Salt City Seven: Fixing the Jazz, Favors and Rubio Sneaking Up, and More

Donovan said it’s time to “fix this.” (Ezra Shaw via espn.com)

The Salt City Seven drops every Monday 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.

An important quote from Jazz players/personnel from the week.

“It’s not that early. We need to fix this.”

-Donovan Mitchell, to the Athletic’s Tony Jones after a home loss to the Kings

By the end of the week, things felt a little better in Jazzland after a Mitchell-less squad blew out the Kings in Sacramento to temporarily allay the anxieties of the fan base. But frankly, it would just be plain inaccurate to tell the story of the week using that 21-point drubbing as a starting point. Before visiting Golden 1 Center, the Jazz were a bit of a mess.

Utah lost it’s first three games of the week, and five of six overall. The stretch featured their two worst offensive performances of the year (as measured by points per 100 possessions), and their games on Monday and Wednesday of the week — at Indiana and at home against the Kings, respectively — were two of their four worst defensive performances, too.

On offense, Utah’s guard and wings were tentative and overthinky. Errant passes and bad misses let other teams attack the Jazz’s defense on the move, and consequently Utah’s usually very stout defense was having a hard time covering everybody. It was the type of stretch that raises existential questions about what a team is trying to accomplish. Nobody on the team was immune from the criticism, with even reigning Defensive Player of the Year Rudy Gobert telling Jones in that same article, “It starts with me.”

And yes, the Jazz cleansed the palate with a Sunday win in Sactown. But some of the questions still linger. Mitchell has been battling with his efficiency metrics. Gobert hasn’t been as impactful on defense. Ricky Rubio isn’t going to shoot 11-for-16 every night, and Joe Ingles might wear down if he has too many nights like L.A. on Black Friday, when he played 37 minutes and had to essentially run the offense and take turns guarding LeBron James.

So things felt rosy to the end the week, but there are still several trends to keep an eye on. Inconsistency from the Jazz’s guards and wings — all of them — is highest on the list, as are troubling shooting numbers that we’ve been saying for a month now, “These have to progress to the mean at some point, right?”

They haven’t yet. And like Mitchell said above, it’s not really that early anymore. Utah has played a fourth of its 2018-19 schedule, and at the quarter pole the Jazz find themselves 4.5 games out of first place in the West. It’s not a terrible spot to be in given their up-and-down play and brutal schedule, but the Jazz have once again given themselves some ground to make up.

Stats that tell the story of the week or highlight an important trend or topic.

6.5

Don’t look now, but Derrick Favors’ shooting over the past 11 games has been really good. He has made 47 of his 73 shots (65%) dating back to November 5 against Toronto. He also canned four 3-pointers in that span, bringing his true shooting to .668 — and yet he has averaged just 6.5 shots per game. It seems like Favors — one of just two Jazz men to ever average 16 per game over a full season — could be part of the answer to the Jazz’s lack of reliable offensive weapons if they found a way to call his number a few more times per game.

That could be one benefit of his move to the bench, if it’s a permanent one. Donovan Mitchell’s absence on Sunday pressed Royce O’Neale into starting duty, and the Jae-Crowder-for-Favors may have been primarily motivated by a desire to offset the spacing challenges of starting O’Neale. Whether Favors coming off the pine is a lasting trend or not, the Jazz have had nights where they really needed bucket-getters. And right there in number 15 is a guy who can score in a variety of ways and who is quietly having a really efficient month of basketball.

39%

Speaking of players who have been sneakily improving their efficiency of late… in his last nine games, Rubio is averaging 15.9 points on 46% shooting, including 39% on his 4.6 3-point attempts per game.

