Salt City Seven: Jazz Season Underway, Mitchell On Fire & More

Mitchell’s Jazz have launched their season with a 2-1 start (via espn.com)

NBA basketball is back. So is the Salt City Seven.

The SC7 is our favorite weekly tradition around here — a 7-pronged recap of the Jazz’s week, told from a variety of angles. Every Monday throughout the regular season, you’ll find the quotes, stats, moments and performances that tell the story of the past 168 hours in the Utah Jazz’s universe. We’ll give out game balls for each Jazz win, take stock of the team’s macro position within the conference, and relive the fun moments from the week prior.

In this season debut of the SC7, we look back on a 2-1 week where the Jazz got a remarkable performance from their star and started to set the foundation for what could be a highly successful offense.

For that and more, read on!

An important quote from Jazz players or personnel from the week

“Every one of my shots tonight was wide open. That shows how unselfish we are. We are looking for the good-to-great: the guy who has a good shot is passing it to the guy who has a great shot.”

-Jazz newcomer Bojan Bogdanovic on the team’s offensive philosphy, after he dropped 26 points on Sacramento

This is exactly what the Jazz envisioned when they retooled the roster this past offseason: threats everywhere, and defenses having to choose which capable scorer to leave open.

One of every five Jazz shot attempts thus far (20.2%) has been a wide open 3-pointer, which is ninth in the league. In particular, Royce O’Neale (41.2% of his shots), Jeff Green (37.5%), Mike Conley (28.9%) and Bogdanovic (28.1%) are benefitting from being left wide open. Joe Ingles (26.7%) is getting left alone, too.

That five rotation players are getting such a huge helping of completely unguarded looks is notable, especially since all five of those guys are at least good 3-point shooters. They’re all converting somewhere between 44% and 71% on their wide open threes — except Conley, who’s down at 18%.

The Jazz offense is still laboring a bit overall. They’re stuck at 21st in terms of offensive efficiency, largely because the sample is small enough that Conley’s early struggles and the Lakers’ swarming defense from Friday are still really pulling down the team figure. On the other end, they’ve shaken off the defensive woes from the preseason to lead the league in opponent points per 100 possessions, heading into Monday’s games. This week they’ll face some of the hotter offenses in the young NBA season, so we’ll see how that defensive figure holds up.

But in the meantime, Bogey is right: Utah is playing selfless basketball, and it’s resulting in the right kind of looks for the right types of shooters.

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

.681

It’s time to start talking about how ridiculous Donovan Mitchell’s start has been. Three games in, Mitchell is averaging 35.9 points per every 100 team possessions. That is an insane number. But what’s even crazier is that he’s doing it with remarkable efficiency. His .681 true shooting figure is the highest of anybody in the league with at least his usage rate, except for the red hot Trae Young in Atlanta. It’s too early to make much sense out of any all-in metrics, but a Box Plus-Minus of +12 and a Win Shares per 48 of .428 are silly numbers that just show how flawless he has been during the season’s first 144 minutes. He’s also playing some of the best defense we’ve seen from him.

80.5

Friday’s defensive performance against the Lakers didn’t look great on the surface, a development many are using to point to Utah’s lack of halfcourt defenders who can guard big wings and forwards like LeBron James. But there’s no need to freak out here. When the Jazz got the Lakers to play against their halfcourt offense, they actually held them to an 80.5 offensive rating. The problem on Friday was Utah’s execution. The Lakers applied a lot of high ball pressure, and the Jazz consequently coughed the ball up too many times and/or settled for bad shots. L.A. scored an 145.5 ORtg on those transition opportunities, including 157.1 after steals. If Utah had executed better, their defense would have looked elite, even against LeBron and his Lakers.

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

Outsmarting the pre-switch

It was maybe the single most viewed highlight from the Jazz’s opening week. But you might not have realized it had a clever X-and-O angle to it. Let’s break down Mitchell’s spicy dunk from the home opener.

If you look only at the immediate action that led to the score, this is just a simple pick-and-roll play where Mitchell splits a weak trap and contorts his way past a waiting help defender in the lane. But the interesting stuff came right before that.

The play starts as a simple 1-4 flat setup, and obviously OKC knows that one of those four guys across the baseline is going to set a pick for Mitchell; they just don’t know which one. It looks here like the play is for O’Neale to screen for Joe Ingles, which would leave Danilo Gallinari guarding Ingles when he sets the pick for Mitchell. The Jazz absolutely love to hunt Gallinari out whenever they play his teams. He is a weak P&R defender, so they like to get him involved in guarding the action as often as they can.

Gallo knows that, so you actually see him point to teammate Shai Gilgeous-Alexander to execute what’s called a pre-switch. He wants SGA guarding Royce so that when the down screen is set away from the ball, they can switch back and SGA will still be involved in guarding the ball screen. But the Jazz notice the pre-switch. In fact, clear across the court, you can see Conley signaling that they already have the switch they want. Royce retreats without setting the screen for Ingles, and Ingles takes Gallo right into P&R action, where the Jazz wanted him.

