Salt City Seven: Passing, Caring, Option Plays & More

November 27th, 2023 | by Dan Clayton

The Jazz are looking to get their guards passing the ball more. (Trent Nelson, The Salt Lake Tribune)

Every week during the regular season begins here at SCH with the Salt City Seven, a septet of recurring 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 look at the big, burning question of the moment in Jazzland

It’s not new news that the Jazz have a passing problem: their most frequent ball handlers quite enjoy keeping the ball themselves, and when they do pass, the Jazz often deliver the pass directly to the other team: after Saturday’s action they were still last in the league at turnover percentage, at 17.5%.

But the new twist this week was seeing Jazz coach Will Hardy openly — and I mean openly — call them out for it.

“The only two things I care about are play hard and pass,” Hardy told multiple outlets before the Jazz’s Wednesday loss in Portland. “We’re at the point now where if you’re not willing to do both of those things, you cannot play for the Utah Jazz.”

That is rather bold. What was even bolder is that even after hearing that, the Jazz went out and barely moved the ball early against the Blazers. Counting from the first frontcourt pass, Utah’s first possession featured five passes. But on the next 10 possessions, the Jazz moved the ball just 3, 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 2, 1, 2 and 1 times in the halfcourt. And literally not one of those was a pass that broke the paint, a pass from a driver to a spot-up shooter, or an interior pass. It wasn’t until their 12th possession, just over six minutes into the game, that they had their first ball movement that wasn’t just a pass around the perimeter.

Hardy expounded on the passing issues before Saturday’s win, citing the learning process for his young ball handlers as well as timing.

“Offense in basketball is on a rhythm. It’s like listening to music,” he said. “If you’re off the rhythm, the beat of the music, it just doesn’t work. I think there’s times where we’re open, and the shooters know they’re open and feel they’re open, and the ball’s not getting there on time.”

He said that too often, the guys with the ball are treating the pass as the last option instead. A lot of times, he said, the responsibility is to get the ball and quickly move it without worrying about whether or not there’s a scoring opportunity there.

This will continue to be something we monitor with these young ball handlers. Collin Sexton is 24. Talen Horton-Tucker is still just 22, as you might have heard a time or two. Keyonte George is 20. Jordan Clarkson is the senior statesman in the role, but even he is relatively new to this exact version of his distributor duties, and Hardy mentioned that he’s working on improving his reads, too.

 

Telling or interesting words from Jazz people

“If you’re gonna wear a Utah Jazz jersey, you have to give a shit about the Utah Jazz.”

-Hardy after Wednesday’s loss

This is what happens when you deliver a “play hard” message before the game and then your guys step on the court and get waxed by a 3-11 team still playing without Anfernee Simons and Robert Williams III, and with DeAndre Ayton taking the night off.

Honestly, this feels a bit like the “Wake Up” moment from Hardy’s predecessor in that it’s a card you can only play so many times.

Combined with the Saturday lineup change, this particular wake-up call seems to have worked in the short term. The Jazz turned in one of their best defensive efforts on Saturday in toppling an opponent that was inarguably superior in terms of available talent at the top of the roster. Will the message stick as guys healthy and the Jazz inch back toward their regular rotation? That’s an interesting question, but Hardy seems to have gotten the group’s attention in the immediate term.

 

Stats that tell the story of the week

76

The 76 paint points the Jazz allowed the Lakers were a season-worst for them, and tied for the second-most allowed in any NBA game this season. The results was their worst opponent eFG% of the year (63.4%).

15

The Jazz never got closer than 15 points after halftime of their game with the Blazers on Wednesday. The Blazers had not previously led by more than 12 at any point in their previous 14 games.

92.0

Utah’s defensive rating in the 4th against New Orleans was one of their best quarters of the season. They held Brandon Ingram to 2-for-7 shooting, forced five New Orleans TOs and didn’t put a single Pelican on the line. It was also their best shooting fourth quarter of the year (83% true shooting), despite not having their two top scorers. Starting with Collin Sexton’s buzzer-beating layup to end the third, they outscored NOLA 39-23 over the final 12:01.

 

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

Just one Game Ball to give out this week, plus a couple of consolation prizes.

Jazz 105, Pelicans 100: Collin Sexton. Whenever there are a few candidates being considered, one place I look to make sense of it all is Inpredictable, which estimates that Sexton’s actions enhanced Utah’s win probability by 30%, far more than anybody else. That’s largely because of his 10 point, 5-assist fourth, where he accounted for 24 of Utah’s 37 points in the final frame. There was a stretch from 7:46 to 1:11 where Sexton scored or assisted all but two Jazz points, all while they went from two down to eight ahead. That included setting up two Olynyk threes, making a pair of his own plus a pull-up two, then dishing for a George three and a Fontecchio layup. Olynyk (13-6-3) and George (15-6-5) were also really solid, but Sexton was way more involved with the actual decisive stretch. Plus there’s the narrative angle: after all of the “it’s a message to Sexton/THT” talk resulting from the lineup change, Sexton came in and earned himself the right to not just close, but be featured on nearly every clutch play.