54%

Dante Exum is taking 54 percent of his non-garbage time shots at the rim this season, which is an elite figure for the “combo guard” grouping on Cleaning the Glass. But he’s still making just 48 percent of his shots there, which puts him in the 12th percentile among that positional grouping. That’s a unique developmental challenge for Quin Snyder and his staff: what do you do with a player who can get to the paint almost any time he wants to, yet consistently struggles to convert once he’s there? He tends to direct his momentum away from the rim, possibly to avoid contact. He also rushes some shots in close and tends to go too high off the glass. Against L.A. and even in the win against Sacramento, Exum had some really impressive drives that ended with wild attempts.

But I still view this as an untapped weapon: the fact that he can get there at will makes him really special. Eventually he’ll figure out the finishing.

Breaking down the Xs and Os behind a Jazz score from the week.

One of the common ways Utah initiates its sets is to set a little elbow pindown screen to bring one of their wings to the ball. This happens a lot, especially for Mitchell or Ingles. For example, pay attention as this play begins with a big stepping out to set an off-ball pick for Ingles to come out to the pass.

And that’s fun enough, but what we’re really highlighting in this week’s X-and-O breakdown is a little bit of a switcharoo.

The Jazz open plays with that elbow pindown often enough that defending big men know it’s coming. They anticipate it, and sometimes they even start to creep over the top to try to contain Ingles. Run this 10 times and eventually the defenders will start defending it somewhat lazily — and that’s when you can strike with a little wrinkle.

“Here we go again,” thinks Marvin Bagley Jr. Except that this time, Ingles isn’t going to rub up off of the Gobert screen; instead, he’s setting a backpick for Gobert. Bagley, who had started to move around the high side to wait for Joe, has no chance of recovering, and Rubio delivers a perfect alley-oop pass from some 30 feet away.

After each Jazz win, we dole out the imaginary honor to the game MVP or a memorable performer.

Jazz 133, Kings 112: Ricky Rubio

Only one game ball to give out this week, and it was a fairly easy call. Rubio’s 23 first-half points completely blew up Sacramento’s game plan, and he was aggressive in getting to the paint and firing when open. He finished with 27 points, seven boards and five assists, and he was active on the defensive end, too. Gobert was splendid too, posting an 18-15-5 line and quieting Willie Cauley-Stein, who was particularly frisky in the Kings’ win over the Jazz on Wednesday. Ingles and Jae Crowder had good games, and Utah got solid play from multiple bench guards.

A quick look at the Jazz’s next seven nights of action.

Monday: Indiana at Utah, 7:00 p.m. MT

• State of the Pacers: Victor Oladipo has now missed three games for Indiana and is day-to-day heading into Indy’s 4-game trip.
• Jazz-Pacers: Pacers are 1-2 in the games ‘Dipo has missed: two losses by a combined 29 points, and then their massacre of the Jazz at home. Indiana just completely dominated every facet of the game when the teams met last week.
• Key for the Jazz: Indiana is great at forcing turnovers, and at quickly turning those opponent miscues into points. Utah needs to be judicious with the ball.

Wednesday: Utah at Brooklyn, 5:30 p.m. MT

• State of the Nets: The Nets are 2-6 since splitting their first dozen games. The injury to fast-improving wing Caris Levert hasn’t helped the young squad.
• Jazz-Nets: In a weird scheduling quirk, these two teams haven’t faced each other for more than a year. They got their season series out of the way early last season: November 11 and 17 games that they split.
• Key for the Jazz: Tempo will be the key here, as Brooklyn is one of the worst halfcourt defenses in the league by a number of different measures.

Friday: Utah at Charlotte, 5:00 p.m. MT

• State of the Hornets: They’re 9-10 overall, but pretty good at home. They’ve won six in North Carolina, and their three losses there were all photo finishes: a 1-point loss, a 4-point loss, and a 3-point loss in overtime.
• Jazz-Hornets: The Jazz last faced Charlotte during it’s season-altering 11-game win streak before the 2018 All-Star break. They’ve split the season series for four straight years, with the home team going 8-0 in that span.
• Key for the Jazz: Charlotte is another one of those teams that defies defensive schemes a bit: they’re fourth in the league in midrange efficiency, so it’s going to be pretty important for guards to contain the ball and/or recover quickly after picks.

