Gobert has done an awful lot of this lately, on his way to becoming an elite offensive force. (Yong Teck Lim via ESPN.com)
The Salt City Seven drops every week throughout the regular season, with seven regular features meant to relive the week in Jazzland from various angles. Check in every Monday for the quotes, stats, plays and performances that tell the stories from the last 168 hours in the world of the Jazz.
Tracking the wild Western Conference postseason race and the Jazz’s place in it.
No reason to be coy here; we know what you’re really after. So let’s go ahead and start here this week.
The Jazz have two games left that will determine whether they’ll finish fourth, fifth or sixth in the West.
Entering the final two nights of regular season play, and a lot is still up in the air.
The quick version, where Utah is concerned, goes like this:
Of course, Utah still doesn’t know who its opponent will be in round 1. The club could still face any of Portland, Houston or (less likely) Denver.
Utah could help karma deliver a twisted blow to Denver with a win on Tuesday. The Nuggets rested their three best players on Sunday night in an effort to help Portland secure the third seed and keep Houston away from a potential second-round matchup. When their second-tier players held a late 7-point lead, the Nuggets then made late subs to remove any chances of accidentally winning.
Well, if Utah managed to defeat Denver on Tuesday, Houston will control its destiny for the No. 2 seed. That means that not only could Denver still get stuck having to face Houston in Round 2 anyway1, but they might have to open on the road. That would be a nice cosmic payback for trying to manipulate the standings.
But as we saw on Sunday night, the Jazz will have a hard time defeating anybody unless they get some of their dinged-up players healthy. They were without five rotation-caliber players when they went to L.A., where their offense looked disjointed and their defense was just plain bad. It’s hard to control outcomes with half the rotation out, especially against a very motivated Denver team still fighting for No. 2 in the West.
On Wednesday, Utah might face a team that is similarly motivated — or not. Because the Jazz-Clippers contest is one of the latest games on Wednesday night, L.A. might be locked into the eighth seed2 before tip-off.
If the Jazz win either one of those games, they reach 50 and grab the fifth seed. If not, they’ll have to hope OKC stumbles on a tough back-to-back with two of the league’s best teams.
Here we go.
An important quote from Jazz players or personnel during the week.
“It’s kind of like the questions I get about the first half of our season and the second half of our season. They are both us.”
-Jazz coach Quin Snyder, via the Tribune’s Andy Larsen
As the Jazz get ready to enter the playoffs and see how they measure up the league’s best, no quote better exemplifies what we know about the Jazz right now. And in another week that featured dominant wins and frustrating letdowns, it bears repeating.
People like to talk about teams’ identity a lot. Which version of the Jazz is real? Which Jazz team will show up? Which sample is most representative of who they are going forward?
Those types of questions, which often come into the NBA discussion in one form or another, all share a faulty premise. The Jazz don’t get to decide which moments are true reflections of their identity, skill and fortitude and which aren’t.
Snyder dropped this quote before the Jazz fell to a Lakers team playing without arguably its six best players, but it applies there as well. You can easily toss that result out as an outlier, and in many ways it was. Utah was missing five rotation players (including two starters) themselves, and their two best players had off nights. It also came after seven straight wins, and the reality is that slip-ups happen. The Warriors, Nuggets, Rockets, Thunder, Clippers and Spurs have all lost to lottery teams in the past month, too.
But it’s a whole lot more useful to treat that outcome as a reality of the type of performance the Jazz are capable of when they don’t execute well or play the right way.
The Jazz ARE the team that erased a 17-point deficit to defeat the league’s best team. They ARE the team that dominated the Nuggets in Denver. They ARE the team that has played the Warriors to the final minute in all three meetings, trounced the Rockets twice, swept Boston and won 12 of their previous 13 games.
They are also the team that went 1-3 against different versions of the Memphis Grizzlies, couldn’t find their gear against the Magic in Mexico City, pissed away a sure win in Oklahoma, got trounced by the Rockets and let Jonathan Williams and Javale McGee punk them on Sunday night.
They are both of those teams. And understanding that both ranges of outcomes are available to them depending on how they play is an important aspect of playoff preparation.