Strong in defeat:

  • Jazz 99, Lakers 131: Omer Yurtseven. You all know I’m a stickler for my self-made rules and almost never go with someone whose contributions came exclusively in blowout minutes. But in this clunker, nobody else was good enough during the theoretically competitive portion of the game to talk me out just giving it to the Turkish center for an 18-point, 8-for-11 outburst. Some of Collin Sexton’s contributions (14-3-4) came when things still sort of mattered, but hey, might as well hand one out to an unlikely candidate since this was a weird game where so very little went right.
  • Jazz 105, Blazers 121: Kelly Olynyk. Here’s another one where it almost seems we’re to hand out a “top performer” sticker at all. Markkanen did some garbage-time stat-padding to get to his average, Clarkson had a rough night, and John Collins had enough mistakes to balance out his 12-and-11. Olynyk was good, though: 13 points, 9 rebounds, 5 assists, with 5-for-5 shooting. It pretty much had to be him or Ochai Agbaji (4-for-4 from the field). 

 

Breaking down the Xs and Os behind a Jazz score.

Football has “option” plays, where a quarterback starts taking the play in one direction but ultimately hits a crux point where he can keep the ball or flip it to a running back depending on the angles and holes in the defense.

Basketball isn’t all that dissimilar sometimes. A very small percentage of plays are set up so that Player X can take the shot, no matter what. Most of the time, the play design generates options, and the players have to think through the right choice in each situation. Here are two quick-hitting little “option” plays from Jazz-Pels.

After Simone Fontecchio inbounds, he pauses for a moment and evaluates a choice: come to the ball using Omer Yurtseven’s angled pindown, or slide baseline behind John Collins’ screen. The only reason I wonder whether or not this design was specifically for him to choose the former is the exuberance with which Collins yells, “C’mon Tech!” while setting up. Sometimes players get a little too cute when trying to disguise the decoy action.

Brandon Ingram guards with his back to Fontecchio on the inbound, which is fine except that he never really gets back in a stance, so eventually Tech just zips into the Yurtseven pick and Ingram has close to zero chance at recovering. And Jonas Valanciunas had no interest in leaving the paint to help at any point in the evening. The other option, had Tech gone baseline, is for Yurtseven to turn around into a 2-man action with Kris Dunn, or for Dunn to flip the court and get into a dribble pitch with George while the help defenders are all occupied trying to deny Fontecchio a layup.

Here’s another, this time on the biggest shot of the night.

Because the Pels were hedging this high on an outside ball screen, Yurtseven smartly slips it. That means Jose Alvarado has to come in on Yurtseven, so not THT’s whole job becomes about reading the second help. The weak side guy is Herb Jones, a defensive stud, but it’s pretty impossible for him to be in a location where he can prevent both the Olynyk cut for a layup *and* the Sexton catch-and-shoot three. THT keeps it just long enough to make Jones wonder, and as a result there are two really good options on this play. 

Freeze frame: when THT picks up the ball, Olynyk is open on a baseline cut, and Sexton is open on the perimeter.

Despite ~20 feet of distance, Jones almost gets a fingertip on that pass, which just goes to illustrate that the Jazz needed every inch of space THT is able to generate by dragging out his decision. But the point of this still is that there was a pretty simple A-or-B decision available to Horton-Tucker here. Two guys are wide open.

Sexton got it, let Jones fly by, and drilled a three. The Jazz never trailed again.

 

Looking ahead to the next seven nights of action

The Jazz get right back into it with a 4-games-in-6-nights stretch. Here are a couple sentences on each.

  • Monday, 11/27: Jazz vs. Pelicans. The official word on Zion Williamson’s absence from Saturday’s showdown was “rest,” so that has to mean there’s an OK chance we see the young superstar in Monday’s sequel. What’s less clear is whether Markkanen (hamstring soreness) or Clarkson (illness) will be available.
  • Wednesday, 11/29: Jazz @ Grizzlies. The Jazz’s second and third best offensive games of the season have come against the Grizzlies, whom they have already beat twice this year. In fact, this will be the final showdown unless somehow they get matched up in the In-Season Tournament makeup games, since neither team reached the quarterfinals.
  • Thursday 11/30: Jazz @ Wolves. Kind of wild that just over a year later, nobody is left from the Rudy Gobert trade who actually played for the Wolves (Malik Beasley, Jarred Vanderbilt, Leandro Bolmaro, Pat Beverley), although George and Walker Kessler remain products of that trade, along with other draft assets yet to hit. However, it will be a homecoming for Kris Dunn, who spent a year there after being drafted fifth by the Wolves in 2016.
  • Saturday, 12/2: Jazz vs. Blazers. Here’s another team the Jazz have seen a lot of early on — in fact, when they play again in mid December, they’ll be done with the Blazers for the year. The second installment of Jazz-Blazers (last Wednesday) was Portland’s only win in the last 10 games, although prize rookie Scoot Henderson is back in the mix for Portland.

 

Random stuff from the Jazz community

I mean, this looks fun.

Another week down!

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