Salt City Seven: Midpoint Macro, Collier Creating & More

Collier has been showcasing his playmaking skills of late (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 exploration of a big-picture topic

This week’s edition is coming at you a little late, so we might as well lump the Jazz-Pels sequel game into the mix so we can officially ruminate on a half season in the books.

The Jazz have played 41 of their games, and stand at 10-31. That means they’re on a 20-win pace, which as of today is good enough to take the best possible odds of a top-4 pick (52.1%) into the lottery drawing room. (The worst three teams share equal odds at a top 4 pick, and Utah’s currently third from the bottom.)

But as I’ve said after each of Utah’s 10 wins, this season can’t and won’t be exclusively about lottery odds. The Jazz have also given just over half of their minutes (5,002, to be exact) to their eight 23-and-under players, despite the fact that one of those eight injured himself minutes into the third game of the season. And those young players have also garnered a ton of late-game experience, because Utah has played in 19 games that were decided by seven points or less, tied for 10th most in the league.

Their winning percentage in those games is .211, the worst in the league. That’s actually a good stat for those in the Venn diagram of fans who want both a) losses and b) developmental moments for young guys. Utah is keeping games close enough to create meaningful reps, while also increasing their likelihood of drafting a franchise-changer.

They’ve played eight games that were decided by a 1-possession margin, and only Denver and Minnesota have more such games in the West.

Somehow they’ve also maintained the value of their veteran corps. John Collins in particular is having a bounce-back season and Collin Sexton is having his best outside shooting year ever. Jordan Clarkson has gotten his efficiency back to career norms after a dip in 2023-24.

Lauri Markkanen’s production has dipped slightly while they encourage him to be more aggressive about shot-hunting, which is the right way to approach an untradable star during a rebuilding season. He’s already one of the game’s very best off-ball scorers, so might as well experiment with other types of scoring while the stakes are low. Even in a year with a lot of experimentation, his TS% is still above average, he’s still 23rd in EPM and he’s still averaging 23 points per 75 possessions. All of that hints to the fact that he’s still good enough to be considered a central piece. Twenty-nine other teams would love to have him, but Utah’s asking price understandably remains sky-high. (He can’t be traded until the offseason anyway.) 

All of this is to say that the Jazz are broadly getting out of this now half-completed season about what they probably set out to accomplish.

The second half portends much of the same on all these fronts. If anything, it could get even tougher from a results standpoint, as most expect Utah to be open to offers as the trade deadline nears. Utah doesn’t have any real “gimme” games left until after the trade deadline, at which point they might be even more youth-focused.

Even if nobody in this group wins a single other game against the rest of the league, there are 35 wins left to be distributed based on head-to-head results.

In other words, a late-season surge might not be coming. But the Jazz will continue to collect data points that will help them decide which of their players could help a more competitive version of the Jazz in the hopefully-not-too-distant future.

Telling or interesting words from Jazz people

“Ryan (Smith) from the very beginning said, ‘Number one, we hired you for you. You don’t have to act one second older than you are. You don’t have act like anybody else…’ That was very freeing, because I’ve never felt for one second like I can’t be me, dress like me, talk like me, think like me. And that’s allowed me to take that mindset to our team.”

-Will Hardy

The feature on Hardy that dropped this month on Jazz+ is quite good, and features that quote and several others about the freedom the young coach was given to put his stamp on a rebuilding team.

Stats that tell the story of the week

0

Here’s a wild stat to say after game 41: the Jazz just played three straight games with starting lineups that had never played a minute together to that point in the season. Not that they hadn’t started together — they’d never shared the court at all. 

57

Utah’s bench contributed 57 points against Charlotte, and it was only the 10th time this season a team had five bench players score eight or more.

35-8

Losing the second points battle by 27 makes it pretty hard to win. The Pels’ 35 such points on Friday were an NBA season high, and also the biggest margin on second-chance points in a game this season.

63

The Jazz took much better care of the glass in Part Deux of their Big Easy Adventure, with a 63-45 rebounding advantage and a +10 on second chance points. Teams with 60-plus rebounds are 15-4 this season, but Utah gets one of those rare losses because of how ineffably cold they got in the fourth quarter: it was a 27% shooting quarter overall. The same team that made nine straight first-quarter shots had a nearly 11-minute span in the 4th and OT where the shooting was 3-for-20.

32

Isaiah Collier’s 32-assist week made him the first Jazz rookie ever to post three consecutive double-digit assist games. The last rookie to have such a streak was Josh Giddey three seasons ago, and before than it was Ja Morant in 2019-20. The longest rookie streak of 10-plus assists this century was Ben Simmons’ six in 2017-18.

Dissecting a Jazz scoring play from the week

Instead of a lengthy and nerdy dissection, here’s a quick look at a couple of trends from this week that I thought were fun.

