Salt City Seven(ish): Mitchell Shines, Unleashing Rudy, Clarkson Debuts & More

Mitchell has been soaring lately for the Jazz, winners of seven of their last eight (Andrew Bernstein via espn.com)

Every week here at SCH, usually on Mondays, we start the week with seven regular features that let us relive the biggest moments, key performances and hot issues in Jazzland from various angles.

Last week’s issue went up late due to some holiday travel by your faithful scribe. As a result, we lumped Monday in with the previous week — including the loss at Miami and the day’s transaction news we covered in that edition of the SC7.  That means this week’s colum is actually more like a Salt City Six, as we catch up with all the biggest storylines in Jazzland from Tuesday on. Let’s go!

An important quote from Jazz players or personnel from the week

“His awareness of his teammates coupled with his ability to attack, he’s finding a new balance.”

-Quin Snyder, on Donovan Mitchell’s recent dominant stretch

Mitchell has been doing some pretty starry stuff of late, as detailed by a story on the Jazz guard by the Deseret News’ Sarah Todd¹. Over the last eight games — seven of them wins — Mitchell has averaged 27.0 points, 6.3 assists and 4.3 rebounds. He’s gone for 30 or more points five times in that span, equalling the number of times he reached the 30-point mark in the previous 24 games.

His true shooting percentage (.604) and effective field goal percentage (.574) over that span are both considerably higher than his season numbers, meaning that the electric scorer is getting it done efficiently as well.

But it’s not just the scoring prowess that has caught Snyder’s eye. It’s the understanding of the offense and the ability to engage the four guys on the court with him at a given point.

“Understanding the plays, understanding where the looks are going to come from in our plays, what’s going to be open, where guys are going to be,” Snyder told the DNews (and other assembled media) on Saturday. “Having the knowledge of that allows you to go at a different pace.”

It’s no coincidence that Mitchell has chosen this stretch of games to step up as both a scorer and a playmaker; the eight-game stretch we’re talking about here roughly coincides with the absence of Jazz starting guard Mike Conley, who has missed 10 of 11 with hamstring problems.

Being without Conley has forced Snyder to rethink how his club generates offense for 48 minutes. He promoted Joe Ingles back into the starting lineup to rekindle some pick-and-roll chemistry with Rudy Gobert. Ingles has rewarded that decision with his own heady play, averaging nearly 17 points and five assists since Conley hit the injured list. Snyder has also tinkered with rotations, including by incorporating the recently acquired Jordan Clarkson, and by moving on from veteran forward Jeff Green.

But the “new balance” that Mitchell has tapped into has given the Jazz their biggest answer. With his 27 points per night over that span and his 16.1 points created by assists, he has accounted for more than 37% of Utah’s offense in the last eight games, without even accounting for the stuff that gets opened up by his very presence on the court and the defensive attention he commands. 

Mitchell’s excellence and Ingles’ resurgence have helped the Jazz stay on track without Conley, but it certainly doesn’t make the 12-year veteran expendable. Ingles made that clear when he appeared remotely on TNT’s Inside the NBA on Thursday.

“Obviously, he (Conley) is an unbelievable leader out there. He’s almost like another Quin Snyder out there,” Ingles told the studio crew. “I don’t think we’ll have a problem getting him back into the flow with our team… We’re excited to have him whenever he’s ready to come back.”

Yes, Utah is 7-3 now in games without Conley, 8-3 counting the Orlando game when he attempted a return but left early. But Utah’s average opponent during that stretch was a .469 team², as opposed to the .521 average record of the previous 21 opponents, against whom Utah went 12-9 with Conley playing. Utah did come up with an impressive road win against the Clippers without Mike, their lone win against an elite team since Conley got hurt. Even in that game, they won despite one of their bench guards (Emmanuel Mudiay) posting a minus-14 for the game. So it’s not like they won because Conley was absent; in fact, they won despite having to spread his minutes around. Having another rotation-quality guard available certainly wouldn’t have reduced their chances of winning.

It would be fair to say that Conley has played his best basketball only intermittently since joining the Jazz. He struggled in his first four games with Utah, then had an 11-game stretch where he averaged 18.5 points on 43% shooting from three, and then has been up-and-down again in his seven most recent outings.

