Salt City Seven: Week of Domination (Almost), Five Painful Ls, Playoff Push & More

March 25th, 2019 | by Dan Clayton

Gobert & Favors helped lead Utah to a 3-1 week. (Scott Cunningham 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.

An important quote from Jazz players or personnel during the week.

“That loss was a little slap in the face — a little wake-up call.”

-Jazz center Rudy Gobert, to KSL’s Ryan Miller, about Utah’s 117-114 loss to the Hawks.

While the Jazz’s trip to Atlanta was their only misstep in their last seven games, it was certainly a bad time to drop a game to a lottery-bound opponent.

Atlanta has been playing well enough that “slap in the face” might be putting it harshly. Rookie Trae Young has had a late-season awakening and has helped the Hawks to four wins in their last seven games, including another clutch thriller against Philadelphia on Saturday. On top of their improved play, the Jazz also had the misfortune of playing them on the second night of a back-to-back.

That said, “wake-up call” is apt. With 10 games remaining — nine now, after the Jazz followed up that loss with a throttling of the Chicago Bulls — it was a good reminder that games don’t win themselves, and that the focus needs to be there in each of these games down the stretch.

“Now we have to go home and get ready for the next one, with the same mindset every night,” Gobert said after Saturday’s win.

Luckily for the Jazz, they’re not the only ones to stumble in a game they were expected to win. Just in March alone, nearly every western playoff team has slipped up:

  • The Warriors lost at home to the hapless Suns, then trailed by as many as 43 against the Mavs on the way to another loss.
  • Like the Jazz, the Nuggets slipped up at home to New Orleans.
  • Houston dropped an overtime decision in Memphis after trailing for most of the night.
  • Portland has charged up the standings with a 12-4 surge, but one of those four losses: Memphis.
  • OKC has had an uneven month, including a loss at Minnesota and another at home to Miami — a team technically playoff-bound at the moment, but far from a sure bet to make it.
  • The same Heat ended the Spurs’ 9-game winning streak.

The only western playoff team who hasn’t fallen to a sub-.500 team this month: the surging Clippers, winners in 10 of their 11 March matchups.

None of that lets the Jazz off the hook: the loss was still a bad one, and not just because it came at the hands of the now 26-48 Hawks. Utah led by eight with 5:00 to go, but fell apart with poor offensive execution and ragged defense. Atlanta made a point of putting Jae Crowder in pick-and-roll defense so that Gobert wasn’t in position to stop Young. And on the other end, missed jumpers and turnovers kept them from manufacturing enough points to hold off the run.

When the standings are final on April 10, THOSE are the games that the Jazz will rue the most — not just the random off nights or the surprise defeats to bad teams, but the leads they gave away in the final minutes of games.

With that in mind, here (in chronological order) are my nominees for the five losses the Jazz will regret the most if a single game costs them a preferred playoff seeding:

Warriors 124, Jazz 123 (10/19). Yes, games in October count just as heavily as games in March. The Jazz coughed up a 10-point lead in the fourth quarter when Golden State went on a 13-0 run. Then Utah got a 5-point lead back with three minutes to play, but gave up consecutive threes. You might remember this for the Jonas Jerebko buzzer tip-in, but it never should have been close enough for Jerebko to flip home the winner.

Heat 102, Jazz 100 (12/2). Utah’s big lead of 19 happened in the first quarter, but they let a Heat team without Goran Dragic or Tyler Johnson erase it, leading to a close finish. Utah came up empty on its last three possessions.

Thunder 148, Jazz 147 (2/22). This one stings doubly because it could have been an L for their conference and division rivals. Utah led this one by 10 in the fourth quarter, by seven with 2:25 left, and also led for most of the two overtime periods.

Pelicans 115, Jazz 112 (3/4). The Jazz held a 14-point lead several minutes into the fourth, then bore the brunt of a 22-2 run by the visiting Pelicans. All while Anthony Davis sat. Oof.

And yes, this week’s stumble makes the list.

Hawks 115, Jazz 112 (3/21). The particularly painful part of this one is that Utah positively dominated during a 28-8 second-half run. So it’s not that it was the Hawks; it’s that the Jazz appeared to have this one sewn up, before Young and the Hawks uncorked a 9-0 run in a matter of less than two minutes.

All of those losses were decided by one-possession margins. Utah has actually played only seven games decided by three points of fewer — these five and two others. They’re also the only team in the league that hasn’t yet won a single game of that ilk: 0-7. The Jazz are an odd contradiction in that way: they own the league’s sixth-best clutch net rating, and yet the worst record in single-possession outcomes.

Yet the reason these losses will haunt the Jazz the most when playoff seedings are set isn’t because they were close losses — it’s because they shouldn’t have been close at all. 

