With players coming and going, the Jazz have barely had a chance to integrate the group they’ve put together over the last eight months. (Melissa Majchrzak via espn.com)
Tracking the 2019-20 Utah Jazz is a complex exercise because of the varied versions of the club that have taken the court.
That’s not a figurative or metaphysical statement either, like Oh, let’s see which team shows up tonight. Literally, actually, the composition of the team’s active core has changed multiple times since the season started. And if we’re honest about it, the current version of the team — and the one that will matter going forward — has really only been at it for under a month.
Perhaps that’s why Rudy Gobert, the team’s All-NBA center, does not seem all that worried despite separate losing streaks of five and four games, the latter of which the Jazz halted on Friday night with a 10-point home win over Washington.
“People overreact to losing and winning. The most important thing is to keep getting better,” Gobert said afterward. “It’s all about where we’re going to be when the playoffs come.”
Looking at an NBA team’s performance in a vacuum is always an exercise fraught with problems. Jazz fans know as well as anybody that things like opponent quality and travel-heavy stretches can color raw outcomes in a way that makes a team look better or worse than they are. That’s why a win or a loss isn’t always the best barometer for where a team is.
“Sometimes you win a game you didn’t deserve to win,” Gobert added, “and sometimes you lose a game you deserved to win.”
There has undoubtedly been some frustration during the 4-8 stretch that preceded Utah’s Friday night win. But Gobert and his teammates sound far more concerned about restoring the winning habits that propelled them into the No. 2 seed as recently as late January, as opposed to obsessing over results. Perhaps that’s because they realize that this team has fielded at least four different versions of itself, and that the current iteration is just getting started.
After injuries slowed down and ultimately sidelined Mike Conley, the Jazz completely reorganized the back half of their rotation, including by acquiring a new bench scorer who is just now learning to play with Conley. Conley was pronounced healthy enough to resume his intended role and come off a minutes limit just 11 games ago. And that means that Utah has had just under a month with this newest version — with Conley, the newly arrived Jordan Clarkson and the rest of the pieces in their intended place.
Because of all of that, comparing a game outcome or a particular player performance in, say, November to one in February is a bit complicated. We still do it though, with varying levels of awareness about the analytical landmines involved. But the Jazz players understand that this is a team still adjusting to a shifting reality.
“We’ve just got to keep working, keep watching film, and keep finding our identity back,” Gobert said.
Here are the four broad versions of the Utah Jazz we’ve seen, along with some of the performance themes, issues and opponent context each one has faced.
Fifteen games in, the new-look Jazz appeared on their way to being really good.
They had faced a pretty average opponent slate, but their main stars looked like they had taken major leaps. Mitchell found a blend of aggression and efficiency that had mostly eluded him in previous seasons, and Gobert was simply dominating. Both were in the top 10 of FiveThirtyEight’s new RAPTOR Wins Above Replacement metric, prompting missives from this writer about just how special both of them looked.
Bojan Bogdanovic had already established himself as Utah’s secondary scoring threat, with 21 points per game over those first 15 contests, including 45% from deep and a memorable game-winner against the now 51-8 Bucks.
Conley looked uncomfortable in his first few times out with the Jazz, but his struggles were a bit exaggerated. Really, outside of a shaky first four games (8 points per game, .308 True Shooting in his first week as a Jazz man), he settled in quite nicely. He’d average 19-4-4 on .573 True Shooting over the next 11 games, essentially giving the Jazz the Memphis-era Conley they thought they were getting when they acquired him for picks, a prospect and expiring veterans last summer.
Meanwhile, Ingles had a hard time adjusting to life on the bench (6.6 points per game during this stretch, with sub-30% shooting from the perimeter and just 13.3% usage). And the second unit struggled overall; Ed Davis broke his leg, and both the acquisition of Jeff Green (-4.1 NetRtg) and repurposing of Georges Niang as a wing (-20.9) were already looking ominous.
Ingles’ struggles and an underperforming bench notwithstanding, Utah looked solid. They appeared to have two superstars and two borderline stars playing at a very high level. Not for long, though…
After that nice 11-game stretch we talked about above, the bottom suddenly fell out for Conley — a 2-for-9 shooting night was followed by 2-for-10, then 2-for-8, 3-for-13. Connected folks have since shared whispers that would explain Conley’s sudden and sharp decline, and in retrospect it seems a little obvious: this is where he reaggravated his leg after some old injuries from his Memphis days.
Conley tried to play through the struggles, but ultimately need some time off. After sitting for five games, he attempted a hasty return in mid December, but he was ruled out partway through a home win over Orlando. He wouldn’t play again until late January.