But when Conley plays, other Jazz players are better, and that’s even true of the mercurial version of the star guard that Utah has gotten in his 22 games thus far. For the season, Conley and Mitchell have a +7.8 Net Rating when they play together, compared to Mitchell’s +0.8 without Mike. Even if we include Gobert in those numbers so that the sample doesn’t penalize Mitchell’s higher percentage of minutes with the bench unit³, the Mitchell-Gobert tandem is still slightly better with Mike involved, +9.2 compared to +8.0. Some of the is a reflection on how the Jazz don’t have enough quality depth they can draw on when Conley is absent. But a lot of that comes down to the way Conley makes things easier for his teammates.

Simply put, the Jazz need Conley to be elite. As easier schedule combined with Mitchell’s starry play have helped the Jazz get back on track even without Mike. But the guard’s return will help the Jazz unlock another level.

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

300+

The Jazz have 15 player trios that have logged at least 300 minutes together, and all of them have +6.5 or better. Here’s the catch: those 15 3-man combinations are all just variations from the same group of six guys. That’s another reason why Conley’s return will help: it will give Snyder more options to cobble together winning lineups.

.375, .607

Clarkson is two games into his Jazz tenure, and so far Jazz fans have witnessed both sides of the coin. In his Utah debut, he posted .375 true shooting, didn’t register a single assist, and was minus-14. His shot profile was a little wild on Thursday night, and he didn’t help at all on the glass, or much on the defensive end. Then on Saturday night, he took better shots, posted a .607 TS figure, had two assists with zero turnovers and logged a +1. He played much better defense, even when the Clippers went hunting for switches that put him on the likes of Kawhi Leonard.

That’s going to be the nature of things with Clarkson: there will be nights when he really helps, and there will probably be other games where he gets a little too adventurous for the tastes of some Jazz fans. Utah acquired him specifically as an aggressive bench scorer, though, so they’ll have to live with what that means on the good nights and the slightly wilder ones.

Gobert Effect

One thing to keep in mind whenever you’re looking at lineup data or individual Net Rating: playing with Rudy Gobert really matters.

If you rank order the main guys in terms of overall Net Rating for the season, the order exactly follows the ranking of who has played the most minutes next to the Stifle Tower. Only the centers, who haven’t played at all with Rudy, break the pattern among players with 100 or more minutes on the season.

(Minimum 100 total minutes, source NBA.com)

Turns out that #27 enables people around him to play winning basketball.

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

Unleashing Rudy

Gobert is still one of league’s premier roll men, with 1.16 points for every play that he ends with a shot, turnover or free-throw trip out of the pick-and-roll. Only the Nets’ Jarrett Allen scores on a higher percentage of his P&R possessions.

But the Jazz find other ways to get their defensive MVP involved in the offense, too. So this week, we’re going to highlight a couple of simple actions they use on scripted pieces designed to get Gobert easy points.

This one caught my eye because of how rare it is to run this action for a center. Notice where Gobert is when the clip starts: clear out in the left corner. Then they run a little disguised “badger” action. Badger is the name for a when a player (usually a big) sets a screen to the outside for (typically) a guard to make that shuffle cut into the middle. The Blazers don’t even know to expect this sort of play called for Gobert, so Hassan Whiteside — who tends to be only intermittently interested in playing defense anyway — gets caught off guard here.

It helps that the Jazz disguise the badger screen. Royce O’Neale sets what looks like a pindown for Ingles, and because of that, Damian Lillard is preoccupied with that action until Gobert has literally already caught the ball.  Whiteside never saw it coming, Lillard isn’t ready to help, so Gobert gets wide open at the rim, thanks to the Jazz drawing up a play that usually works for guards.

Here’s another scripted play that the Jazz ran right after a timeout.

This is just a simple UCLA backscreen that they run for Gobert. And if you’re thinking that’s pretty bad help defense by Anfernee Simons — well, it is, but there’s a reason why he’s paranoid about staying with Mitchell here.

The Jazz often have the back screener “bump” the screen, which means they get the defender thinking they’re going to set the backpick and then instead cut away from the screen. Bogey scored back-to-back layups that same night by “bumping” the screen.

Both times, Bogey’s defender tries to cheat a little to the high side in anticipation of the backpick, so Bogey just seals off the angle and gets a layup.

That’s what Simons is worried about when Mitchell sets the UCLA pick above. And the Jazz are good at reading the defense so that somebody winds up with an easy attempt at the rim as a result of this type of action. 

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

Utah’s two straight wins mean we have a couple of fake Spaldings to hand out.

Jazz 121, Blazers 115: Donovan Mitchell. Tough one. Ingles was both aggressive and red hot early on, and helped Utah build its big lead with his 26-5-4 night. And Gobert posted 16 and 15, along with several late stops and the game-clinching save on the baseline that led to Bogey’s timely three. But Mitchell was too good here, outduelling the Blazer guards to the tune of 35 points, 10 of which came in the clutch, along with seven assists. O’Neale was also really important in this one.

