Salt City Seven: Bogey’s Big Month, Role Players Leveling Up, Playoff Picture & More

May 10th, 2021 | by Dan Clayton

Ingles, Bogdanovic and Niang have helped the Jazz weather injuries. (via Utah Jazz Twitter)

Every Monday during the regular season, the 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.

A quick dissection of a big-picture topic or burning question relevant to the week in Jazzland.

The Jazz have played 17 straight games without their full complement of scoring guards. After Jordan Clarkson missed four in mid April, All-Stars Donovan Mitchell and Mike Conley got hurt. Those were the Jazz’s three top scorers heading into that stretch, yet Utah has somehow managed to stay afloat during this stretch of improvised guard rotations. They’re 12-5 in those 17 games, and perhaps more telling is that their efficiency differential — filtering out garbage time and heaves — is still at an elite +10.7, tops in the league over that span.

Why have the Jazz been able to still play dominating basketball with three scorers and creators shuffling in and out of the rotation?

There are a few reasons. It doesn’t hurt that they have an MVP-level big man in Rudy Gobert. Joe Ingles has provided the facilitation and creation skills that they’ve needed to keep the gears of the offense turning. Multiple role players are contributing at a level that is well beyond their typical job description.

But one of the biggest reasons is that the Jazz chose not to give up on Bojan Bogdanovic.

The versatile scoring forward is one of two Jazz players to appear in every game this year1, and he has unquestionably ratcheted up his offensive game to help Utah survive and even thrive while the guards have been sidelined. Bogey was averaging 14.9 points on 42-38-85 shooting splits through April 7. During this 17-game stretch where Utah has been without one or more of their high-scoring guards, he’s averaging 22.6 points, with 49-42-92 shooting.

Overall, his True Shooting has jumped from a very average .567 to .649, all while ticking his usage2 to 28.9%. 

It’s not just an efficiency or usage bump, though. He’s playing smarter, more aggressive basketball and has taken over a larger chunk of the facilitation duties for a team lacking its best playmakers. Bogey shot 42% on drives over the season’s first 51 games, and gave up the ball on 8% of his forays into the paint. He often looked like he was seeking contact first and the bucket second, and many of his driving attempts became wild flings with his body’s momentum headed anywhere but toward the rim.

Now, he’s shooting 50% on those same drives. Overall, his shooting inside five feet has gone from 51% — comfortably the worst among Jazz rotation regulars — to 66%, a scorching figure for a guy who creates most of his own interior looks.

He has also played better team defense during this stretch, and he’s getting to the line more often, both in raw terms and as a ratio of field goal attempts.

His 29 ppg during a 4-0 week for the Jazz earned him Player of the Week honors, weirdly making him the first player on the league-leading Jazz to take home the weekly hardware this season.

The highlight of the week was his unstoppable 48-point performance in a massive win against Denver. The career night for Bogdanovic served as the culmination of a month-long turnaround for the Croatian forward, punctuating a return to relevance that is meaningful to both Bogey and the Jazz as the playoffs draw near. The 33-year-old Bogdanovic admitted in his walk-off interview that he didn’t think he’d find himself in a position to break his career high (it was previously 44) at this point in his career.

If the juxtaposition of Bogey’s own self doubt against that brilliant performance weren’t stark enough, it’s nothing compared to how ready Jazz fans were to dismiss him at various points this season. Especially during a month-long slump that roughly coincided with the height of trade deadline speculation, Bogey undoubtedly saw his name in fan-concocted trade machine deals. For a player to come back from that and live THIS kind of a moment with those same fans chanting his name is almost poetic:

Redemption stories are cool. Two months ago, nobody knew just how important Bogdanovic would be as Utah fought to cling to the No. 1 seed among injuries. Hell, two months ago, nobody knew for sure that Bogey would still be around.

It’s another little vindication of the Jazz’s patience and the belief in their players. The Jazz now head into the playoffs with a major ingredient having found his way. His role will undoubtedly look different once Conley and Mitchell return, but he’s restored the confidence and rhythm that made him a big part of the puzzle last season, and the scoring that the Jazz missed when a wrist injury kept him out of last year’s playoffs.

In other words: Bogey’s back.

Keeping track of the Jazz’s place in the wild, wild West.

Just about everybody in the Western Conference playoff race has four games left:

Seven days of regular season basketball remain!

The separation between various tiers has made the closing week of the season perhaps less dramatic than some people hoped for in an overall sense. But the various micro-races are tight enough that we likely won’t have clarity on any single playoff seed until Thursday or Friday at the earliest.

The Jazz could technically wrap up the top seed as early as Wednesday if everything breaks right in the next 72 hours, but it’s far more likely that they don’t clinch until closer to the weekend. Luckily for them, they close the season against two bottom-10 teams who may be shutting things down by then, which gives them a bit of a safety net.