Playoff series are usually won by the team with the most talent. But in the balanced field that is the Western Conference, there are only going to be a few cases where one team just simply outclasses another. Most of these games we have coming our way in April and May will come down to who understands their tendencies, formulates a solid game plan, and executes. Any of the teams in this field can beat any other on a given night by playing harder and smarter.
The Jazz are 12-2 in the last four weeks. That’s part of who they are, and part of why they feel confident heading into their third straight postseason appearance. But their most likely first-round opponents are on their own surges of 12-3 (Portland) and 20-4 (Houston). So it does Utah no good to find false comfort by thinking of who they are only on their best nights. They are a team capable of dominating elite teams, and of just not having it on random nights.
They are both, and they’ll be better able to prepare emotionally and mentally for the playoffs if they remember that.
Stats that tell the story of the week or highlight a timely topic.
That is just a silly number of dunks for a single human being to have in a season. Rudy Gobert is actually up to 301 now, the most of any player since the league began counting these in 2000. Somehow, I still think it’s lost on people just how dominant Gobert is. His ability to get to the rim and finish (when teams’ entire focus against the Jazz is preventing that very outcome!) is part of why Gobert is still an underrated NBA superstar.
He is the most efficient scorer — yes, scorer! — in Jazz history by field goal percentage, effective field goal percentage, and true shooting. He’s one of just five players in the franchise top 10 for both offensive and defensive win shares, which gives him the top ranking in overall WS per 48 minutes — higher than Hall-of-Fame players like Karl Malone, John Stockton and Adrian Dantley. He, believe it or not, leads the team (along with Ricky Rubio) in on-court offensive rating among the main guys. He’s doing his usual dominant thing on the defensive end, and few have stopped to notice that he’s become one of the game’s great offensive forces.
Speaking of Rubio, his recent lower body bumps and bruises have again reminded us how important he is to the Jazz’s success. Utah’s offense often struggles to consistently create good looks without the Samurai, and that was true again this week, especially in the loss to L.A. on Sunday. For the season, the offense drops from 110.8 points per 100 possessions when Rubio is on the court with stars Gobert and Donovan Mitchell to 105.4 when those two play but Rubio sits. There those who assume the Spanish guard is a liability because of his shaky jump shot, but Rubio is a savvy orchestrator who knows how to read and dissect defenses. When he plays, the Jazz’s eFG% goes up by 1.3%, the biggest positive change of any Jazzman with 500 minutes, per Cleaning the Glass.
The Jazz are really missing Derrick Favors, who has had the best Defensive Rating on the team since the All-Star break (94.5), and whose Net Rating since the All-Star break (+17.4) trails only 14-mpg reserve Raul Neto.
Breaking down the Xs and Os behind a Jazz score from the week.
The Jazz played much of this past week while being down an entire lineup’s worth of rotation-quality players: Favors, Kyle Korver and Dante Exum missed all four games last week, while Rubio, Neto and Jae Crowder also took turns sitting.
That meant other players had to step up, so let’s quickly look at some plays that resulted in scores for Utah’s deep reserves who stepped in to help propel Utah to a 3-1 week.
Niang attacking the horns flare
This starts with a familiar little horns flare setup: where Georges Niang and Ekpe Udoh start at the top of the key (horns) and then Niang slides out behind Udoh’s “flare” screen to the outside. That’s an action they run to get the ball in the hands of the playmaking guards like Mitchell, Rubio and Joe Ingles. So the fact that they run it here for Niang tells you how Snyder feels about Niang’s creation ability, and might be a hint as to the direction they want to continue to develop Niang in the future.
In this case, Niang first fakes the screen, rather convincingly. This gets his guy worries about defending the ball, and you can see the defender drop back to contain. That makes him very late to contest Niang on the catch. But since the defender closes out under the screen, Niang makes the quick decision to force him over by having Udoh flip the pick. So now Niang has the middle of the floor, with his man trailing. It’s pretty simple “horns flare to middle P&R” action that we’ve seen a lot, but it’s interesting to see the Jazz give the playmaking responsibilities here to Niang.