Jazz 120, Clippers 107: Donovan Mitchell. Don took over again in Staples. His thunderous dunk with 9:18 left put the Jazz in front for good, and then when the Clippers got back to within a bucket, Mitchell scored three straight midrange pull-ups as part of an 11-0 Jazz run. Clarkson looked good in his second Jazz game, and O’Neale’s defense on Leonard was a huge part of this win. But Mitchell’s 30-9-7 line was simply too good not to let him to back-to-back in the Game Ball department.

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

Utah’s win in L.A. was a big one, because it gave them the inside lane on the tiebreaker with the Clips, who are now just one ahead in the loss column. In fact, Utah is now just one loss behind all of the Clippers, Mavericks and Rockets. They’re three losses back of division-leading Denver and five back of the Lakers.

The win also put Utah’s win projection at 538 back over 50 — they now project to be a 51-win team, although the site doesn’t see them as real threats to win a title. Basketball Reference’s SRS-driven model still has them coming in sixth with 47 wins, and ESPN’s Basketball Power Index has them right at 50.

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

With their recent road trip in the books and Christmas-week matchups with the Blazers and Clippers behind them, the schedule is about to lighten considerably for the Jazz. That starts with three duels this week against teams with losing records.

Monday 12/30, Jazz vs. Pistons: Blake Griffin is having the worst year of his career to date, and with his struggles on top of several injuries to role players, Detroit just doesn’t have enough. They’re 4-11 outside Michigan, but beware: one of those wins was at Houston. They’re sixth worst at defending the 3-point shot, which could be important as Utah rolls out its league-leading percentage from deep.

Thursday 1/2, Jazz @ Bulls: The Bulls were expected to be a little better this season, but with players openly sniping with coach Jim Boylen, it just hasn’t come together. They have a really poor offense, the result of not shooting well (5th worst eFG%) and turning the ball over a lot (6th worst TOV%). They have, however, won four of their last seven heading into Monday’s tilt with the league-leading Bucks, so they’re not a team to overlook, either.

Saturday 1/4, Jazz @ Magic: Orlando is 3-7 in its last 10, and has multiple players on the injury report, including third-leading scorer Aaron Gordon. But this one is probably tougher than it looks on paper. The Magic are decent defensively, foul very little, and limit transition opportunities. They can’t score (6th worst in points per halfcourt play, per Cleaning the Glass), but if they get hot, they have enough defensive discipline to keep things close.

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

Thank you so much for making Salt City Hoops a part of your fan experience in 2019. As the year ends, it’s hard not to be in awe that, after all this time, SCH is still a major voice in the Jazz online community. That’s because all of you care enough to keep coming back to hear perspectives on your beloved Jazz, but also because of the great work done by dozens of writers over the years.

Twenty different writers have had their work appear on our pages since the start of 2019. That includes solo articles by Isaac Adams, Ken Clayton, Dane Coles, Tyler Crandall, Austin Facer, Riley Gisseman, Jake Gochnour, Steve Godfrey, Clint Johnson, John Keeffer, Keith Rivas, Jimbo Rudding, Clark Schmutz, David Smith, Kincade Upstill and myself, plus we were fortunate to have Thatcher Olson, Mark Russell Pereira, Allen Reihmann and Jonathan Turnbow weigh in on group posts.

Some of the most prolific SCH contributors of this past decade⁴ are: Andy Larsen, who posted 334 articles and podcasts here before moving on to KSL and then the Salt Lake Tribune where he continues to be awesome; founder Spencer Hall, who had 286 of his 374 lifetime SCH posts drop in the last 120 months; Clint Johnson, a professional writing instructor who brought Jazz basketball to life with 181 posts; Ben Dowsett, whose 169 posts paved the way for him to appear at several other outlets, most recently Forbes; David J. Smith, whose encyclopedic knowledge and unbridled love have been evident in all 150 posts; and Jimbo Rudding, who has posted the 142 funniest posts on this website. Oh, and me. I’ve been lucky enough to share my view of the Jazz world for nearly seven years now, during which time I’ve posted 376 articles, podcasts and Salt City Seven columns.

Salt City Hoops is what it is because of those and many other voices. I’m proud to be associated with the names above, and humbled to be holding the torch that they lit.

Thanks to all of our writers, past and present, and to you the readers.

That’s a wrap for this week — and for 2019! Happy New Year to all of the fine folks who follow us here at Salt City Hoops!