Sunday: Utah at Miami, 4:00 p.m. MT

• State of the Heat: Miami has lost seven of nine, including five straight home losses. They host the Hawks and Pels before Utah comes in, so we’ll see if they’re more or less desperate for a home W by Sunday.
• Jazz-Heat: The Jazz have lost three straight in the series, the latest of which was a heartbreaking fall-from-ahead defeat last January.
• Key for the Jazz: This could be a great opportunity for Utah to restore its stout interior defense, since Miami creates the seventh fewest rim attempts and converts the fourth lowest percentage.

Tracking the wild Western Conference postseason race and the Jazz’s place in it.

A quarter of the season in, Utah trails a quartet of teams in an eighth-place tie by one full game, and they trail the first-place Clippers by 4.5.

But here’s the reason why it’s still way to early to get into the standings watch: more than nearly any other Western Conference team, Utah has paid the piper early both in terms of opponent quality and home/road split. Utah’s remaining schedule stretch over the next 62 is 0.02 per Basketball Reference. That means their average remaining opponent is basically a .500 team. Only the Clippers (-0.05) have it slightly easier, and they have played almost as many home games (9) as road (10).

This is the stretch we knew would be rough when we first saw the schedule back in August. If Utah can get to New Year’s Day at or above .500, it’ll be the piper’s turn to pay, and Utah should again have a nice second half, if healthy.

Because after all, we’re here to have fun.

While the Jazz spent the last week and change zig-zagging the country, so did I. In fact, fellow SCH writer (and my big brother) Ken Clayton I had the opportunity to see the Jazz play twice in the last nine days, in two different visiting arenas and on opposite coasts.

Catching the Jazz in enemy territory also means a chance to consort with other fanbases, and that’s part of the fun, too. So far it’s been pretty copacetic, and in Boston we even had a chance to sit next to Georges Niang’s high school math teacher. But that doesn’t mean we haven’t rolled our eyes a few times at our hosts.

We kept a running list of the weirdest, quirkiest, wrongest and funniest things we heard fans yell at Jazz games in Sacramento and Boston. Here’s a sampling.

• “Cauley’s getting owned by that dude, man.” Cauley, of course, is Kings center Willie Cauley-Stein. And “that dude” is just the reigning Defensive Player of the Year.
• Same guy: “Put me in there, I’ll muscle him up.” When pressed by his buddy as to how he’s do that: “I’ll just bring my knife. He goes and up for a rebound and [mimicks slashing sound.]” OK, then. Make sure it’s a regulation knife, I guess.
• “That’s Grayson Allen from Duke. He got in trouble for kicking dudes and stuff. I hate him.” Which drew this response from his friend, apparently tired of his team’s lack of physicality: “Dude, we need him!”
• Boston fan to a bald referee: “Hey ref, next time you want your hair back, call a foul!” Ummmmmm.
• “Hey Ingles, try anger management!” yelled another Boston fan, apparently unaware that Ingles might be the most laid-back NBA player ever.
• The Boston fans also showed off their appreciation of diverse backgrounds. One repeatedly called Crowder “rasta,” and another goaded Utah’s starting point guard by yelling, “Ricky Rubio, no understando.”
• Speaking of Crowder, some in Beantown still feel fondly toward the former Celtic. When Crowder and one of the Celtics got nose-to-nose in a brief second-half tiff, a guy in front of us yelled, “I miss you, Jae!” Then again, only this time it was quieter, sadder, almost spoken to himself: “I miss you.” Sad.
• “Rubio and Ingles: Dumb and Dumbah!” I don’t know which one was Lloyd Christmas in that Boston fan’s mind.

That’ll do it for this week. Seven more bits of Jazziness will come your way next Monday.