Salt City Seven: Closing Lineups, Big Shot Bogey, Rivalry Rankings & More

The Jazz halted their skid and have won two straight. (Melissa Majchrzak via espn.com)

Every week here at SCH begins with the Salt City Seven: seven regular features that let us relive the biggest moments, key performances and hot issues in Jazzland from various angles. Check in every week 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 from the week

We’ll start this week off with a 2-for-1 special: TWO Jazz quotes that illustrate the mindset we’re going to talk about this week.

These two quotes are really the inverse of each other in terms of both context and content:

“First of all, I wasn’t even supposed to be on the court on the last play, the way I played all game. But that’s the coaching staff, the way they believe me.”

-Utah’s Bojan Bogdanovic, after nailing a walk-off three in Houston despite starting the night 1-for-6

“We were playing well. We were scoring and rotating defensively. I did my role… I just told him to let them rock.”

-Jordan Clarkson, via Andy Larsen of the Tribune, on why he told Jazz coach Quin Snyder not to reinsert him for the stretch run despite his team-high 30 points

Here you have the hottest and coldest Jazz players from the first 3.5 quarters against the Rockets both making the case for why they shouldn’t have been on the court in the clutch minutes of a hugely important Western Conference showdown.

As fate would have it, both would close the game. As Bogdanovic correctly pointed out in his quote, the coaches’ trust in him led to him playing the final 7:43, culminating in his buzzer-beating 3-pointer for a 114-113 win. And Clarkson, despite making his “Let them rock” case to Snyder, eventually did check in for the game’s final 28 seconds when the Jazz found themselves trailing by one and in need of more offensive weapons.

Since the Jazz got everybody healthy, debate has raged on about who should start, who should reinforce the Utah bench, and — perhaps most importantly — who should finish close games.

Sunday evening’s thrilling win — and the quotes that came after it — might be a good hint that all of that discussion is a waste of time and keystrokes.

The Jazz have six players who are good enough to start and finish for most teams, plus they have Clarkson, whose ability to create his own shot is especially important when they face teams that switch on picks or when their offense is otherwise stuck. That’s a total of seven dudes who could get the call on a given night.

Rudy Gobert and Donovan Mitchell are more or less locks to be out there¹. Utah will live and die with their All-Stars making big plays, and we’ve already covered in this space the ridiculous frequency with which Gobert makes game-defining defensive plays in the clutch.

The vast majority of the time, Bogdanovic and Mike Conley will close games, too, because that’s why the Jazz brought them here. They’re both natural scorers and heady players, and their respective résumés have earned them the benefit of the doubt, even on nights when things haven’t gone their way. Almost every team operates that same way with their main guys, and particularly when you’ve won upwards of 60% of your games, it’s perfectly acceptable to adopt a “dance with the one who brung you” mentality. As Bogey showed us all on Sunday, that trust is often rewarded.

Sometimes those four will be joined by Joe Ingles, a maestro at executing the pick-and-roll against traditional defenses and a smart defender whose size has helped the Jazz frustrate opposing guards. Sometimes it will be Royce O’Neale, a gritty perimeter defender and consistent spot-up shooter. Other times they might need Clarkson to come in and provide a bucket, or help bend the defense so someone else can.

And yes, on some occasions, they’ll need a couple of those guys to come in, meaning one of the four stars will take a turn watching those clutch minutes unfold from the bench. That’s okay, too.

For example, against Portland, the Jazz needed the length of both Ingles and O’Neale for their defensive strategy down the stretch, so Conley sat even though he had played an excellent game. In Houston, they mostly played with the starting lineup down the stretch. But in the final minute, they turned to O’Neale for defensive reasons and then called in Clarkson as a shooting option, which meant that Bogdanovic and Conley each had to take a brief turn sitting.

That’s just the luxury of having multiple guys that can impact games down the stretch. You can still expect Snyder to stick mostly with the core group of closers — Gobert, Mitchell, Conley, Bogdanovic and one of Ingles/O’Neale — in most situations. Snyder’s default temperament is to avoid being too jumpy about changing things up. If he alters his plans and lineups every time someone has a hot or cold stretch, eventually that messes with players’ rhythm and confidence. And Bogey made a pretty good case in the Toyota Center for why it’s a good idea to trust the larger sample size over what has happened most recently.

But if the quotes above tell us anything, it’s that the players don’t lie awake at night worrying about it, so those of us who cover and follow the team probably shouldn’t either.

These guys are all mature professionals who, above all, want to win. All seven of those guys know that they’ll play a big role in every single game. When it comes to the last few minutes, they’ll have nights when they are part of the group trying to bring home the win… and nights when it’s their turn to support their teammates.

“We all trust in each other,” Clarkson told KSL.com after Sunday’s big win. “We know what we can do.”

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

5/6

Bogdanovic now has made a total of five go-ahead field goals in the final 2:00 of fourth quarters and overtimes this season, on just six attempts. Only Chris Paul (6) has more such buckets, and it took him twice as many attempt (12) to pile them up.

