Analytics

What’s Behind Gordon Hayward’s Inconsistency?

From the moment he entered the basketball community’s collective consciousness, Gordon Hayward has always inspired mixed reviews.  Coming out of Butler following a magical run to the NCAA title game, optimistic scouts found...

All-Star Break Jazz Stat Party!

It’s All-Star time, folks!  With just over half the season in the books, players will get a well-deserved break from the grind while the league’s elite head to New Orleans.  It’s sure to be a weekend full of dunks,...

The Development of Alec Burks

Now in his 3rd year, where has Alec Burks improved since coming into the...

Does Offensive Rebounding Hurt Transition Defense?

Uh oh, fellow basketball math nerds: we might have overcorrected. The analytics movement has given us so many new ways to see and understand NBA basketball. I myself am an ardent subscriber, and I think we’re just starting to...

Can Derrick Favors and Enes Kanter Work Together?

  Building and maintaining a competitive NBA roster from year to year is a complex task. More often than most GM’s around the league would prefer, crises arise in some area of this process. These situations can come up...

Utah’s Evolving Pick and Roll Defense

It almost goes without saying, but things have certainly stabilized to a high degree in Jazzland after an extremely rocky beginning to the season.  It kind of feels like ages ago that the doomsday drums were beating loudly as...

Jazz Individual Shot Selection Stats

A few weeks ago, with the Jazz still in the hunt for the title of WOAT (Worst Offense of All Time), we took a look at a fundamental question: were Utah’s plethora of offensive issues the cause of poor systems, poor execution,...

SportVU and the Jazz

While the general public would likely associate the name “Moneyball” with the 2011 film starring Brad Pitt, those who are analytically inclined would think of something entirely different. Spawned near the turn of the...

Checking the Metronome

The new era of Jazz basketball is a quarter-season old following Utah’s Wednesday night loss to the league’s best team, so any attempt to discern the identity of this squad is probably a bit premature. Still, I can...

Utah’s Offensive Evolution

As part of my debut for Salt City Hoops last month, I wrote a two-part series on legendary Jazz coach Jerry Sloan and his impact on both the team and the league as a whole.  Much of part two delved into some of the systematical...