Utah Jazz host the Houston Rockets tonight, which usually means three pointers

Most of us Utah Jazz fans remember the Houston Rockets infamously for the NBA Playoff battles in the 90s. Some of the Jazz fans remember them because of the playoff battles in the 2000s, yet others remember this rivalry from the beginning. But one thing seems to persist -- it's that the Rockets really take a lot of threes on the Jazz. A huge reason for this has been Houston's early adoption of this strategy, and their GM's love of the long-ball. A more overt reason is that when these two teams face off the Jazz defense is moved all over the court in order to better attempt to corral the star players for the Rockets. They've had a few: Hakeem Olajuwon, Clyde Drexler, Yao Ming, Steve Francis, Tracy McGrady, and now today James Harden and Dwight Howard. H-Town's gameplan is to move the defense around and get open shots.

Against Utah? A lot of those shots have been open threes.

I looked at the last five year of UTA / HOU games, and tallied up all of the players shooting stats. For the non-star players (players coming off the bench, role players, 3rd to 5th options in the starting line-ups, and even players who would eventually become stars or were previously stars) they've played 2035.07 minutes against the Jazz. And in those minutes they've shot 47.36 FG%, mainly on the backs of shooting 40.07 3pt%. Furthermore, 43.79% of these non-star's FGA were 3PTA. (Only included the stats of PG, SG, SF, or some permutation of that.)

Behold:

They know where to be. They get open. They get the ball. And the let fly. Having stars means you can get role players open. That's one thing the Rox have always done.

Per 48 minutes, from the full data set, the Jazz are giving up at least 20.07 points from the "average" single non-star shooter. You can't let the other team's best shooters hit for over 40% regularly. That's what the Jazz defense has precisely done over the last five seasons of UTA vs HOU.

Hope it stops tonight.