Perhaps the Jazz’s problem is not with the double-team but the zero-team.
When Scottie Pippen goes to double-team John Stockton as the Jazz runs the pick-and-roll, it leaves a man open. That man–Pippen’s man–is usually Greg Fostertag, the Jazz’s two-headed center, though neither head has been used much through the first three games of the Finals.
Greg Ostertag, not to be confused with Greg Foster, acknowledged that Tuesday, lamenting a few missed layups in the first half of the Jazz’s 96-54 Game 3 loss to the Bulls Sunday.
“Just dumb,” Ostertag said. “I got some open layups and wasn’t able to convert them.”
The inability to make the simplest shot in basketball is why Ostertag and Foster have not forced Pippen to stay with them. Instead, Pippen floats to Stockton, essentially daring the Jazz centers to beat the Bulls down low.
So far it has been a smart dare. Foster and Ostertag have combined to score 13 points. That’s not 13 pointsa game, it’s 13 points in the entire series. Thirteen points on 20 shots. Thirteen points in 93 minutes.
Most centers would give anything to be guarded by a small forward. Foster said Pippen is the smallest player who has guarded him all season, and Ostertag said he can’t remember if a small forward has ever guarded him.
It hasn’t mattered. Whether Foster starts, as he did in Games 1 and 2, or Ostertag does, as he did in Game 3, the Jazz centers have received as much respect from the Bulls as Dennis Rodman gets in Utah.
Jazz coach Jerry Sloan said he hadn’t decided which Greg will start Game 4, but both Gregs said they believe it will be Ostertag. Either way, both will play, and they will have to erase the mistakes they made Sunday.
The first thing they can do, of course, is make their layups. It would also help if they took more of them, which is tough to do when you’re standing 15 feet from the basket.
“If you’re up at the top of the key, (Pippen) is going to double-team every time,” Foster said. “If you’re on the baseline, it’s going to be a lot harder to double-team. You have to make them pay. If you’re making layups and dunks, they are going to have to change the trap. You have to punish the traps, punish the double-teams.”
Pippen has also slowed the Jazz’s break, but if Ostertag and Foster keep him honest the Jazz can score more easy points.
“My position is to get down the court–in a sense, get out of the way,” Ostertag said.
Ostertag and Foster are supposed to run down the court away from the play, not down the middle of the floor. But in the confusion of Game 3 they failed to do that, allowing Pippen to free-lance.
“I was running Scottie right to (Stockton),” Ostertag admitted.
That wasn’t what Sloan was looking for when he put Ostertag in the lineup Sunday. Ostertag had lost his starting spot to Foster during the season, but Foster lost it back early in the Finals. Foster was “a little bit” annoyed by his benching, but “this is not the time to have a selfish attitude.”
No, but it may be the time to have an assertive attitude. Foster burned the Bulls for 17 points in last year’s Game 3, and the Bulls responded by sticking Pippen on him. The Bulls have beaten the Jazz in four of six Finals games since.
Pippen seems susceptible to being posted up by Foster and especially Ostertag, but that isn’t how the Jazz offense is designed.
“We don’t exploit weaknesses like that,” Foster said. “Yes, I would like to take him in the post, at least wear him out a little bit. (But) we haven’t done it all year.”
They paid for it in the first three games. It’s up to Foster and Ostertag to stop the bleeding.
“I do know one thing,” Foster said. “I’m going to be more aggressive offensively.”
He and Ostertag had better be more aggressive, or at least smarter. Sloan is running out of guys to bench.