So now, with nine games left, they need to heed the wake-up call to which Gobert alluded.

 

Stats that tell the story of the week or highlight a timely topic.

16+

OK, that’s enough talk about the lone blemish to Utah’s otherwise dominant week. They went 3-1 since our last SC7, and they dominated so completely in the other three that even counting the Atlanta game, they still outscored opponents by 70 points this week — 17.5 per game. In New York, they picked up their fifth straight victory by 16 or more, matching last March’s franchise record for consecutive blowouts.

+9.6

And that’s nothing new: Utah actually has the best Net Rating in the league over the past 15 games at +9.6, a full point better than the next best team (Houston).

4-0

How much did the Jazz dominate in Chicago on Saturday? During the first half of the rout, the Bulls only had one run of more than two consecutive points. That came with 1:24 left in the half when Robin Lopez’s layup gave them four straight points. But by then, Utah was already up by 38.

27.8%

Here’s a weird one: even though the Jazz have been winning over the past two weeks, they’ve been doing so despite some rough outside shooting from even wide open guys. Over that stretch, Crowder is shooting 25 percent and Ricky Rubio 27.3 percent on wide open threes (closest defender six feet away or farther). But they’re not the only volume shooters struggling; Kyle Korver — yes, Korver — is shooting 27.8 percent while wide open. It’s only an 8-game sample, but an anomaly worth noting.

Donovan Mitchell is hitting 56 percent of his wide open threes over the same stretch.

 

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

The NBA is a funny place: Teams figure out a new way to attack defenses, and it quickly spreads. But even while it’s spreading, the same teams and coaches are hard at work devising strategies to neuter it. Then those defensive strategies spread, so people start working on ways to attack those. Round and round we go, a constant evolution of the game as smart people tinker with new approaches in a copycat league.

For example, off-ball staggered screens have become much more of a staple for teams, particularly those with good shooters. They’ll have a reliable catch-and-shoot guy run off a couple of consecutive screens, then catch the ball and either let it fire, or zip a pass to the inside of one of the screeners’ men stepped out on him. The Jazz do this a lot — in fact, this week a play caught my eye where they ran a TRIPLE pindown for Korver. He came off three screens, creating such a panic that Joe Ingles was left wide open.

One way teams have been fighting this is by “icing” the first pick, the same way they might for a ball screen. “Ice” occurs when a ball handler’s man tries to force the ball handler away from the screen by stepping up to the level of the screener. We’ve talked about icing in this space before, but now we’re seeing it a lot more as an off-ball defensive choice, designed to keep a player like Korver or Mitchell from using the staggered screens to begin with.

And, lo and behold, here’s the counter to this rapidly spreading counter.

Notice how Mitchell sees the ice coming, so he walks his defender up behind Derrick Favors, and then he goes under the staggered screens instead. Damyean Dotson is now trailing behind Mitchell, and DeAndre Jordan has no clue what to do. So Mitchell just waltzes into an open 18-footer.

Korver often does the same thing, only on this next play, he puts a little wrinkle on it. He does the same thing by taking Ryan Arcidiacono up behind Crowder and curling underneath that first screen. But then he snakes back over the second screen to catch the pass. By zig-zagging his path to the ball, he has kept Arcidiacono in the rear view mirror, and so the defense caves in response to his drive, leaving Crowder free.

The chess match continues. Right now, some assistant coach or video tech somewhere is thinking about the way to defend this wrinkle, and then someone else will brainstorm a way to attack that defensive approach. And on and on.

 

After each Jazz win, Twitter helps us decide who was that game’s MVP or most memorable performer.

Jazz 116, Wizards 95: Joe Ingles

During an early stretch in which Ingles hit five of his six shots, he was busy telling the Wizards all about it. But just as important as his scheme-busting threes and his chatty demeanor was his defense. Ingles was primarily responsible for holding the red hot Bradley Beal in check. Beal was coming off consecutive 40-point games, but in the 32 possessions that he was primarily guarded by Ingles, the star guard shot just 2-for-6, and the Wiz’s ORtg on those possessions was a meager 100. Meanwhile, Ingles ended the game with 16 points (12 from deep) and four assists. Ricky Rubio gets an honorable mention for his 10 assists, four steals and 4-for-7 shooting, and Jae Crowder had 18 off the bench. Plus, Gobert and Mitchell did their usual things.

Jazz 137, Knicks 116: Donovan Mitchell

With a combination of gravity-defying drives and feathery jumpers, Mitchell wound up with what felt like an effortless 30 points in the win. That included 4-for-4 shooting for 10 points during a 43-20 run spanning the first and second quarters. Gobert was phenomenal defensively throughout the game and didn’t miss a shot, but the kid from New York ran away with this one.

