Portland’s defense is designed to make opponents take mid-range shots. They do this by dropping the center so low in pick and roll that all of your space is in that area of the court. But the Jazz don’t really have good mid-range shooters other than Donovan Mitchell, and he shot just 1-10 tonight.
So what do you do? You don’t just run vanilla pick and roll. You don’t settle. You move. The defense can’t just “stay at home," they have to deal with threats and problems. The Jazz did this utterly brilliantly today, and it led to their second consecutive game with 30 assists — the first time that’s happened since 2011, according to the stats folks at Jazz TV.