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

1. Donovan Mitchell leads a formidable offensive performance Jazz

Donovan Mitchell proves the haters wrong.

In particular, he led the latter half of the quarter, pushing the Jazz away from the Celtics through sheer aggression and shooting. He had a tremendous appreciation of when it was his turn to attack, and when the Celtics’ defense paid too much attention to him, leaving someone else open. More than anything else, he read the game on the fly and made the right decision every time.

Like, I’m really impressed with this piece. Yes, clearly it’s a huge mistake for Boston to leave Bojan Bogdanovic open just after a time out. But I think the earlier versions of Mitchell don’t take advantage of it, preferring to just perform the play Quin Snyder wrote within the timeout. Here Mitchell has his eyes open and ready to pounce with the long pass.

Again, an older version of Mitchell slows the game down here; he loves to bring the ball up the field with the end of the game. After a missed free throw, how often do you get a quick break? But Mitchell and Joe Ingles recognize the opportunity, then Mitchell attacks in the perfect way to open Ingles.

It goes on to hit just three climax reel hits: all three pull-ups and an ankle breaker hit that just might be the best game on SportsCenter. He’s in a groove, on TNT, with the perfect opportunity to keep pushing that point total, proving the haters wrong. The defense, again, is focused on one thing, stopping Mitchell.

So what does he do? He draws the defense and lobe to Rudy Gobert.

That’s what makes this team feel a little different: They really play for each other, and that’s largely down to Mitchell’s attitude as the team’s best offensive player.

“The two assists to Rudy, you all know, last year, the year before, and the year before, I’m probably not throwing that pass,” Mitchell said. “So that’s the progression that I see in myself. And my teammates see me and can just trust him.

The Jazz had an offensive rating of 130 today against the league’s eighth best defense, a team with plenty of girth length and talent. They also didn’t shoot well above par – it wasn’t a coincidence performance. So far, they have answered every possible offensive question that has been asked at the highest level.

2. Aggression on both sides

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

Previous jazz teams, I think, have tried to dissect their opponent. Forgive me for extending a horrible metaphor here, but if the Jazz wanted their opponent dead, they asked him to get on the operating table, put him under anesthesia, take out a scalpel, open the skin. from the chest, remove a few ribs, carefully cut the aorta and all other arteries and veins, and then removed their opponent’s heart. At one point talented opponents thought ‘wait, I don’t like what’s going on here’, and occasionally slipped away.

This Jazz team has a more direct approach. They have a machete. If they want their opponent dead, they’re just going to start swaying.

They take another seven three per game. They run in transition way more. They totally freed Jordan Clarkson to do whatever he wants – it means an attack. Even players like Ingles, Royce O’Neale and Miye Oni, who have been very reluctant to take punches at times in their careers, let him go.

Focus on Ingles for a second; he took 11 three tonight. But not only that, he’s also made it to the free throw line 10 times, the most of his NBA career. Yes, the Celtics do flip the switch a bit, but do you know how many versions of Ingles aren’t ready to take advantage of it, especially with time on the shot clock? This version of Ingles does and hits.

And on the defensive side, they attack even more. They’re averaging nearly two more blocks per game this season than last, for example. Rudy Gobert is great at blocking basketballs, but I thought last season he was a little too happy playing the percentages – yes a mid-range shot is a bad shot, but he still has 35% chances of entering.

Unless you block it. Then he has a 0% chance.

Because they’ve been more aggressive, they repeatedly have those revolutionary races that only ruin their opponents – like a hack-and-slash video game where you rack up points by combining attacks. It’s not Surgeryit is Mortal combat.

I think this is the first time that I have directly discussed refereeing this season. Honestly, for the most part, I think it’s been really good this year.

Tonight’s crew of Leroy Richardson, Mark Ayotte and Tony Brown were really, really poor. I could have a more detailed list of qualms, but they’ve committed a ton of arbitration sins tonight:

• No consistency from period to period. There were seven combined free throw attempts in the first half and 34 combined free throw attempts in the second half. It has become absurd the last two periods and made a very good game difficult to watch.

• pure guesswork on calls. Replay wasn’t nice to the referees tonight – he didn’t show fouls on many edge practices where the refs thought there was contact, but instead the defensive player got all the ball. Likewise, there have been a number of times a player has found himself on the ground and the referees have simply assumed that there is a foul on the fielder.

• Fouls called after a success or a failure. It is not necessary to look at the result of a layup to decide whether to blow the whistle. If there was a fault, call one. Otherwise, keep playing.

• Elastic arbitrage. I thought it was pretty clear that the whistles were more likely to be thrown in one direction when the match needed to be kept close. This particularly applied in the third trimester, when I had to bite my tongue on some of the whistles at Jayson Tatum.

I will say this as a positive note: They did not compound their error by giving technique to either side, with several players clearly unhappy with what was happening on the pitch. I love that they gave both teams room to be upset, rather than putting on an even bigger show by adding points one way or the other.

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