PHILADELPHIA — The Utah Jazz are an unconventional team. They play a number of different defensive schemes to junk the game up and bother their opponents to get stops.
Philadelphia 76ers guard Tyrese Maxey received a taste of that in Saturday’s 120-109 loss to the Jazz. Maxey scored 25 points, but he shot 9-for-24 overall and 1-for-8 from deep as Utah made him work for everything he got in this one.
It didn’t help that it was the second night of a back-to-back for him following the tough loss to the New York Knicks on Friday and playing through their physicality, but the defenses the Jazz threw at him made it even tougher.
“It seems like these games, for us this year, has always been like that every time we play a back-to-back, but it happens,” Maxey said. “They did some different things defensively. They did a lot of different box-and-1s and denied and zones and they junked up the game a little bit so we gotta look at it.”
The point of a box-and-1 defense is to frustrate the opposition’s best player. With Joel Embiid, Tobias Harris, and De’Anthony Melton sitting, the Jazz went with that defense to focus on Maxey.
The Jazz had four players form something of a box with two players at the low post and two players at the free-throw line while the fifth player just face-guarded Maxey. In Utah’s case, it was a combination of Kris Dunn, Jordan Clarkson and others.
It’s not exactly a defense Maxey sees very often. Especially, in the NBA.
“I’m not going to lie to you, I haven’t seen that in so long,” he stated. “Even like when I was in high school I didn’t — when Joel doesn’t play — I didn’t get trapped. It was my first time really getting trapped, box-and-1, and denied like this. So it was just different. It was very different. I had to work hard to get the ball, I got to work hard, you know what I’m saying? And try to help my teammates more and get them some more open shots.”
Maxey and the Sixers now have three days off before facing the Atlanta Hawks on Wednesday.
[lawrence-related id=88728,88723,88720]