From that point on, it’s a pretty straightforward play. Gallo steps up to hedge, but he leaves a gap that Mitchell can attack. Royce’s spacing isn’t ideal at this point, which is why SGA is still kind of hanging out in the paint, but it doesn’t matter because he never commits to helping. Mike Muscala does, but Mitchell simply makes an athletic move to get around him. It’s heads-up thinking by the Jazz to create the precise advantage they want, and then to attack is decisively.

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

We have two game balls to dole out this week, and they were both fairly obvious, easy decision.

Jazz 100, Thunder 95: Donovan Mitchell

Mitchell drained an efficient 32, grabbed a career-high 12 boards, and only Rudy Gobert eclipsed his +9 for the game. On top of that, Mitchell played splendid defense and had several of the game’s decicing plays. Gobert once again locked down the paint, and Bogdanovic gutted out a return after spraining an ankle. O’Neale and Emmanuel Mudiay also both deserve some credit for strong stretches. But when a star does star stuff and is the author of both the game’s definining moments AND the best stat line, there’s no reason to overcomplicate this.

Jazz 113, Kings 81: Bojan Bogdanovic

Bogey got the Jazz going and then stayed strong throughout. He had a 12-point (on seven shots!) first quarter, and finished with 26 points, five threes, and four rebounds. The Jazz outscored the Kings by 32 in his minutes, and as illustrated in the quote above, the Jazz finally got to start imagining what it can be like when all of their offensive weapons are clicking on the same night. Honorable mentions: Mitchell had a quiet, efficient 15 and was +36 for the game, and Conley finally got going a little bit.

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

OK, it’s way too early for this section, but for continuity’s sake, let’s chat for a second about the Western Conference field.

The five supposed playoff locks — Clippers, Rockets, Jazz, Nuggets, Lakers — haven’t done anything to seriously jeopardize their status in their first 2-3 games. All those teams except the Lakers still have a nine-in-ten chance or better of making the postseason, per FiveThirtyEight, and the Lake Show isn’t far off with 73% odds¹.

If we’ve learned anything else about the Western Conference in the six nights of basketball we’ve had so far, it’s that once you get past those main five, the West might be more open than we thought. Golden State looks beyond flawed, while the Wolves and Suns appear to be a bit ahead of expectations — again, based on a small sample size.

We’ll revisit this race weekly as more data points come in, and we’ll do so from various angles leading up to the spring. For now, it’s safe to say the Jazz still look like they’ll be part of the upper echelon if the right guys stay healthy.

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

Monday 10/28, Jazz at Suns: One of the more interesting topics in the early NBA season is how real the Suns’ good start is. They’ve been sharing the ball, playing smart and defending with a newfound friskiness. They’re also doing it without Jazz alumnus Ricky Rubio, so there’s some talent upside even beyond their 2-1 start that includes a surprising win over the Clippers. Devin Booker is a gifted scorer who can combust without warning, so Utah needs to take this matchup seriously. That said, if you’re going to win 50-55 in the West, you need to be able to count wins against this tier. 

Wednesday 10/30, Jazz vs. Clippers: The Jazz luck out in the sense that they get to play L.A. twice in quick succession while Paul George is out. That said, the Clips have still looked rather elite even with only one of their megastar wings available. Kawhi Leonard has picked up right where he left off after earning his second Finals MVP award, and the Clips’ supporting cast includes various guys who know their specific role — like Lou Williams’ scoring or Patrick Beverley with his tenacious defense against just about any size human they assign him to guard. This will be a huge test for the Jazz, but at least they get them at home first.

Friday 11/1, Jazz at Kings: Utah is fresh off a 32-point drubbing of the young Kings, who so far haven’t lived up to the hype they created unexpectedly staying in the playoff conversation into late March. De’Aaron Fox still appears headed toward stardom, while their other blue chip prospect, Marvin Bagley III, has missed some time with injuries. The Kings will be home all week while they wait for the Jazz, with games against the Nuggets and Hornets.

Sunday 11/3, Jazz at Clippers: Both teams will be coming off a rest day when the Jazz and Clippers run it back on Sunday in L.A. It will be interesting to get 96 minutes of Jazz-Clips so early in the season, because they really are pretty aligned in terms of strengths and weaknesses, and should be a great matchup. The Clippers’ main liability so far on defense has been the interior, where Utah is a little light on scoring from the four position. Utah generates most of its offense from the guard spots and wing, which is where L.A.’s best defenders reside. 

Because after all, following a basketball team is supposed to be fun

With apologies to Mitchell, there was a clear winner for this week’s most chuckle-worthy moment. Even if it happened at the expense of the star guard and his, um, posterity.

Joe Ingles laughs at Donovan Mitchell getting hit in the nuts pic.twitter.com/SSK0Tkf38V

— The Render (@TheRenderNBA) October 27, 2019

That does it for this week. We’ll be back next Monday with seven bits of Jazzy goodness.