Salt City Seven: Oh No Joe, Fixing the Focus & More

Joe Ingle will miss the remainder of the season, the Jazz confirm. (Rick Egan, The Salt Lake Tribune)

Every week during the regular season 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. Last week’s column was delayed by a day, so it actually covered eight days of Jazziness. That means this installment actually covers games from Tuesday through Sunday night. Check in every week for the quotes, stats, plays and performances that tell the stories of the Jazz’s week.

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

The hits keep coming for the suddenly very beleaguered Utah Jazz.

The Jazz have lost 11 of 13. Their best players are sidelined with no real clear information about an expected return to action. Even their coach will be taking a break from prowling the sidelines, as Quin Snyder became the latest NBA coach forced to hand over the clipboard due to health & safety protocols.

But you know the saying: when it rains, it pours. Nobody was quite ready for Sunday’s latest squall — Joe Ingles, down in a heap before being carried to the locker room.

“Joe, you know — it just took a lot out of guys just seeing him with tears in his eyes,” Mike Conley Jr. said with a shaky voice after the Jazz lost both the game and the soul of their team. “You know how much this means to him, and this game means to him, and what we mean to him. It’s tough.”

On a mid second-quarter drive, Ingles’ left knee buckled inward, then folded under him as he collapsed in the paint.

Further evaluation on Monday confirmed the Jazz’s worst fears. As ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski first reported, the Jazz have indeed confirmed that Ingles’ anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) ruptured and that he is out for the season. 

But if you heard the way Jazz players were talking on Sunday in Minneapolis, you already knew this injury was going to be a significant one.

“At halftime, we found him in the X-ray room. Obviously he was in a tough state,” Conley added. “Everybody came in there and told him we loved him, gave him a hug and told him we’re going to keep fighting, just keep trying to go forward for him.”

That will be harder than most people realize. Even in a down statistical year, Ingles is really important to the Jazz. He runs more pick-and-roll offense than anybody outside of Conley and Donovan Mitchell, and he still has an underrated impact on the defensive end, even as age has taken a bit of the zip out of him there.

But more than anything, as I wrote a couple of weeks ago, he is a pillar to the Jazz’s culture and character. Now the second longest-tenured Jazz player, Ingles has stamped his identity all over the team’s attitude, basketball identity, and locker room. His wisdom and wit often keep the Jazz centered through the lows and highs, and he has been a rudder of sorts as the Jazz have built and rebuilt through multiple different versions of their squad.

He has already etched his name in Jazz history as the franchise leader in 3-pointers made, and he and his family have connected with and challenged the community.

Obviously some of that leadership and cultural wisdom can still benefit the team even as Ingles heals up, but his smarts and skills will still be missed on the court during the remainder of this season. After that, it’s unclear. ACL reconstructions generally keep NBA players out for the better part of a year, which would take Ingles past his 35th birthday. It’s not unheard of for a player to return to play that late in his career, so we’ll have to see what Ingles and his family decide about what this spells for his and their future.

More than anything, this latest misfortune at the end of a massively turbulent January just deepens the feeling among a frustrated fan base that their favorite club is snakebitten. Not long ago, the Jazz were cruising at 28-10 (a 60-win pace), but sometimes all the tribulations hit at once. Mitchell’s lingering concussion symptoms, Rudy Gobert’s strained calf, Snyder’s illness and a host of other issues have piled up to test the mettle of this team that entered the season with the loftiest of aspirations. They haven’t had their full rotation healthy since Christmas Day. They’re 10-3 in the scant games where their 9-man rotation has been available, but now 20-18 when missing one or more of those key guys.

Many teams start to crack under the weight of all of these challenges piling up. For others, it marks simply a bend in the path, a footnote in a story about overcoming. We’ll see how the Jazz’s story develops from here.

“Not everything is supposed to be easy. We understand that,” Conley said Sunday. “This will build even more character for us, this adversity that we’re going through.”

In their own words

“This isn’t Chicken Little, ‘the sky is falling.’

“We’ve got a team that’s capable and I believe in them. Which is part of the reason that there’s frustration from all of us that we can allow some of those things to happen.”

-Snyder, after the Jazz’s 105-97 loss to Phoenix on Wednesday 

Wednesday’s home loss to the Suns seemed to hit Snyder differently. The coach bemoaned a lack of energy in the game’s opening quarter, a period that saw them fall behind by 21 right out of the gate.

Snyder did point out that his team “competed like crazy” after that, cutting the deficit to a one-possession margin five separate times before Phoenix pulled away late against the Gobert-less, Mitchell-less Jazz. But for the eighth-year head coach, the dichotomy there was the frustrating part, because he knows that the ability to compete is there. He sounded as pointed in that postgame presser as he has been all season, indicating in a number of different ways that he wants to see more fire from his team than he saw early against the Suns.

