Exum’s Reduced Role Boils Down to Defense, But Snyder Still Believes

On Friday night, Exum looked on from his spot on the sideline. (Game still)

On Wednesday evening, a little over an hour before his Utah Jazz would tip off against the Brooklyn Nets, head coach Quin Snyder made it clear that he’s still committed to Dante Exum’s development. 

“The way for him to keep getting better is just to keep competing,” Snyder said. “Take his shots when he’s open, attack, defend — and make mistakes.”

The fifth-year coach — whose Jazz tenure coincides exactly with Exum’s — continued on, explaining why he’s willing to endure some errors by the 23-year-old. “There are certain experiences you have to play to have… When you’re out there, you have a chance to get better and learn more about yourself. He’s in a good place, and I just want to see him keep working.”

Yet in the hours immediately after he offered those insights about the value of learning through experience and mistakes, Snyder appeared less than patient with his reserve guard’s mistakes. Exum played three stints in Brooklyn, and got a quick hook each time, logging just 1:44, 2:25 and 2:44 before being called back to the bench. Then, in Friday’s game against Charlotte, Exum didn’t get off the pine at all, logging his first DNP-CD¹ of the season.

So is Snyder speaking out both sides of his mouth, preaching about patience but then holding Exum to a harsher standard than others?

In a word: no.

Exum is legitimately struggling right now. And he knows it. For example, that same evening he spoke with Salt City Hoops and offered some unsolicited self-criticism regarding his ability to finish in the lane.

“I just need to be more comfortable and realize I’m ahead of guys and just focus on finishing the shot,” Exum said. “Just slow down, that’s the biggest thing for me.

He’s currently converting on one of the lowest percentages in the league in non-garbage time rim attempts, as well as corner threes. His turnover percentage has also nearly doubled from his first 14 games (10.3%) to the last nine (23.3%). 

And yet those likely aren’t the reasons why Snyder has been using Exum less. Fellow point guards Ricky Rubio and Raul Neto also have high turnover percentages (19.4% and 25.3%, respectively), and Snyder has been emphatic throughout the season that missed shots aren’t an accurate barometer of whether a player is playing the right way. Snyder’s about process, not outcomes, so shooting percentages aren’t the reason Exum got the quick hook against Brooklyn and then found himself bolted to the bench on Friday evening.

In fact, when you’re trying to find the reasons behind Snyder yanking a player earlier than usual, the answers typically aren’t found at the offensive end of the court at all. 

Exum’s a rangy and active defender whose default mode is to try to impact the play defensively. Those are great traits to have, but sometimes it makes him a bit jumpy when the Jazz’s defensive approach on a given play might require him to stay home. While most fans assume that his misfires on offense led to Exum’s short leash, Snyder it not usually going to pull a guy purely based on outcomes. A review of the film from Brooklyn reveals that, in fact, there were defensive mistakes that led to Exum being subbed out. Quite simply, he was too often out of scheme on defense.

Take this play. Exum decides to help from the top as D’Angelo Russell snakes around the screen from the opposite side. That’s not his assigned help here, and while he does get back out to challenge the shot², this is still a bit of a freestyle by Dante.

On the ensuing play, Exum again sagged off his man outside the 3-point line, though it didn’t effect the play as Jared Dudley kept the ball on the opposite elbow and ultimately missed a jumper. 

But on the next trip down, Exum had trouble executing a couple of switches.

Lately, the Jazz prefer to switch most wing-to-wing screening action out front, but they try to fight through picks involving a perimeter player and a big man. As this clip starts, Exum is late in recognizing a planned switch with Royce O’Neale, so he hurries to catch up with DeMarre Carroll. Right as he does, Carroll uses another screen, this time involving a big. Exum decides to switch, even though Jae Crowder is clearly trying to let him through to stay with his man, which is the usual scheme for a big-to-wing screen. When he realizes Exum has decided to stay with the big, Jae lunges to recover and almost loses his man, but O’Neale comes in and makes a nice deflection to save the play.

