Salt City Seven: Toughest Stretch Yet, Collins Surge & More

John Collins has been playing well, but his Jazz are heading into a brutal stretch. (Via sltrib.com)

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 exploration of a big-picture topic

The Jazz are about to head into arguably their toughest stretch of the season… and they embark on this stretch coming off eight losses in nine games.

The 4-16 Jazz will play eight of their next nine outside of Delta Center, including two as-yet unscheduled games (one home and one road) the NBA will drop into their schedule once the In Season Tournament field is set.

Then they’ll make a brief stop at home to face Philadelphia (a train wreck at present, but with marquee talent) and the 2023 champion Denver Nuggets before heading out again for three more road games. Their opponents in those three: oh, just three of the Eastern Conference’s best six teams.

By January 5, the Jazz will have played 22 road games and just 14 at home. That’s a huge disparity.

Of course, that also means they have a home-heavy second half of the season. They’ll have home stands of eight and six games in the final two months of the basketball year (although the 8-gamer will functionally feel more like a 7-game homestand since it’s broken up by All-Star weekend after a single home date with the Lakers).

But the real point here is this: the current doldrums could continue into the new year if the schedule is any indication.

Let this serve, then, as your period reminder that there are more ways to enjoy following a basketball team than simply counting wins. Here are a few of the big questions I’ll be monitoring during what could be a brutal December.

• Will Lauri Markkanen continue to progress as a versatile scoring threat? Experimentation has cost him a few percentage points off his usual efficiency, but few things about the 2024-25 season will matter as much in 3-5 years as this question.
• Can Keyonte George turn the corner? This is the other question that could fundamentally change the medium-term future of the club.
• Will John Collins’ bounceback season (nearly 18 a game on 53-38-91 shooting) last long enough that it changes his market value… or even that the Jazz start to think differently about his long-term fit? (Similarly, will Jordan Clarkson bounce back at some point from his least efficient season ever?)
• Can a G League infuse Cody Williams with the confidence to earn his way back to rotation minutes?
• Will one of Brice Sensabaugh (16.1 minutes per game) or Johnny Juzang (15.8) lay claim to a bigger chunk of the wing minutes?
• When will Kyle Filipowski be healthy enough to continue his precocious rookie season? Will Isaiah Collier’s shooting improve?

Happy watching! It might be a rough month, but there is still plenty to monitor that is long-term relevant.

Telling or interesting words from Jazz people

“He knows where his shots are coming from, and you see him working on that type of shot every day. I think he’s doing an awesome job of getting different kinds of looks. But also, we want him to be John. He’s a tough guy to guard.”

-Markkanen, on Collins

Collins’ solid season deserves more than a passing mention, and at some point somebody here at SCH will deep-dive John and his wildly improved second Jazz season. But Lauri is right: Collins is a uniquely versatile threat.

Play type tracking estimates that Collins gets 1.33 points out of the average possession where he ends the play as a P&R roller. These stats are noisy and subject to all kinds of definitional problems, but even if that’s just kind of directional, that’s very impressive.

What’s more impressive is the versatility that his teammate hints at. There aren’t too many big men who have Collins’ volume of buckets as a roll man AND have drained 20 or more threes. And almost all the players on that crossover list are literal All-Stars (KAT, Vooch, Sabonis, etc.) or soon-to-be All-Stars (Wemby).

When the Jazz acquired him (for virtually nothing, as a reminder), the idea was that someone who can succeed in pick-and-roll, pick-and-pop, as a spot-up threat, off cuts and bullying smaller defenders would unlock a lot of options on how to play. The proof of concept wasn’t always there in John’s first Jazz season, but now he’s hitting shot at a 53-38-91 clip. And the Markkanen-Collins-Walker Kessler trio that seemed like an ill fit last season is now +12.6 per 100 in a growing sample of 78 minutes.

Stats that tell the story of the week

8

The Spurs had just five offensive rebounds all night on Tuesday.. until the fourth quarter. That’s where eight of their 13 O-boards came from, and they went from losing the second points battle 16-0 to winning it in the final frame, 8-5. That’s not the only reason Utah lost, but it had a big part in it.

33

Denver’s 33 fast break points were the sixth highest in the NBA this season. Teams are 7-1 this season when they score at least 32 in transition.

18%

That was the collective 3-point shooting percentage of the Jazz’s starting five on Saturday night: 2/11 for Markkanen, 1/5 for Collins and Sexton, 0/2 for George. Overall, it was their 3rd worst outside shooting night at 23%, and unsurprisingly they are 0-7 when shooting 30% or worse from deep (and 1-12 when shooting under 38%).

64.0

The Jazz are one of just two WC teams (with Denver) to have not held an opponent under 100 yet, but their games against Dallas and L.A. featured some of their best defensive quarters of the year. Their second-quarter DRtg against the Mavs was 64.0, their best single quarter of the year. And both of their weekend games were among their six best defensive performances overall.

50%

Until his 2-for-11 shooting on the weekend back-to-back, Collin Sexton had enjoyed a 12-game stretch where he was hitting literally half of his 3-point attempts. After a weird opening stretch where he got stuck in single digits as often as he broke 20 through the first half dozen games, Sexton is averaging 18.4 over his last 14 games, right in line with his head-turning 2023-24 campaign (18.7 last year).

Dissecting a Jazz scoring play from the week

It feels like Markkanen is putting the ball on the deck more over the last couple of weeks. The numbers don’t really shout it: he’s up only mildly from 4.9 shot attempts after dribbling to 6.3 over his last six games. But anecdotally, it just feels like it’s been more of a focal point — perhaps because he’s shooting 33% from outside over this six games, compared to 46% before then.

