The Utah Jazz haven’t won a playoff series in seven years and they look to end the drought when they host the Los Angeles Clippers in Friday’s Game 6 of the Western Conference first-round playoff series. The Jazz hold a 3-2 series lead and are aiming to close out at home, but the Clippers are not going to quit after suffering disappointing ends to their seasons ever since rising to prominence.
Los Angeles Clippers at Utah Jazz
LINE: Utah -6 (-110); moneyline -250
Total: 192.5 (-110o, -110u)
The Clippers face early elimination yet again
There’s no quick fix for the Los Angeles Clippers offense. They are shooting less frequently because of pace, they are shooting worse because of defense, and a big part of their offense is gone. It’s a make or miss league now, with almost all teams relying on the three, but the problem is that literally all the Clippers threes are contested, Paul is asked to do a Westbrook impersonation and they are starting Speights instead of Griffin, and he (Speights) is giving them a basket or two for the entire game. So Game 5 was predictably ugly. Few would foresee that it would be this ugly, though.
The Clippers were pleased to have guard Austin Rivers back, recovered from injury. But he was not ready for the intensity and physicality of the playoff series and could not defend Hayward as the Clippers game planned for. He was not the additional playmaking option on the offensive end either. If not for Redick’s hot shooting night, the Game would not be close as the Clippers had the look of a hurt team. They scored only 58 points in the first three quarters and never really threatened despite keeping it close the rest of the way, as they shot 29-of-69 from the field.
Redick scored 26 points and Chris Paul continue to play exceptionally well like he did in the entire series, finishing with 28 points and 9 assists. Even DeAndre Jordan chipped in with 14 points and 12 boards, but the fact that seldom used Paul Pierce was the Clippers best player off the bench with 6 points paints good picture on how much the second unit contributed. The Clippers hit 10-of-23 shots from beyond the arc, the best figure they managed to muster all series, but the Jazz dominated inside.
With all the perimeter players, the Clippers can only put Mbah a Moute on Hayward defensively, so what they might gain with the ball, they surrender at the other end – especially in the late game situations when the Jazz force them to switch, or further complicate the mismatches by duplicating the monster with Joe Johnson. On the same time, the Clippers had only one interior player in Jordan. He might play for the full 48 minutes on Friday after the Clippers actually outscored the Jazz by 10(!) during his 40 Game 5 minutes. And don’t forget that the Jazz can’t quickly diminish his late game impact by hacking him if they feel be becomes too much of a nuisance. So, the Clippers are very limited with what they can do and will need a superb execution on the road to even the series and avoid elimination.
Place: Vivint Smart Home Arena, Salt Lake City, Utah
Date/Time: Friday April 28th, 2017. 10:30 PM ET
TV Coverage: ESPN
Poor shot selection the reason for a squandered opportunity
The Utah Jazz are healthiest they’ve been the entire season. With Gobert and Hayward back from their ailments, they are much more talented and deep team, and it showed in Los Angeles. Lyles, Mack and Withey, players already featured in the series, never checked in. Derrick Favors, relied heavily on for the most part of the series with his troubled knee, played just 12 minutes in the pivotal game. That kind of impact does healthy bill has. The Jazz can turn to their veteran for guidance and leadership and to their youth for energy and hunger. Heck, coach Snyder was probably confused with all the good players on the bench cheering their teammates.
Of course, two Jazz stars haven’t had impact only on the squad rotation. Hayward led the team in scoring with 27 points, shooting a healthy 9-of-16 from the field and making half of the 8 three ball attempts. He added 8 boards, 4 dimes and 2 steals for the good measure. Most importantly, he was clutch with his ball handling and decision making during the game’s ending. Gobert was the most impactful of the Jazz players on the defensive end. The Jazz defense wouldn’t let the Clippers anything easy at the rim and they managed to limit them to just one shot the entire game. The Clippers only had 3 offensive rebounds all night. The Stifle Tower had 2 blocks, but also 5 steals to go with the 11-11 double double.
Utah had not shot well – just 43.2 percent for the game – this prevented them from breaking free of the Clippers in Game 5, but they looked like a better team for the majority of the game. They’ll continue to rely on the defensive execution and team play in the next game as well, so if the shots fall with more frequency, they’ll be in a god position to close this book and say hello to the Warriors.
Los Angeles Clippers at Utah Jazz Game 6 Trends & Prediction
The Los Angeles Clippers have covered only once in the previous five games, as the market struggles to handle ever-present team news on both teams. The Clippers have been fairly rated until this stretch as they are just 41-45-1 against the spread overall, and 20-23 playing away games. Due to the season-long injury issues, the Clippers have been an underdog in relatively large number of games. In the 24 such occasions, they’ve covered the spread exactly half of the time. LAC postseason games have been played at much slower pace than in the regular season, especially the last one, but the books have been handling that part of the offer fairly well.
Against the total point projections, Los Angeles Clippers have gone 2-3 in the series and 46-40-1 for the season. Both games played in Salt Lake City were overs, though, and the Clippers tend to play much higher number of overs on their road games. They’ve gone 28-15 on O/U market as a visiting team.
The Jazz have a reputation of an underrated team, but this certainly wasn’t the case in Vegas. They’ve gone just 40-43-4 against the spread this season, but they failed to produce just once in the series with the Los Angeles Clippers, when they lost Game 3 at home. They are also 44-43 against the over/under overall, 21-22 at home, with no significant trend either.
The Jazz turnaround in the series has not gone unnoticed. Bookmakers have set them as a 6-point home favorites, prompting more public support for the seemingly great away value. This is not the case. Don’t get fooled by comparing this line to the previous ones. There was a lot going on in the series, and the Jazz are not only justified to be this big of a jolly, but the true value actually lies in going with the home side.
I’m projecting an 8-point spread for this game and am confident in taking the Jazz. The line has been set to 192.5, unfortunately. The books have made quite an adjustment, dropping the line 3.5 points compared to the previous meeting. This leaves us with next to no value on the under side. My fair line is 191.5 for this game, so I’m going to skip it.
My Pick: Utah -6 (-110)
Total: Pass