These are subtle things, but when teammates expect a player to react to a screen one way and he does something different, the whole defense is off balance. 

Exum returned in second quarter, and it was obvious that he was trying to defend better. He hounded Russell into a bad floater, and he got back in transition to pressure Shabazz Napier’s fastbreak layup attempt. But his aggression on this second stint didn’t always work in Utah’s favor. Watch him randomly leave his guy on the 3-point line to dart 20 feet when he has no chance of arriving in time to help.

His improvisation here was unnecessary and threw the rest of the team into what I call “oh crap” mode³, although the Nets mercifully missed the resulting shot.

These are mostly sins of commission, mistakes he’s making by being aggressive and over-helping. As mistakes go, they’re the kind of mistakes you’d rather see a player make, as opposed to not trying hard enough. But they’re still mistakes. And defenses break down when one guy freestyles in a way his teammates aren’t expecting.

“You can have four guys that are on the same page and if one guy’s not, you have a breakdown,” Snyder explained, speaking generally about Utah’s defensive shortcomings⁴. “For us, our execution is something we want to see improve. A lot of that is focus and practice.”

Of course, Exum also committed the three quick turnovers during that second stint, and that probably didn’t help his case. 

Snyder and even GM Dennis Lindsey have frequently said that they’re OK with the right kinds of turnovers, and there are certainly Jazz players who have been guilty of worse turnovers lately than any of these three. But three turnovers by one player within about a 90-second span is problematic. And to be honest, Exum might have caught the brunt of Snyder’s frustration with the team’s broader imprecision here, as these three miscues were the club’s eighth, ninth and eleventh⁵ turnovers inside the game’s first 18 minutes. Right after these three, Snyder called Exum out of the game, and the latter was visibly frustrated with himself as he went to the bench.

He appeared briefly in the fourth quarter, and this time played things much safer. He didn’t turn the ball over or commit any glaring defensive mistakes, and even set up a Royce O’Neale three for his lone assist of the night. But at that point, he was clearly in just to buy Donovan Mitchell a quick rest. So after 2:44 of play, he checked out and Mitchell went to work, scoring 12 in the game’s final minutes to engineer the Jazz’s 19-7 run and secure the come-from-behind win.

But back to the main point here: from looking back at his play in Brooklyn, it becomes pretty clear that it was Exum’s play on the defensive end that led to his short night. Exum has the tools to be an excellent individual defender, but coaches tend to prefer playing guys who they can trust to adhere to the team’s defensive plan for a particular game. And especially in Charlotte, where Utah had a very specific game plan for dealing with elite scorer Kemba Walker, playing guys who would make the right team defensive play every time was important.

Exum’s still learning how to do that an NBA speed, and these are mistakes he’ll learn from. In that sense, he reminds me of another Jazz player: reigning Defensive Player of the Year Rudy Gobert.

As a rookie, Gobert frequently found himself in the wrong places for the right reasons. The competitive and physically gifted rookie was so anxious to use his elite physical tools to help the team defensively that he’d occasionally do the wrong things or deviate from the team’s collective approach. Consequently, his coach often opted to rely on guys who would adhere to the game plan, leaving Gobert just 434 total minutes and some DNPs despite his obvious freakish abilities.

Does that last paragraph sound familiar? Gobert figured it out. So can Exum.

Over time, Gobert learned how to leverage his uniqueness within the team construct. A coaching change helped, but the Stifle Tower also improved significantly in terms of establishing an awareness of the unit’s defensive goals so he could unleash his length and instincts in a way that made the Jazz better. 

Exum, too, has unique physical gifts, aggressive defensive instincts, and a strong desire to help his team. There’s no reason he can’t follow in the footsteps of his largest teammate and transform himself into an indispensable part of the team’s defensive identity.

Dante will get more chances. He’s too talented not to. More to the point, he has a coach who is committed for the long haul, and wants the young Aussie to have experiences that will make him better.

“If you’re frustrated with something, you work on it,” Snyder said. “You work on it until you make it better.”