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The Triple Team: Jazz’s defense slips against Blazers pick and roll, while the 3-point shots don’t fall

Portland scored 39 points in the third quarter. That is too many. Jusuf Nurkic scored 17 of those points. That’s also too many.

In particular, the Damian Lillard and Nurkic pick and roll was just killing the Jazz. That makes some sense: Lillard and Nurkic is a uniquely good pick and roll combination. But we’ve just rarely seen the Jazz get beaten so repeatedly on one play — usually, they successfully make an adjustment.

Here’s the first assist from Lillard to Nurkic in the third quarter. You can see what the Jazz want to do: they want to have Rudy Gobert up on Lillard to prevent the shot, then have the weak side rotate over and help so that Nurkic can’t get to the rim.