Bogey is also the only NBA player this season to call game twice; his two made shots for the lead with 0:00 on the game clock make him the only guy with multiple walk-off winners this year.

30+

Clarkson is now one of three NBA players to pile up three separate games of 30-plus as a reserve. He had a 33-point game for Cleveland before the trade, 37 in a loss at Denver two weeks ago, and 30 for the Jazz on Sunday. Montrezl Harrell and Dennis Schroder have each had four games or 30 or more off the bench this season, but nobody else has had more than two.

.549

This one comes courtesy of the intrepid Riley Gisseman, whose great statistical finds we highlight frequently. Of the past 18 teams to reach the Finals, only one (2015 Cleveland) didn’t finish the season in the top four for effective field goal percentage. Utah finished the week at .549, good for third in the league and only a tenth of a percentage point behind the Lakers (.550) for the top spot in the West.

20-5-5

Those are Conley’s averages since being re-inserted into Utah’s starting lineup. His True Shooting is .598 over that stretch. It looks like Mike is finally coming alive. Which is at least partly why…

3:01 p.m. EDT

…the team looked the same after the trade deadline as it did right before. Utah already made a blockbuster move last summer to bring Conley here, and then bolstered the rotation in December by landing Clarkson. And their recent 5-game funk notwithstanding, the Jazz believe that this new core is good enough to be really competitive once it’s all had time to congeal.

“There are times that we have played very, very well this year, and there are times we haven’t played very well, including this stretch [the 5-game losing streak that ended on Friday],” Jazz general manager Justin Zanik told team radio after the deadline passed. “But the character of our group will help us get through this tough stretch.”

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

Spain to Loop

Last month we looked at what happens when the Jazz run some of their favorite screening actions without Gobert. It puts defenders into roles they might not be as used to.

This week we’ll look at something similar. Against Denver, the Jazz fan this Spain pick-and-roll — which is a double ball screen down the slot, with the second screener setting a backpick on the “contain” big. But this time they run the action without Gobert involved, because the Spain action is actually a decoy for Bogey to run a loop route and get a pindown from Gobert.

The Nuggets were switching anything that didn’t involve Nikola Jokic, so Utah knew that Torrey Craig would wind up switched onto Bogey. Look at the latter just casually come off the screen as though the switch blew up the action. And then, as soon as he gets past Jokic, he hangs a sharp left and sprints into Rudy’s flare screen, which actually serves as more of a pindown because of the angle of Bogdanovic’s cut.

The whole initial setup essentially turns Jokic into a weak corner helper, which is a role he’s not used to playing. That’s why he plays the whole thing rather passively, and isn’t up to help on the pindown, leaving Craig to deal with Bogey on his own.

Craig recovers well, but because he has to close out hard on the 3-point shooting Croatian, Bogey’s able to get around him. 

One of the things Bogey does really well on drives is that he uses his inside shoulder to lock himself in front of the defender, instead of shying away from contact. Notice how between his second and third dribbles, he shifts sideways to get his upper body in front of Craig’s. Even though his first step wasn’t lethal, that smart tactic means he has the advantage. He does that often on show-and-go drives, as I highlighted in this thread. Because Craig is now guarding from behind, Jokic has to help, which means Gobert is free.

I really like all these variations on Utah’s favorite screening actions. 

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

Two wins this week. Let’s pass out some leather.

Jazz 117, Blazers 114: Bojan Bogdanovic. Several folks jokingly suggested we give this one to , the trio of referees who missed a goaltending call when Rudy Gobert blocked Damian Lillard’s attempt at a tying layup with 13 seconds remaining. Jokes aside, Conley had the pole position on this with a really nice outing, and that allowed Bogey to pull away as the clear game ball favorite. His 27 points (on 16 shots) included eight in the game’s final 7.5 minutes — like this big boy layup right here. But Conley was really great too, and Gobert’s 7-for-9 shooting and 16-and-14 double double were really important against a smaller version of the Blazers 

Jazz 114, Rocket 113: Jordan Clarkson. Buzzer beaters are really special moments, but with apologies to Bogey, this one needs to go to Clarkson. He made big shot after big shot to keep Utah within striking distance throughout the first half, and then had two scoring spurts in the second half that gave Utah a shot to win. He had nine points in the final 5:38 of the third quarter, including the free throws that tied the game up at 81-all. And then he had another 9-point burst in about three and a half minutes in the fourth. Also considered: Conley was excellent (20-5-6 and maybe his best overall floor game since the injury), and was the favorite to win it until Clarkson’s 18-point explosion in the second half. Gobert was also really crucial in a unique role for him defensively, and Mitchell came on in the clutch to finish with 24.

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

This is the last week before we’ll re-debut the playoff race graphics. So while you wait for that, here’s a roundup of how the various projections systems we cite most often here view the Jazz and their Western peers.

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

The Jazz are right in the middle of a back-to-back at the moment, and then they’ll conclude their pre-All-Star schedule by hosting an elite Eastern Conference team.