The Lakers’ tiebreaker situation will make it tough for them to climb out of the 7th seed, but LeBron James’ imminent return could be the boost they need. The Nuggets are on the verge of clinching a top-4 seed, the Mavs’ division title will help in hypothetical multi-team ties, and the Blazers can swing multiple races as they still have three games left against Western Conference playoff teams.

I’ll update this via Twitter at least once during the final week, so keep your eyes out for one or more updates.

Stats that tell the story of the Jazz’s week.

100.1

Another player who deserves a massive amoung of credit for stepping up in recent weeks is Georges Niang. The sharpshooting forward also sports a 100.0 DRtg for the season, just a tenth of a point off of Conley’s team-best figure. He has sustained that good defense since the injuries started, at 100.1 since April 8. Here’s a thread of nice defensive moments from last week.

+38.5

The Jazz’s new makeshift starting five — Ingles, Bogdanovic, Royce O’Neale, Niang and Gobert — is up to an unbelievable +38.5 net rating with 122 possessions. That is in the top 2% of all NBA lineups with at least 15 possessions together. The two hybrid bench units Utah has been running while Conley and Mitchell have been out are also both in the top 10%: the Trent Forrest-Clarkson-O’Neale-Bogey-Derrick Favors group has been +23.1 so far, and the group of Ingles-Clarkson-Miye Oni-Niang-Gobert is +30.0. It’s notable that the Jazz have been so successful at cobbling together not just a winning rotation amid the absences, but three separate *dominant* core lineups. (The 122-200 possession played by each of these quintets isn’t a lot, so be cautious about assuming a ton this early. It’s still a great start.)

The Jazz are up to +9.0 in non-gargabe minutes with ANY lineup combination that doesn’t include Conley or Mitchell, which is amazing. That’s the efficiency differential of a 60+ win team.

+12.2

Per Cleaning the Glass, the Jazz raised their offensive rating by 12.2 points just through their transition efficiency in Friday’s dramatic win over Denver. Notably, they turned 31% of their live defensive rebounds into transition plays, and scored a full two points per play on those trips. Overall, it was their second best night of the season at reaping the benefits of transition play, and their best at playing off of opponent misses (+9.6 added to their ORtg from transition plays off a live rebound).

37.0%

Utah’s shackled the Spurs on Wednesday night to the tune of 37.0% eFG defense, their best mark of the season and in the top 1% of all NBA games played this year. And in *both* Jazz-Spurs games this week, the hosts held San Antonio to just a half point per transition play, which means the Spurs’ fastbreak opportunities actually brought down their offensive efficiency for those two games.

68

The Jazz have now hit 10 or more threes in every game this season, meaning they are four games away from accomplishing something totally unprecedented: finishing the year without ever failing to nail double-digit threes. Houston had a streak of 97 split over two seasons. The Jazz’s overall streak now stands at 74: this year’s 68 plus six at the end of last season. They already own the best single-season streak at 68; Houston had 56 straight as part of that 2-season run, and 55 straight a year earlier.

In their own words

“We’re definitely fatigued, but that’s nothing we’re looking at… I’m not gonna lie, this season has been grueling and tiring. But we came here to work, we came here to win.”

-Clarkson, on the Jazz’s whirlwind season

This season was always going to be a test of teams’ mettle and players’ ability to fight fatigue. To accommodate a mostly-full slate of games in an environment altered by a global pandemic, the NBA had to cram 72 games for each team into a 21-week period.

The wear and tear of an unusually compressed season got even tougher for Utah mid all the injuries, as the remaining rotation players have had to fill bigger roles. Clarkson is getting 5.3 more minutes a night, Ingles and extra 4.9, and Niang’s minutes are up a whopping 7.9. (Gobert’s, Favors and O’Neale’s minutes are roughly the same; Bogdanovic’s are too, but as documented above, he’s playing a much larger role as a facilitator, ball handler and scorer.)

The good news for the Jazz is that they’ve played their last back-to-back. After this Sunday’s season finale in Sacramento, they’ll get a minimum of five off days before they start the playoffs, where schedules will also be spaced out by at least one off day between games.

So they’ve weathered the worst. But don’t underestimate the impact of mental and physical fatigue on these guys after a grueling season. 

Recognizing the best (or most memorable) performances from each Jazz win.

Jazz 110, Spurs 99: Rudy Gobert. Gobert was simply dominant on both ends. You’ve likely already seen the videos of him turning back multiple Spurs or making multiple efforts to shut down the same play. He also pounded inside for 24 points (on 14 shots), grabbed 15 rebounds, and notched five combined steals/blocks. Bogey’s 25 and Ingles’ nine assists made them runners-up, but Gobert was dominant enough that this one wasn’t hard.

