The Utah Jazz have not exactly looked their best thus far in their first-round Western Conference playoff series against the Houston Rockets, dropping Game 1 by 22 points and losing Game 2 by 20.
Jazz point guard Ricky Rubio understands that his team is going to need to make some changes if it wants to have any chance of coming back in this series, and on Saturday, he told reporters what Utah needs to do:
“We’ve gotta keep playing our game,” said Ricky Rubio, according to Eric Walden of The Salt Lake Tribune. “We can’t fall in the trap of … playing iso ball. We had a couple good plays from last game where we moved the ball and had success. … It’s about us trusting our game, and our game is playing as a team.”
The thing is, offense has not really been the Jazz's problem over the first half of this series. Sure, it would be nice if Utah averaged more than 94 points per game, but it is also giving up 120 points a night, which is something the Jazz are not accustomed to doing.
To be fair to Utah, the Rockets have simply been special this series, mainly because of James Harden's brilliance. But if the Jazz want to come back, they need to start focusing more on improving defensively, because they are not going to be able to win shootouts with Houston.
Utah, which lost to the Rockets in the second round of the playoffs last year, will play host to Houston in Game 3 of this series on Saturday night.
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