“This isn’t about winning and losing, it’s about committing to the things consistently that allow you to win,” Snyder continued.

Snyder addressed a number of specific issues: getting back on defense, lack of ball movement, needing to make quicker decisions… But mostly it boiled down to a single concept: focus. If the Jazz can improve their focus on all the things, big and small, that magnify winning habits even while Gobert and Mitchell are out, then their return can elevate the club even further. But it has to start with the guys on the court now, he kept insisting.

It wasn’t just one guy. Rudy Gay appeared to draw some ire during the course of the game for failing to get back on defense. Hassan Whiteside was not quite in scheme on defense either, failing to come up as much as he needs to on pick-and-roll guards trying to get to mid-paint pull-ups and floaters. Jordan Clarkson got caught letting the ball stick on offense. Plenty of problems plagued the Jazz, which is why Snyder’s consternation was pretty evident. He gave his starting point guard a glowing-if-also-graphic endorsement — “Mike Conley just spilled his guts on the court,” Snyder said — but seemed to want more from most of the guys in yellow that evening.

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

+11.0

I keep coming back to this, but it’s because it really is important context for the current struggles. The Jazz still — despite all the injuries, illnesses and other weirdness — play elite-level basketball with only their main rotation guys on the basketball court. Lineups with any five of their nine main rotation guys are +11.2 per 100 possessions this season, with an elite offense (120.2) and an above-average defense (109.0). Throw Eric Paschall¹ and/or Danuel House Jr.² into those lineups and the Jazz are still +11.0. But as soon as they go deeper into their bench, things fall apart quickly. Lineups with one or more of the deep bench guys are -11.5 per 100, with dismal offensive (107.2) and defensive (118.7) ratings, per Cleaning the Glass.

In other words, the current problem may have more to do with Utah’s deep bench not being ready to contribute to winning basketball. That’s especially important to monitor with Ingles’ injury news. The Jazz may need to do some rotation reshuffling — starting with locking up House for the remainder of the year.

114.3

In the early part of the season, a huge positive storyline for the Jazz was their ability to play winning basketball when Gobert sat, due in part to Whiteside’s strong play. Through the end of 2021, Whiteside’s net rating was +10.0, and both the offense and defense were elite in his minutes. But a concussion, COVID-19, and role changes appear to have impacted him. He is just +0.8 since those trials started, and in particular his defensive rating (114.3) is equal to the second or third worst defense in the league. It’s important to remember the human context here — he was concussed, then he was sick, then there was COVID in his family, and now he has returned to a Gobert-less rotation where he’s asked to do different things. Hopefully he can bounce back, because that strong early season play was a big differentiator for Utah’s bench units.

.583

Ingles is the Jazz’s all-time leader in 3-pointers attempted and made, but did you know he’s also one of the most efficient scorers in franchise history? His .583 effective field goal percentage trails only Gobert’s .650. He’s also fifth in Jazz career assists, ninth in steals, and needs just 17 games to crack the top 10 in game played.

Again, it’s way too early to write Ingles’ NBA obituary; he may decide to fight his way back onto the court next season. Either way, it’s worth pausing to recognize just how important he has been to modernizing and elevating the Utah Jazz since his arrival in 2014.

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

With 31 games to go, the Jazz definitely aren’t closing a 12-game gap in the loss column to catch first-place Phoenix. The eight-loss gap to No. 2 Golden State would also be pretty improbable, which is why the detailed seeding reports at Basketball-Reference and Inpredictable both give the Jazz essentially a 0% chance at climbing any higher than third. (Technically B-Ref says 0.2%, but yeah… it’s not happening.)

The focus now is on getting as healthy as possible as soon as possible so they can continue to jostle with Memphis (4 ahead in the loss column) while keeping Denver and Dallas on their backs. Denver is now even in the loss column, and Dallas has one more loss than the Jazz.

To fall further than that, a currently .500-or-below team would have to catch them. Even if the 26-26 Clippers or 25-25 Minnesota were to magically improve and win 70% of their games down the stretch to finish around 47-35, Utah could hold them off by finishing 18-13, which is right on their current win percentage pace. In other words, No. 6 is likely a worst-case scenario at this point.

After the All-Star break, we’ll resume firing off versions of the massive playoff race graphic that has become of a fixture of Jazz Twitter in the spring.

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

We only get to dole out imaginary Wilsons after the Jazz win, so this week the game ball department has been sadly quiet. We will recognize some good efforts from the Jazz’s three losses as a consolation prize, though.