Jazz 114, Bulls 83: Rudy Gobert

Gobert happened to have the most solid line of the game: 21 points, 14 boards and four blocks, on 9-for-11 shooting. But even before he piled up those impressive numbers, he was the player who visibly, palpably impacted the game the most. The poor young Bulls were just terrified of him, and with good reason: they shot just 2-for-7 at the rim with him around. Rubio got the Jazz off to a good start, and Raul Neto was once again a nice spark off the bench.

 

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

The bad news: the Jazz no longer own the easiest remaining schedule of Western Conference playoff hopefuls. The good news is that the team that does is currently on Utah’s back.

Note: The Clippers took Boston’s spot in the top 10, which is why Houston, Utah and GSW all saw a game added to that category in the top bar graph.

With the way L.A. is trending, that Jazz-Clippers season finale is looking more and more interesting.

And because of their 0-4 record against OKC, the Jazz need the Thunder to lose if they’re going to climb the standings at all. OKC has a home-heavy close, but only Denver has more than the Thunder’s four remaining games vs. top-10 teams.

There are no head-to-head matchups involving this group in the next three nights, and then all hell will break loose. The last 14 nights of the season will feature 16 games between two of these teams — 11 if we exclude Sacramento, whose playoff hopes are still alive only in the most technical sense.

 

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

The Jazz play six of their next eight at home, starting with three lottery teams visiting this week. 

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

  • State of the Suns: After going winless for 17 straight games, the Suns are basically playing .500 ball (6-7) over the last month, including wins over the Bucks and Warriors..
  • Jazz-Suns: The Jazz have beat Igor Kokoskov’s team twice already, by 28 and 17 points. Now they’ll finish the season series by facing them twice in 10 days.
  • Key for the Jazz: Several key Suns will be out, so as long as the Jazz can control tempo, they should be in good shape. Phoenix has the third worst halfcourt offense in the league.

Wednesday: L.A. Lakers at Utah, 8:30 p.m. MT

  • State of the Lakers: L.A. was officially eliminated from playoff consideration. They’re 26-27 in games LeBron James has played, but the real story might be how they have fallen apart (4-14) since the trade deadline failed to deliver them the help LeBron wanted.
  • Jazz-Lakers: The Lakers won a Black Friday tilt in a game where the Jazz couldn’t score, and then the Jazz got payback with an 18-point January win in one of the 20 games LeBron missed. 
  • Key for the Jazz: This is going to be a battle for the rim. The Lakers lead the league in getting shots at the rim, and they’re top five at converting them. On the flip side, Utah’s defense is elite both at limiting rim attempts (5th) and turning them into misses (3rd).

Thursday: Washington at Utah, 7:00 p.m. MT

  • State of the Wiz: Washington has lost four straight and is 6-12 in its last 18, but Beal is playing out of his mind. His averages are 29-5-7 over those same 18 contests. 
  • Jazz-Wiz: Utah just laid a 19-point beatdown on the Wizards last week in Washington, and overall have won six straight contests against Washington. 
  • Key for the Jazz: Stopping Washington these days is all about stopping Beal, which the Jazz did well last week. If Ingles & crew can replicate that defensive performance against the star guard, the Wiz will struggle to find points.

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

Let’s end with something that looks like an exciting play, but is really an allegory for having five engaged, connected guys on the court.

On the surface, this is just an authoritative swat leading to a fun fastbreak dunk. But this play doesn’t unfold this way unless all five guys are playing hard and with a certain mental velocity.

If Rubio doesn’t get back defensively and cut off the paint with good positioning, then Kris Dunn probably scores or gets fouled, but he certainly wouldn’t have had to veer left, right into Gobert’s waiting wingspan. Then Gobert blocks it, but also keeps it in play. Crowder tracks down the rebound, but also has the presence of mind to flip it to Ingles behind his back. If he had just grabbed it (or let Ingles grab it), then the Jazz never would have gotten such a headstart in transition. Then Ingles runs hard and commits the defender, and all the while Mitchell is sprinting toward a highlight-reel finish.

You might not see a better example of team play on both ends in eight seconds like that all season. If any of those guys had been complaining to a ref, distracted by someone in the crowd, or just 10% less mentally engaged in the play, the outcome would have been different. They might have still scored, but it wouldn’t have looked quite like this.

Whenever fans start talking themselves into players who don’t play hard all the time with lines like, “It’ll be fine, the other guys will cover for them,” I think of plays like this. When you have five guys who are focused, thinking fast, playing hard and connected to each other, plays like this can happen. If you have four guys like that and a fifth who’s not quite 100% into the game, this play doesn’t happen.

That will do it this week. Nine games to go!

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