Jason Kidd sees the NBA trending big; the Jazz might just have a head start

SALT LAKE CITY — Dallas Mavericks head coach Jason Kidd has an idea of where the NBA game is headed.

“I think there’s going to be a point where it might come back to playing inside, where the paint becomes key,” he said. “Can you dominate the paint? Can you get up 50 threes? Can you do both? And so whatever team can get there first is going to be the team that’s going to be copied.”

Kidd might be biased — after all, his Mavericks are starting Cooper Flagg at point guard — but if he’s right, the Jazz could be ahead of the curve.

On Wednesday, Utah rolled out a jumbo frontcourt featuring Kyle Filipowski, Lauri Markkanen, and Walker Kessler. At 6-foot-11, Filipowski was the shortest of the trio.

The result? A jumbo-sized five-out offense that the Clippers had no answers for in Utah’s 129-108 win on Wednesday. Those three combined for 14 assists — five each from Markkanen and Filipowski, and four from Kessler — as the Jazz used some creative sets to get their bigs involved as facilitators.

“Bigs that can pass are a luxury because it gives you so many different ways to play,” Jazz coach Will Hardy said.

Markkanen ran wild off of pindown screens. Filipowski handled side pick and rolls. Kessler and Markkanen found each other on lobs. It all led to efficient shots at the basket and wide-open 3s.

Even Kessler knocked down a pair of triples.

“He surprised me with the three-ball a couple times,” Markkanen said with a smile. “But I see him working on it, so shouldn’t be surprised.”

Heck, given how the Jazz played, just about everyone was surprised. It was simply beautiful offense.

Off the bench, the Jazz used Jusuf Nurkic, arguably the team’s best half-court passing center, and Taylor Hendricks, who is a threat both on the perimeter and at the rim. That kept the Jazz towering for nearly the entire rotation.

“Coach trusts Nurk and me in that five position to flash the ball and make those plays,” Kessler said. “But even more than, it makes a lot easier when you’re throwing to guys like Lauri, Flip T-Henny that have kind of a smaller guy on them — especially Lauri.”

Because Markkanen is the engine that makes it all work so effectively.

The former All-Star creates so much gravity with his shooting that it can force teams to overplay him.

Early on Wednesday, the Jazz ran some off-ball screens to free him up for some 3-point looks. When the Clippers adjusted to take that away, cutting lanes opened, and the 7-foot-1 forward repeatedly found his way to the rim.

He’s the only player in NBA history with 200 threes and 100 dunks in a season — and he showed why on Wednesday.

“He’s such a threat coming off a pin downs to shoot the ball, that he’s also overplayed a lot of times,” Kessler said. “So he gets a lot of stuff to the basket.”

And helps stop plenty of stuff at the other basket, too.

The big emphasis for the Jazz defensively this season is protecting the rim. They passed their first test.

“It’s really important defensively, just being big, long, athletic,” Filipowski said before the season. “I think that’ll help our defense a lot. So kind of just like owning the paint, owning the rebounding, I really think just having big lineups like that can be super helpful for both sides of the floor.”

They scored inside, hit threes, and protected the rim. What’s not to like?

And since the three-big lineup worked so well, what about four — or even five — on the floor together?

“We actually joked about a little bit last year — how we were gonna go with an all-big lineup, and wondering who’s gonna run point and things like that,” Filipowski said.

The frontcourt even tried to convince Will Hardy to let them try out Filipowski or Markkanen running point — he wouldn’t bite.

Still, they’ll happily take the jumbo-sized frontcourt.

“Teams are gonna make three in this league, and some nights they’re gonna beat you with that,” Markkanen said. “But being able to protect the rim and paint like that, those big lineups can be useful at times, for sure.”

All the time?

The Jazz made a strong case of that to open the season.

The Key Takeaways for this article were generated with the assistance of large language models and reviewed by our editorial team. The article, itself, is solely human-written.