prevents him from playing as well.

It’s not impossible for him to get it back together, but he’s far away right now.

Walker Kessler’s offensive growth

I wrote more about this in the Triple Team this week, but Walker Kessler has shown off significant offensive development in recent games. In particular, the passing seems to have gone from liability to legitimately reliable.

Making his first two threes of the season is a great start, too.

The deadline for his extension has now passed, but I’m sure his representation loved his performance tonight. If he continues playing like this, both Kessler and his agents will be getting big, big raises.

Walker Kessler’s reading plans

Kessler also was seen reading Stephen King in the locker room tonight. He said he’d only recently started reading King, on the advice of his dad, a big King fan.

But he took a real liking to the books. Walker started with “Pet Sematary,” which led to him reading “The Shining,” which Kessler called his new favorite book. “Salem’s Lot” came next.

Now, he’s just ordered “The Stand,” with plans to read the “Dark Tower” series afterwards, on the advice of King-heads in his life.

Keyonte George, avoiding repeating mistakes

One bugaboo for George in his first two seasons was that he tended to compound mistakes. He’d react to getting beat on the defensive end by hijacking the offense for a possession by trying to get one over on the guy who just beat him. Or after turning over the ball or missing a shot, he’d try to make a great play on the next possession to even it out.

I haven’t seen that much from him this preseason, and certainly not in Game 1 Wednesday night, where he looked terrific. He was one of the Jazz’s best players in this win.

Great atmosphere at the Delta Center

Even on opening night, many NBA teams wouldn’t have had a crowd like the Jazz had Wednesday. After a season in which they finished with more losses than anyone else in the league or in franchise history, and after losing the lottery anyway, the fans packed this building and were as loud as can be.

I’ve covered a couple of hockey games this month, and that’s a fun atmosphere too — but for whatever reason, Jazz fans make more noise throughout the game than the hockey fans do. (It might just be because more fans fit in the building, owing to the smaller court.)

Great gear, too

Two big wins for the Jazz tonight from a merch point of view:

First, they put a purple Jazz T-shirt on every seat. Obviously a great perk for fans, but also makes the game more visually impressive to watch, too. Whenever possible, I love it when they do this.

Second, they held a jersey swap before the game, allowing fans to turn in their old, and perhaps yellow, jerseys in for new Mountain Basketball ones. The lines for this were wildly long, but credit to the team for trying to right the wrong.

Hilarious moment from in-arena host Andrea Urban

Back again this year was a promotion from Jazz game ops in which two fans don goofy outfits, then race across the court to make layups. First one to complete the cycle wins a free domestic flight from Delta.

After a few missed layups, one of tonight’s fans finally was able to find the basket with their attempt, putting the whole nation in the realm of possibility for exciting travel. You can go to Hawaii! New York! San Diego!

So when in-arena host Andrea Urban asked the fan where they were heading, the response of “Boise, Idaho” was a legitimate shock, and even garnered a few boos.

Urban’s terrific response: “That seems like an absolute waste!”

I welcome Utah’s rivalry with our inferior Idaho competition up north.

Both Tag Team and Derrick Favors were here

The ‘90s hip-hop duo performed “Whoomp! (There It Is)” at halftime. Fun song, and Urban announced it would be played after Jazz wins this season. Also, love that the Jazz are bringing in goofy musical acts like that for halftime performances.

Meanwhile, former Jazzman Derrick Favors also made a pre-game and on-court appearance — it feels almost too soon to bring him back as a Jazz star from the past. He’s only 34!

Will Hardy still gets mad when his team has a 37-point lead

There was a portion of this game, even with his team having an absolutely lights-out performance, where I was worried Will Hardy would be kicked out of the game anyway.

He did pick up a technical, upset with the officials on a missed foul on a George three. But he was equally tough on his own players when they made mistakes, even with the big lead. Walter Clayton, Jr. had a couple of rookie possessions in a row, for example, and got a big earful from his head coach.

The rim protection collectively

The No. 1 priority for the Jazz defensively throughout this season, Hardy says, will be protecting the rim. The Jazz want to see less of a layup line than they saw last year, when they ranked 30th in the NBA defensively.

So far, so good. The way the Jazz rotated to the rim was legitimately impressive, even from players who typically haven’t made those rotations in the past. As a result, the Clippers had to turn layups and dunks into threes, and only made 31% of them.

Taylor Hendricks’ floater

Among the expansion we saw from young players’ games tonight: a 14-foot floater from Taylor Hendricks.

He also tried to lead the team in transition a couple of times, though those had worse outcomes, as he lost the ball in traffic. In general, Hendricks is probably best taking a couple of dribbles towards the basket right now, but probably not more than that.

No “Show Love”?

Will Hardy says the team’s motto is “Show Love” — in the doldrums of the NBA season, he thinks it’s important for the team to show each other grace and appreciation to keep the vibes high.

However, when the fans chanted for Kevin Love to play in the game in garbage time, a literal demand for Hardy to show Love to the crowd, Hardy didn’t put him in! Why, Hardy, why?

Turns out Love didn’t want to enter the game. In fact, he put his hands over Hardy’s ears when the chant occurred. So it goes.

Ace Bailey’s first game

Bailey was clearly limited by his illness on Wednesday. At the end of one four-minute stint, he was bent over with both hands on his knees, as gassed as I’ve seen an NBA player.

Still, he didn’t look out of place. He ran Hardy’s offense well, didn’t force up any shots, and looked to understand the Jazz’s defensive strategy.

He’ll have better offensive nights (he shot just 1-for-5), and we’ve seen in preseason just how potent those can be.

Kawhi Leonard was a no-show

This joke was well-crafted.

The recipient of the no-show endorsement deal from fraudulent Clippers sponsor Aspiration put up just 10 points on the night; he was a game-low -25 on the court. He simply didn’t make any sort of impact on proceedings.

This is a winnable schedule coming up

After this, the Jazz play Sacramento on Friday, then Phoenix on Monday, Portland on Wednesday, the Suns again on Friday, then Charlotte on Nov. 2.

That’s four matchups against teams projected to be near the bottom of their respective conferences.

Will we see another hot Jazz start, along the lines of 2023-24’s campaign?

Jazz basketball looks fun again

We’ll wrap it up here: By the end of last season, joy had nearly been eliminated from Jazz basketball. The team was losing on purpose. Fans, players, coaches, executives, everyone felt that.

New President of Basketball Operations Austin Ainge’s decision to allow the Jazz to actually go for it this year, even with as inexperienced a rotation as possible, opened up the possibility for nights like opening night, nights in which everything goes right. Nights in which you can imagine the Jazz back at the top again.

“It reflects all the work we’ve been putting in the summer,” Filipowski said. “We aren’t here to just go through a season again. We’re here to compete, and we’re here to win games.”

I’d missed joy. I’d missed fun.

We got it on opening night. Long may it last.