Jazz 126, Spurs 94: Jordan Clarkson. We saw Clarkson’s whole bag on Wednesday. Sure, he did a decent amount of his scoring after the game was well in hand, and by pure “game MVP” standards this was a lot closer between Clarkson and Bogey. The latter did the bulk of his work early to help Utah pull away in the first frame, and finished with 24 points on 10-of-13 shooting. But narrative counts too, and I think we’ll look back on that one as the one where Clarkson just busted out: 30 points, six boards, four assists, 12-of-16 from the field, and a number of breathtaking shots and passes. Plus, he had the game’s single most memorable shot (the stepback three) and single most memorable pass.

Jazz 127, Nuggets 120: Bojan Bogdanovic. Really no question. Forty-eight. The discussion could stop there, but Bogey was also efficient, helped greatly on the glass and played solid D. Gobert had what felt like the clinching block — on a Nikola Jokic sky hook, no less! — and scored six down the stretch as part of a 14-and-9 night. Clarkson struggled with his shot, but shared eight assists and had consecutive fourth-quarter steals that helped the Jazz put the Nuggets away. Ingles had nine assists, and Favors helped limit Jokic. But… 48. Yeah.

Jazz 124, Rockets 116: Georges Niang. Another easy one, as Niang dropped in a career high-tying 24, and those weren’t window-dressing points, either. The bulk of his six threes came when the game was still at least theoretically in doubt, and he had a couple of steals, assists and boards, too. He was red hot. The poor Rockets had nobody who could deal with Gobert (13 & 14, with four blocks) and O’Neale had another all-around night. Bogey and Clarkson scored (20+ each) and Ingles again directed (7 assists).

Looking ahead to the next seven nights of Jazz action.

This is it — four more!

Monday 5/10, Jazz @ Warriors: Steph Curry is red hot right now, with an average just north of 40 — FORTY! — over the last four games. The Warriors are without Kelly Oubre Jr. and James Wiseman at the moment, but those injuries have sneakily helped them eliminate some of their most troublesome lineups. Curry’s net rating with Oubre this season is -1.8, with Wiseman it’s -8.3… and without either one it’s +16.7. So there’s some addition-by-subtraction happening now, which is partly why the .500ish Warriors are 11-5 in the last 30 days.

Wednesday 5/12, Jazz vs. Blazers: The home finale should be a good one. It’s hard to sweep a .600-plus team, but the Jazz will be looking for their third straight win this season against Dame Lillard’s 39-29 Blazers. They’re coming off a 7-1 stretch, and will probably be 8-1 by the time they come into SLC since they host Houston on Monday night. Norm Powell has been up and down as a Blazer, but Lillard has finally recovered from a mini slump. The Blazers will likely be fully engaged, as they are locked in a tight 5-6-7 battle with the Mavs and Lakers, and whichever of those three draws the short straw by Sunday afternoon will have to fight their way into the postseason in a dangerous play-in scenario.

Friday 5/14, Jazz @ Thunder: OKC has sent veteran Al Horford out on garden leave, and Shai Gilgeous-Alexander remains out. So it’s no surprise that this Thunder squad is 1-22 since the start of April. They have the league’s worst offense by two full points per 100 possessions, and their defense is also bottom-7. This should be a gimme for Utah, as long as they don’t treat it like one.

Sunday 5/16, Jazz @ Kings: First of all, how cool is it to finish the season with all 30 teams playing? Especially if things are still compressed in all these little pockets of the standings, that last day could lead to some serious movement and nailbiting. The league has also announced that they’ll have all 15 games start within a few hours of each other, which is terrible for me as a League Pass viewer, but should make for a dramatic final day of standings-watching. As for the Jazz, they’ll face a team that most likely will be eliminated from playoff contention long before Sunday. That said, season finales often have weird emotional energy, so Utah can’t look past the Kings, especially if they need that win to clinch the top seed. The Kings are 8-4 over their last 12, despite the fact that De’Aaron Fox has been shelved by protocols, Tyrese Haliburton is done for the year, and Harrison Barnes has been day-to-day. So they can put together a good 48 minutes of basketball now and then. (Although they certainly didn’t when the Jazz boatraced them by 49 points in April.)

Random stuff from the Jazz community.

Lots to choose from this week. Mitchell addressed University of Utah graduates. Gobert supported an ailing Jazz fan. Bogey’s whole week. Clarkson being Clarkson.

But let’s go with this:

What do we even make of this? Perkins has seemingly been earnest in his belief about the Jazz all year, but this feels at least part tongue-in-cheek. Either way, it was fun to see this come across the Twitter machine. The Jazz are very obviously on people’s radar now, and it was cool to see Perk have some fun with his support of these emerging contenders.

Just one more week! We’ll have our final SC7 of the season next Monday, which we’ll use to tie up loose ends on the 2020-21 regular season and start to look ahead at the Jazz’s first-round series.

Comments are closed.

© 2024 Salt City Hoops. All Rights Reserved.