Go to
www.82games.com and look at the true defensive numbers: Phoenix is a better defensive team a few of the numbers:
1. effective fg% which includes the difficulty of a 3 point shot- utah 49.9, PHO 49.3
2. Scoring defense- PHO gave up 103.0 points per game, and Utah only gave up 97.3 however Phoenix offense is set up to where they shoot early in the shot clock, so teams averaged 9 more possessions per game vs Pho. take the 49.3% on Fieldgoals and the fact that the jazz force turnovers on 15% of possession and you still give up another 6 points a game for utah which puts the scoring defense for Utah at 103.3 which is higher. Also Pho scored 110.2 a game and Utah only scored 93.
3. layups and dunks- teams averaged 9.9 points per game on layups and dunks verses utah and only 7.5 vs phoenix.
4. 38% of utahs opponents took a shot within the first 10 seconds of the shotclock, 35% of PHO did. Which to me proves that Pho has at least better transition D and plays defense for a lot longer. Also with the shot clock under 5 Phoenixs opponents shot 43% Utahs shot 45%, which shows they play D for the full 24 seconds.
5. offensive rebounding- opponents had an offensive board 26% of the time vs Pho and 30% of the time vs Utah. Defensive rebounding and boxing out is the key to playing good D.
Phoenix did all this while taking 40% of their offensive shots within the first 10 seconds on the shot clock and giving opponents 9 more possessions per game which is a huge number. Yet defensively they were still better than utah. That is throughout the season the difference between the two series is not even close.