Jazz Headline Disheartening Defensive Metric to Start New NBA Season

The Utah Jazz have kicked off the 2023-24 NBA season lacking on the defensive end.

Through a 1-3 start for the Utah Jazz to begin the new NBA season, the team has found themselves struggling on the floor in one major aspect: defense. Since trading away 3x DPOY C Rudy Gobert and parting ways with coach Quin Snyder during the 2022 summer, the Jazz have seemingly yet to truly recover the proficiency they once had on the defensive end.

Within the first four games of the 2023-24 NBA season, the Jazz have generated a defensive rating of 122.2, ranking dead last in the entire association. It’s a very small sample size but proves to be a substantial shift from last season’s rating of 110.5, which ranked 23rd in the league.

A defensive rating is simply a measurement of how many possessions a team gives up within 100 possessions. It’s one of the more common advanced metrics we see used in the association, often paired with the very similar offensive rating, where the Jazz place at a better 14th-overall rank in the league.

For the Jazz to find some consistency in the wins column, comes with finding production on the defensive end. The woes began game one against the Sacramento Kings, highlighted by 19 opposing threes being drained on the night, persisting through their most recent contest against the Denver Nuggets, being victim to a Nikola Jokic triple-double and Jamal Murray double-double.

Granted, these initial four games for Utah have been stacked with high-end competition (facing four of the top five seeds in the West from last season), which might be a way to attribute these issues to the defensive end. It’s tough to expect this team to become a group of lockdown pests from day one. Regardless, some improvement needs to come sooner rather than later.

Utah does have some intriguing defensive pieces on the roster, headlined by 2022-23 ROTY finalist C Walker Kessler, along with G Kris Dunn and G Ochai Agbaji on the perimeter. It proves that all hope is not gone with this unit, but shifting one or two of these players into new lineups and roles (or playing them more) may assist the early encountered problems.

The Jazz will have an easier stretch of games approaching, with a slate consisting of the Ja Morant-less Memphis Grizzlies, the Orlando Magic, and the Minnesota Timberwolves on tap for the next three games. It’s not time to hit the panic button yet in Salt Lake City, but Will Hardy will have to find some complimentary lineups and adjustments to avoid getting stuck in a big hole to climb out of to start the season.

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