Udoh against a switch
This is even simpler action, just a straight 2-man P&R. But with Udoh’s defender back to contain Grayson Allen, he makes a smart decision. Watch him step backward, around the rolling Udoh. Now, the guard can’t get back to him without committing a foul, so this forces a switch. At this point, Allen has options. The corner defender is worried about the “mouse in the house” situation, so he steps in, leaving Ingles. But Allen decides he’s going to feed the big man. But this whole play was creating by Allen’s decision to snake back in the P&R and force the switch.
Of course, we also have to highlight Allen’s scoring chops, given the week that he had.
Allen snaking back to his strong hand
Actually, that kind of craftiness on the bounce is one of the reasons the Jazz like his long-term trajectory. Allen is a bit beyond his years in his ability to slow the ball down once he gets the ball to the middle of the floor, which he also used to his own advantage this week. Here are two nearly identical plays that illustrate that.
Both of these are P&R plays going to Allen’s left3, and both times he does that same “snaking” move you saw above on the Udoh bucket. Only here, he doesn’t step around the screener; rather, he simply locks his defender behind him while he “changes lanes” to get back to his right hand for the floater.
In a week with so many guys on the shelf, the Jazz were fortunate to get mostly productive minutes from their deep bench.
“We’ve had some guys who’ve been a little banged up and other guys have to step up, and that’s an opportunity for them,” Snyder said.
After each Jazz win, Twitter helps us decide who was that game’s MVP or most memorable performer.
Jazz 111, Hornets 102: Ricky Rubio
Most of the time, 20 points and 13 assists would make this pretty easy. But Gobert also went out and grabbed and 18-and-18 double-double, while Mitchell poured in 25 points and nabbed four steals. But the team offense just felt compltely different with Rubio running things (128.6 ORtg in 30 minutes!), and he also played a big part defensively. He had Kemba Walker for most of the night, and while the All-Star still got his (29 while Rubio was on him, 47 overall), the Hornets’ ORtg on the 45 possessions that Rubio had Kemba was 86.7.
Jazz 118, Suns 97: Joe Ingles
Jingles got hot at the right time, keying a 30-10 Jazz run that brought them back from a double-digit deficit and put them in the lead for good. The next big Jazz surge was the 19-3 push that put the game away in the third quarter. Ingles had eight of those points, and Mitchell seven. Ingles would wind up with 27 points, eight assists and five boards. Mitchell’s 29-5-6 line was as impressive, and Gobert had another strong 17 and 13 to go with five blocks. For long stretches of the game, Gobert simply didn’t allow Phoenix to score. You could go with any of those three, really, and the Jazz got a lot of help from their bench.
Jazz 119, Kings 98: Grayson Allen
It’s not just that he matched Mitchell’s game-high 23, and on five fewer shots. Because if we were going purely off of stat lines, Don was the MVP of this one, what with his nine assists, responding to the playmaking challenge when the Jazz again lost Rubio. But that’s not to say this is purely a narrative pick, either. The Jazz offense hit a funk after they jumped out to an 18-3 lead, and the work to build that cushion was in peril. Allen broke through Sacramento’s pressure and left a Grayson-sized hole in the wall in the process. His 13 points in the final five minutes of the first quarter erased any doubt, and the Jazz were able to coast to a wire-to-wire win. Allen’s 23 bested the career high he set one game earlier.
A quick look at the Jazz’s next seven nights of action.
Because after all, we’re here to have fun.
This is just cool.
E N C O R E 🎷#RudyDPOY | #TakeNote
— x – Utah Jazz (@utahjazz) April 5, 2019
» https://t.co/N1fwUA3gkl pic.twitter.com/82AFGNZNdy
That does it for another year of Salt City Seven columns. Thanks for following along! (I’ll post something later this week to close out the game ball category, along with some stats of interest to preview whatever first-round matchup awaits the Jazz.)
Please let me know if you’re still enjoying these posts, and if there’s anything you particularly want to see more/less of, so I can determine the right approach for next season. In the meantime, the rest of the SCH team and I will of course have a lot to say as the playoffs and offseason develop.
Here is a link to the entire 2018-19 Salt City Seven archive.
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