Monday 2/10, Jazz @ Mavericks: Luka Doncic will miss this game, his seventh straight, with an ankle injury, but Kristaps Porzingis has been phenomenal in his absence. The Unicorn had three straight games with 32+ points and 12+ rebounds, although two of them were Dallas losses. He missed Saturday’s game as the Mavs sought to manage a knee injury on the second night of a back-to-back. But Seth Curry went bananas (26 points) as Dallas secured a double-digit road win. In other words, while it’s not clear what version of the Mavs the Jazz will get on their own back-to-back, it surely won’t be an easy game.

Wednesday 2/12, Jazz vs. Heat: Miami is really good. The Heat have the 4th best effective field goal percentage in the league, and trail only the Jazz as a 3-point shooting team. They’re the best above-the-break shooting team in the league. That said, they’re currently adjusting to some new additions. Former Jazzman Jae Crowder had 18 and 11 in his Heat debut, while Andre Iguodala had just two points in his first NBA game in nearly nine months. Heat star Jimmy Butler (shoulder) didn’t dress for their loss at Portland, but it doesn’t sound like anything too serious. Utah will be Miami’s last stop on a 5-game Western road swing, and both teams’ final game before the All-Star break.

**Sunday 2/16, NBA All-Star Game, featuring Utah’s Gobert and Mitchell: The Jazz’s All-Stars will be teammates on Team Giannis at next Sunday’s midseason showcase. Remember, this game will have a different format, with the game only lasting until one squad or the other has reached a score that is 24 points greater than the leading team’s tally after three quarters. With the way they defend at the All-Star game, that means the fourth quarter will likely take just a few minutes to play.

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

This week’s spicy Blazers-Jazz game — and the Twitter feud that ensued soon after — made me realize that it’s time to revisit the rivalry rankings. After all, hardly anybody is left from the Clipper and Thunder teams that the Jazz helped dismantle with playoff series wins, the Mitchell-Ben Simmons stuff has simmered down, and the Gordon Hayward emotions are no longer at fever pitch.

So how does it look? Here’s my top five. History factors in, but these rankings are mostly a subjective measure of the current state of fan animosity, player beefs and competitiveness. 

5. L.A. Lakers: From a team perspective, L.A. probably doesn’t view Utah as one if its top five rivals, which weakens the case a bit since reciprocity is a big part of what makes a rivalry matter. But it helps that both LeBron James and Anthony Davis have their own unique histories with the Jazz, and the playoff history here is long and interesting.

4. Wolves: This might feel high given that the rivalry has been a bit one-sided recently. Utah has won the season series four times in the five full seasons of the Snyder era, and leads 2-1 this year. But these teams don’t like each other. It was a little hotter before Ricky Rubio left Utah, and Minny looks different now following an active trade season. But this one will continue to matter, specifically around the Gobert-KAT matchup.

3. Denver: Gobert-Jokic is about as philosophically interesting as a center matchup can get, and the divisional foes have exactly split their last 14 meetings. But this one just lacks the fervor it needs to put it any higher here.

2. Blazers: The Portland rivalry already had some real competitive juice (8-7 over the last 15) even before this new bad blood. Six technical fouls, a handful of “hold me back” moments, a controversial no-call, and then a Twitter spat. Pile that on top of an already great star guard matchup, plus both the Gobert-Jusuf Nurkic and Gobert-Hassan Whiteside personal rivalries have both been historically spicy, and Carmelo Anthony has his own history with Utah. It’s also a very relevant one since the teams toil in the same division and see each other four times per year.

1. Rockets: Easy button. Not only have the teams faced each other two years in a row in the playoffs, but their fates seem inexorably tied to each other again this year. They’ve had almost identical records for the last month and a half, and James Harden is the most hated player by NBA fans in Utah. Russell Westbrook wasn’t around for the Jazz-Rox playoff battles, but he of course has had his own postseason tangles, plus of course that inexcusable fan behavior that got national attention and stoked his own hatred of Salt Lake. Plus you just have the question of competing philosophies. So it’s interesting on multiple levels.

These teams really don’t like each other, and yet they can’t seem to escape each other. And as lopsided as the playoff counts have been, this rivalry has been much closer in the regular season than most people realize: 8-10 in the last five seasons.

Also considered: The Philly and Boston stuff has died down, and the Jazz only see them twice per year anyway. A lot of tweeps suggested I included the Suns, based on some very active discussions between the two fanbases on social media. But I just dont’ think the Jazz lie awake at night thinking about the Suns, who have averaged 25 wins during the Jazz’s Snyder era and are on pace for 32 this year. Chris Paul could help restoke the OKC rivalry, but right now the pitch on that is pretty low. Memphis’ surprise competitiveness and the Conley relationship could make that one interesting, but Mike is too damn nice to have a real rivalry that way. The Clippers and Jazz will eventually rebuild the rivalry vibes, but too much of their squad is new at the moment.

How did I do?

That’s another week in Jazz Nation for you. Next Monday we’ll recap the Jazz’s short week of work, check in on the All-Stars, and look ahead to the 28-game home stretch — including by reintroducing the popular playoff race graphic!