First, in these games without Markkanen, the Jazz still have to teach their guys how to run certain stuff that’s going to matter to them when their top offensive threat is back. So it was kind of interesting to watch them run some of Lauri’s pet actions for other guys — like the wide sideline pindowns they run for him several times a quarter.

The cool this about this action is that it actually lets guys come off and make a read. So when, say, Cody Williams sees his defender jump to the high side, he can make the decision to stop in the seam instead of completing the cut. Smart. Then, when the switcher jumps out at him, he can attack that by putting the ball on the deck and forcing help defenders to react.

The other two are both staggered screens that they often run for Markkanen, and depending on the reaction of the defenders, the Finnish forward might stop for a shot, cut in between the two screeners, come all the way to the ball, set a screen himself, etc. On these, Kyle Filipowski and then Brice Sensabaugh run off both screens to create an advantage. I even saw them run is for newcomer Elijah Harkless in the second Jazz-Pels game.

And while we’re on Sensabaugh, can we just appreciate some of his recent Eurostep creativity?

Sensabaugh slipped to the late first round in 2023 because people weren’t sure his scoring ability would translate. So far it is, and he’s not a double-figure scorer with 46-40-94 shooting splits. He’s been fun to watch lately.

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

Even by including Monday’s game in what was otherwise a light week, this slate of games did not require the services of the Game Ball department. But here are some consolation prizes…

Strong in defeat:

• Jazz 112, Hornets 117: Brice Sensabaugh. Collier’s double-double might have been a bigger story, but I think this comes down to Keyonte George and Brice. George had 26-4-6 and took care of the ball pretty well on the way to having the best +/- of the starters. Sensabaugh’s 19-4-4 included scoring 12 (and assisting two more) of the Jazz’s points during a 19-2 run they used to get back in the game early. I’ll go Sensabaugh here only because George’s late decision-making got a little hero-bally. He did put the Jazz up 105-102, but then the Pels went on a 15-4 run when the Jazz offense devolved into a lot of dribbling and not much passing.
• Jazz 123, Pelicans 136: Drew Eubanks. Sexton (24-4-5 and lived at the line) and George (26-4-3 and no turnovers) will make the headlines, but Eubanks was the first name Hardy mentioned after the game, and I thought really important here. Beyond the 17 points, 7 rebounds and 4 blocks, he just kind of made the night uncomfortable for Zion Williamson. The 2-time All-Star did get the last laugh, but Eubanks had him frustrated for much of the game. The aforementioned guards are, in some order, runners-up, but props to Collier for again setting a new career high in assists: 11, one game after dishing 10.
• Jazz 119, Pelicans 123: Isaiah Collier. Walker Kessler gets criminally underrepresented in these things because he’s so damn steady. In this one, he was the precise reason the Jazz built their big lead, and even when they were faltering late, Kessler kept buying tem extra chances. But look, part of the exercise here is to recognize the type of historic stuff that we’ll remember about a game a month or two later. And Collier joining Deron Williams and Trey Burke as the only rookies in franchise history to have 20-point, 10-assist games, qualifies. Ultimately Kessler was more impactful, but it just seems wrong to give Collier nothing during his 32-assist week. George had 23-4-7, but if you go with one of the guards (both of whom struggled late) it almost has to be Collier’s 20-3-11.

Looking ahead to the next seven nights of action

This would have been a 4-game week, but the Jazz got spared a back-to-back when their home game against the Wizards got moved to mid-March as the NBA shuffled its calendar around after the L.A. fires.

But that leaves three pretty tough games:

• Wednesday, January 22: Jazz @ Thunder. Since Cody Williams was with the Stars on December 3, this had a chance to be his first opportunity to play in an NBA game against brother Jalen, a 20-ppg scorer and a fringe All-Star candidate. But alas, he rolled an ankle on Monday and now we’ll have to see if he does get to play in this one. The Thunder are runaways for the #1 seed in the West behind the NBA’s top scorer, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander. The Jazz will get them without Isaiah Hartenstein, but honestly OKC is pretty formidable. They are the league’s top defense by more than four full points, and they turn teams over a bunch — something the Jazz, umm, already struggle with.
• Saturday, January 25: Jazz @ Grizzlies. The Jazz would have gotten a home game against the lowly Wiz to cleanse their palate before facing Memphis, but that game got moved to March as the NBA shuffled some dates around. Now it’s straight from the #1 team in the West to visit #3. Morant did miss some games recently, but played in Memphis’ close win over Minnesota on MLK Day, the Grizzlies’ third straight victory. The Grizzlies had an uneven 8-7 start, but are 20-8 since.

Random stuff from the Jazz community

I had a fun little graphic prepared for brothers in head-to-head matchups, but now that Cody and Jalen Williams are unlikely to face off on Tuesday, let’s go here instead:

Utah’s had to get creative about opening lineups.

We’ll see what five guys trot out to start Jazz-Thunder on Wednesday!

Exactly 41 down, 41 to go…