Strong in Defeat:

• Jazz 97, Suns 105: Jordan Clarkson. Fairly obvious this has to be Clarkson. To the degree that the Jazz had any real shot coming down the stretch, it was mostly due to Clarkson’s fourth-quarter shot making. He finished with 26 total points, including six threes. Conley had a special game, with 16 points and 10 dimes, but Clarkson was the story and the reason the Jazz had life late.
• Jazz 109, Grizzlies 119: Mike Conley Jr. This was a tough call between the two “juniors.” Narrative-wise, this will likely be the game we remember a month from now as the night it became obvious that Danuel House Jr. would be sticking around. But Conley was just too damn good. The Jazz were actually won Conley’s minutes 75-62… but lost to the tune of 34-57 in the 18 minutes he was off the floor. Conley finished with 15 points and six assists in his old stomping grounds, and once again left it all on the court. House (21 points, superb defense) would be a worthy pick, but to me, Conley’s guts were all over this game.
• Jazz 106, Timberwolves 126: Bojan Bogdanovic. Bogey was the chief protagonist in the Jazz’s best stretch of the night, scoring 11 in just over three minutes as he powered a 19-4 second-quarter Jazz run. His shot-making allowed Utah to erase an early deficit and take a 7-point lead. He got his 23 total points on just 11 shots, which I used as a tiebreaker of sorts since Conley (22 points, five assists, three steals) was also superb again. Conley has been busting his butt to keep the Jazz competitive in these games without his fellow 2021 All-Stars.

Looking ahead to the next seven nights of Jazz action.

How weird is this: just two games in the next seven nights. Maybe that will give the ailing Jazz a chance to rest and recuperate from a grueling stretch and travel and games. They only leave Salt Lake City twice in February (plus whatever traveling guys do over the All-Star break).

Wednesday 2/2, Jazz vs. Nuggets: The Jazz are, somewhat improbably, playing for a season sweep when they face Denver at home on Wednesday. But all of the games have had some weirdness to them. They notched a home win after Nikola Jokic exited early in the October matchup — but they were up narrowly when the MVP got hurt, and pulled away against the Nuggets’ smallball groups, a supposed Jazz Achilles heel. Then they won two games in Denver in the span of a week and a half, the first one without Gobert, and the second one in the star center’s return from COVID-19. But let’s be honest, the Nuggets aren’t themselves either, with long-term injuries to their second and third best players. The MVP has been stellar — 26-14-8 for the season — but just hasn’t had a lot of help. The Nuggets will be on a back-to-back, and visiting the rested Jazz on the last game of a 6-game trip in nine nights.

Friday 2/4, Jazz vs. Nets: The first Jazz-Nets tilt of the year would have been a fascinating test under normal circumstances. The preseason title favorites from my old borough are in a lot of ways the ultimate measuring stick, both because of their overall star quality and because they have specific ways to tug at Utah’s weaknesses. But alas, we won’t get anything quite that revelatory; even if Gobert and/or Mitchell are back for the Jazz by Friday, Nets star Kevin Durant is out until after the All-Star break. James Harden (hand) is questionable, but the Jazz will see Kyrie Irving, who is eligible to play in the Nets’ road games. The Nets have lost 11 of their last 17, but if the Jazz aren’t closer to full health themselves, this might turn into a last-man-standing type of affair.

Random stuff from the Jazz community.

Lots of good options this week, from a new SLC snowplow named after Gobert to Mitchell’s apparent troll job directed at those worrying about market size rumors and the All-Star’s future.

(My quick $.02 there: it is silly to pretend like Mitchell leaving isn’t a possibility. But you also can’t live in fear of that. At some point as an organization, you have to believe in what you’ve built. If you’ve done things the right way and tried to put a culture of excellence around a star player and he still chooses to leave, then at a certain level I think you still sleep soundly knowing you did what you could. My bigger worry is that the “one early playoff exit away from leaving” becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. If a player already has that mentally built in as the justification for a shortcoming, does that subliminally affect is performance in any way? I’m sure that’s a highly individualized answer, but food for thought.)

But instead of diving headlong into that whole set of speculation and counter-speculation, let’s end with more Joe.

The amount of support and gratitude pouring out toward Ingles in the past 24 hours has been touching.

• Mitchell’s own “best memory” of Ingles was hilarious and self-deprecating and awesome.
• Gobert’s response to the situation — stunned silence — was very relatable.
• Former Jazz teammate Ricky Rubio is currently dealing with his own knee injury, and promised Ingles: “We will be back.”
• Lots of “love you brother” and similar sentiments expressed by Jazz guys in Insta stories and Twitter posts.

But perhaps the sweetest thing to happen in the aftermath of Ingles’ ACL tear was this tender response by Bogdanovic.

For some reason nothing gets me verklempt like reflexive demonstrations of unconditional love & brotherhood.

Something so sweet & pure about Bogey RUNNING to Joe, instinctually rubbing his head and neck, then refusing to leave his brother’s side. Gahhh, so beautiful and awful. pic.twitter.com/oOlbNlXDqK

— dan c. (@danclayt0n) January 31, 2022

It’s been a rough January, but it’ll be OK, Jazz fans.