This Jazz team is more aggressive this year, and it shows on both sides of the track against the Celtics

1. Donovan Mitchell leads a great Jazz offensive performance

Donovan Mitchell proves the haters are wrong.

In particular, he drove the last half-quarter and pulled the Jazz away from the Celtics through mere aggression and shooting. He received tremendous recognition from when it was his turn to attack, and when the Celtics defense paid too much attention to him and left someone else open. More than anything else, he read the game on the fly and made the right decision every time.

Like, I’m actually really impressed by this play. Yes, it’s clearly a big mistake by Boston, to leave Bojan Bogdanovic open just after a timeout. But I think earlier versions of Mitchell do not take advantage, but rather prefer to perform the play that Quin Snyder composed in the time-out. Here Mitchell has his eyes open and he is ready to strike with the long pass.

Again, an old version of Mitchell slows down the game here; he likes to let the ball run on the court with the game late. How often do you get a quick break after a missed release? But Mitchell and Joe Ingles recognize the opportunity, and then Mitchell attacks in the perfect way to get Ingles open.

He shot only three highlights: all tries and a single-breaker shot that is possibly the best game on SportsCenter. He’s in a ditch on TNT, with the ideal opportunity to increase the points total, which the haters prove wrong. The defense is once again focused on one thing, which stops Mitchell.

What does he do then? He pulls in the defense and hands it to Rudy Gobert.

This is the thing that makes this team feel a little different: they really play for each other, and that’s largely due to Mitchell’s attitude as the team’s best offensive player.

“The two are going to Rudy, you know, last year, the year before, and the year before I’m probably not throwing the pass,” Mitchell said. ‘So this is the progress I see in myself. And my teammates see me and can only trust it. ”

The Jazz today had a 130 offensive onslaught against the league’s eighth best defense, a team with a lot of perimeter length and talent. They also did not shoot above average well – it was not a fluke show. So far, they have answered every possible offensive question posed at the highest level.

2. Aggression on both sides

I was thinking about the differences between this Jazz team and last year, and I think I identified a big one:

I think previous Jazz teams tried to dissect their opponent. Forgive me for uttering a gruesome metaphor here, but if the Jazz wanted their opponent dead, they asked him to climb on the operating table, put him under anesthesia, take out a scalpel, remove the skin from his chest cut open, removed a few ribs, the aorta and all the other veins and veins, and then took out the opponent’s heart. At one point, talented opponents thought ‘wait, I do not like what’s going on here’, and sometimes slipped away.

This Jazz team has a more direct approach. They have a machete. If they want their opponent dead, they will just start swinging.

They take seven more tries per game. They run in transition manner more. They have fully released Jordan Clarkson to do what he wants – that means attack. Even players like Ingles, Royce O’Neale and Miye Oni, who were sometimes slow to take shots in their careers, let it go.

Focus for a moment on Ingles; he took 11 tries tonight. But not only that, he also reached the release line ten times, the most in his NBA career. Yes, the Celtics blow the switch slightly, but do you know how many versions of Ingles are not ready to take advantage, especially with the time on the shot clock? This version of Ingles do and hit.

And on the defensive side, they just get it more. For example, this season they are on average almost twice as many per game as last year. Rudy Gobert is great at blocking basketball, but last season I thought he was a little too lucky to play the percentages – yes, a shot in midfield is a bad shot, but it still has a chance of 35% to enter.

Unless you are just blocking it. Then it has a 0% chance.

Because they were more aggressive, they repeatedly had these game-breaking runs that devastated opponents – like a hack-and-slash video game where you build up points by combining attacks. It is not Operation, dis Mortal Kombat.

I think this is the first time I have discussed the referee directly this season. Honestly, I think it was really good for the most part this year.

Tonight’s crew of Leroy Richardson, Mark Ayotte and Tony Brown were really very poor. I may have a list of more detailed issues, but they committed a bunch of judgment sins tonight:

• No consistency from period to period. There were seven joint release attempts in the first half, and 34 joint release attempts in the second half. It’s just gotten absurd in the last two periods, and it’s made a very good game hard to watch.

• Overall guessing about calls. Replay were not friendly with the referees tonight – they were unable to point out errors on numerous drives to the edge, where the referees thought there was contact, but the defensive player got the ball. Similarly, there were a number of times where a player ended up on the floor and the referees only assumed that there was an offense on the defending player.

• Offenses after a mark or a fog. You do not have to look at the result of a setup if you decide to blow the whistle. If there was a violation, call one. If not, keep playing.

• Referees on rubber tires. I thought it was pretty clear that the whistles would be blown more in one direction if the game had to be kept close. This was especially true in the third quarter, when I had to bite on Jayson Tatum on a few whistles.

I would say this as a positive remark: they did not aggravate their mistake by giving techniques on both sides, with several players clearly dissatisfied with what happened on the pitch. I like that they gave both teams the opportunity to be upset, rather than make an even bigger display of things by adding points in one direction or another.

But overall it was a frustrating game to watch fans of both teams – just search on Twitter or read the conversation threads to confirm it. Like I said, I think it’s been a good refereeing season so far, but tonight was an exception.