Here’s a play that was undoubtedly drawn up to give Markkanen a couple of options based on his reads, but the way it played out, it gave him the chance to throw down one of his 17 dunks.

This is essentially just a pindown into high horns for Lauri, but with enough fluff that the Finnish forward already has an advantage when he catches. 

Drew Eubanks comes up like this is going to be a simple sideline P&R (for Collier or Johnny Juzang, because of the twist/dribble-pitch action at the top), and at this point Markkanen is the weak corner spacer. Then Markkanen comes in to set a flare screen, which freezes his defender for the half second he needs to have an advantage as he heads into the pindown.

At this point, PJ Washington looks like he fully expects a switch that isn’t given. My guess is that the Mavs probably have different switch/show rules in their game plan based on whether it’s an off-ball or on-ball screen, so Spencer Dinwiddie isn’t worried about switching out until too late. This is likely the moment where Markkanen could have made a read and pulled up into a three. After all, he’s got a good six feet of space on the catch. But he also has momentum going to his right, and a defender he can likely beat out in space. He also has the pass to Juzang if he gets trapped.

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

Another quiet week for Game Balls, but here were high performers from Utah’s four games.

Strong in defeat:

• Jazz 115, Spurs 128: Keyonte George. George shot 8-for-13 in the first and third quarter, 1-for-3 in the second and fourth. He’s still a pretty easy pick for this, though, after an electric 15-point opening and team-leading figures of 26 points and seven assists. The most serious competitor here was Collins, with 20 and 13 boards, and Sensabaugh had a nice second-quarter burst (16) but didn’t score outside that. Sexton did Sexton things, also finished with 20.
• Jazz 103, Nuggets 122: Collin Sexton. This looked like it was destined to be George’s again after a 3-for-3 start from deep, but then he shot 30% for the rest of the contest. Efficiency matters to me, so the fact that of Utah’s two high scorers, Sexton had 26-and-4 on 16 shots and Key had 23-and-4 on 23 shots was kind of the tiebreaker to me. You could actually make a decent case for Kessler (16 and 12 to go with an impressive five assists) or even seldom-used Micah Potter who pulled down 16 boards in 31 minutes.
• Jazz 94, Mavs 106: Walker Kessler. Kessler didn’t just tie a season-high; it had actually been over a calendar year since he had put up 18 or more, and now he’s done it twice in a month. But this was more about his all-around impact, with 10 boards, 5 blocks, 3 steals and a bunch of really solid defensive plays. Markkanen was the other option here, after taking the hard route to 19 points (7-for-20 shooting). Like Lauri, all of Utah’s big minute guys shot with middling efficiency. In a game where Hardy said the Jazz “defended well enough to win” but didn’t make shots, I’m giving it to the one guy who did both.
• Jazz 104, Lakers 105: John Collins. We could give this to Sexton after he made the would-be game-winner only to have it waved off because his own coach called a timeout — great defense by Hardy. (In all seriousness, Sexton had his head down going toward the sideline when Hardy first signaled, so I get why he called it. Also, the two Lakers in the paint stopped guarding after the whistle, so it’s no sure thing Sexton gets/makes that same shot if play hadn’t stopped.) Instead, I’m recognizing Collins, who at this point is so consistent it’s easy to look right past an efficient 21-9-3 night. Markkanen was good after some early struggles.

Looking ahead to the next seven nights of action

After wrapping up a 5-game homestand, just one of the next nine games will take place inside Delta Center — and none this week.

• Tuesday, December 3: Jazz at Thunder. The Jazz’s In-Season tournament finale won’t matter for them, but an OKC win could still get them the Group B spot (if the Spurs lose) *or* the wild card spot (if the Thunder win by enough points to stay ahead of the Mavs and/or Blazers). The Thunder have won four straight after a little 4-4 malaise, but Houston halted that streak on Sunday. Shai Gilgeous-Alexander is averaging, oh, just 34, 6 and 7 over this 4-1 stretch. OKC finally has Isaiah Hartenstein healthy, and Jalen Williams is averaging career highs across the board.
• Friday, December 6: Jazz at Blazers. The Blazers have been surprisingly plucky at 5-5 since a 3-8 start, and they’re kind of doing it committee-style. Anfernee Simons and DeAndre Ayton are actually doing less than last year, while Shaedon Sharpe and Jerami Grant are doing roughly the same but with less efficiency. Deni Avdija is good and gives them more ways to construct rotations, but he’s not playing like a world-beater either (11ppg, below average efficiency). Mostly they just generate extra points through effort: their top-5 in offensive rebounding and opponent turnovers.
• Sunday, December 8: Jazz at Kings. This is already the third meeting between and the Jazz and Kings, but the last one has a bit of asterisk since Domantas Sabonis and DeMar DeRozan both missed it. Those two plus De’Aaron Fox combine to average 70 points, but the Kings have missed at least one of them in five games. They’re now 1-6 in their last seven after dropping a close one at home, and they’re hoping the addition of former Jazz fan fav Jae Crowder will help them manage the injury woes and turn around the funk.

Random stuff from the Jazz community

Since it feels pretty obvious where this season is headed, there’s no reason not to start the pick-watch graphics early.

The Jazz own three picks in the upcoming draft, two of which could be lotto selections.

I’m not sure at what point these will become a more regular part of the SC7… I like carving out space for X-and-O dissections too, but obviously fans will have one eye on pick position throughout the season.

It’s about to get even tougher for the 4-16 Jazz… let’s see how this goes!