Three thoughts on the Utah Jazz’s 113-99 win over the Orlando Magic from Salt Lake Tribune Jazz beat writer Andy Larsen. 1. Jazz defense takes advantage of Orlando offense Coming into Saturday’s game, I hadn’t fully realized what a spiral the Orlando Magic had been in.
They’ve lost seven of the last eight games, four of them by 20 points or more. That includes two losses to the Portland Trail Blazers and the Toronto Raptors, two very bad teams. It was pretty immediately obvious on Saturday: that team cannot score.
They are ranked 29th in the NBA offensively, and looking at their stats, the fact that they’re the worst shooting team in the NBA could not be more obvious. The Magic's shooting stats this season. Yikes.
(Basketball Reference) But while the Magic’s horrendous form meant that the Jazz’s defense had an opportunity to win the day, it was an open question whether or not they’d be able to. After all, the Jazz are the league’s 29th-ranked defense, too — it was the classic case of a stoppable force vs. a movable object.
The game plan was obvious: protect the paint at all costs, and let them fire away from three. They did that, especially early. The Jazz allowed zero points in the paint in the first quarter, and only 36 for the whole game.
The result is this shot chart: Orlando Magic shot chart vs. Utah. Paolo Banchero, the Magic’s best offensive option, went 4-19 on a variety of bad looks like this: Lauri Markkanen’s playing really far off of him, b.