So this stretch is ultimately defined by the Jazz playing with a banged-up and less efficient Conley, and then learning to deal with not having him at all. And that probably would have been fine except that the bench was still really in disarray.
During this stretch, Utah was still beating teams — despite a harder than average schedule — during the minutes when starters like Gobert (+4.4), Bogdanovic (+3.9) and Royce O’Neale (+6.9) were on the court. When any of those three sat, Utah bled points to the tune of a double-digit negative Net Rating.
Ingles was promoted to the starting lineup in Conley’s absence, and got his groove back with 12.5 points and .647 TS%. But that left the already shaky bench unit without a real ball mover. The Jazz solved for this by shifting a chunk of Mitchell’s minutes each half to play with the bench platoon, and that move came at a cost. Those minutes with a struggling second unit are part of what led to Mitchell’s efficiency and differential both slipping.
Bottom line is that the Conley-free, pre-Clarkson Jazz were not very good. The chinks in the armor were already showing on the defensive end (19th in the league over these 15 games), and they just clearly needed more help.
Good news: help was the on the way.
With Conley still out and the bench letting teams back into too many games, Utah clearly needed to try something different. Enter Clarkson.
It’s hard to overstate just how much dynamism Clarkson introduced into Utah’s bench offense from day one. From his second Jazz game on, his average with the new ballclub never dipped below 13.4 points per game. Historically regarded as something of a freestyler with a bad shot chart, Clarkson worked on cleaning up his shot selection, eliminating midrange shots almost entirely in favor of threes and shots in the paint.
Clarkson wasn’t the only change made right before Christmas. Utah finally moved on from Green and shifted Niang back to his natural position at power forward. They also moved away from Ed Davis — back from injury, but struggling to the tune of 1.2 ppg and 39% shooting — as the backup center and instead promoted Tony Bradley to the role. Bradley is still raw and doesn’t always move particularly well, but he is a bit more of a traditional rim-finishing big man, important to a team that runs a lot of pick-and-roll.
And, with less pressure on Mitchell to produce so much of the offense for 48 minutes, he was able to recapture some of his efficiency. He shot 38% from three over this span, and honestly, this stretch probably solidified his selection as a first-time All-Star. Gobert was also still wrecking worlds.
The cumulative effect of these changes — and a softer patch of schedule — was astounding, especially on offense. Utah was the top offense in the league over this span, and had the same Net Rating even though the defense (11th) was still flailing.
It’s empirical fact, though, that this was also Utah’s most cakewalky period of the season, by a wide margin. In fact, Utah was actually 13-1 against an average opponent of .414 until they ran into Dallas, San Antonio, Houston and Denver in the last four games of this stretch, and went 1-3. In other words, the success of this stretch mostly had to do with feasting on the softest stretch of schedule of the entire season.
The only problem: Ingles’ seemingly perennial winter slump started during this period as well. Since January 16, Joe is shooting just 37% from the field and 28% from three. The dip started before Conley’s return and even before the schedule got too hairy. Joe just happens to his these slumps, usually around the same part of the year.
Conley came back at the very end of this stretch, and the Jazz went 4-2 with him even though he made just three of his first 21 triples. He was still on a minutes limit at this point, gradually working his way from 15-17 minutes up to the low 20s. He was also mostly playing with the second unit and mostly playing off ball, not fully back to his usual minutes or role.
Until…
February has been a tumultuous month for the Jazz, which is the reason why we started this whole discussion with a quote from Gobert about the Jazz needing to “find [their] identity back.”
Conley graduated from the minutes limitation and was restored to his role of offensive gear-turner on February 1, just in time for Utah’s toughest extended patch of schedule yet. Yet Conley’s return to the starting role were broadly speaking, fine. He hasn’t been quite as good as he was during that November surge, but he has averaged 17-5-5 (rounded) since being restored as the starter, on efficiency (.576 TS%) that would eclipse all but his very best season.
That’s not to say Conley doesn’t need to play better — he does, especially on defense, which we’ll cover momentarily. But the Conley scapegoat campaign is pretty out of hand when you consider that he has looked pretty damn close to Memphis Mike for two extended stretches now when he was starting and healthy. (He did miss three of these 11 games for rest and injury management.)
But Mike’s return required quite a bit of shuffling and adjusting to one another. Remember, the retooled, Clarkson-led bench wasn’t a thing before Conley’s reinstatement, so in a lot of ways everybody has had to start over at figuring out how to coexist defensively, allocate possessions as ball handler, and just generally play basketball with a squad that is now teeming with ball handling guards and is light on big men.
All of that has the Jazz a bit flustered. Ingles — already in a slump since mid January — has had a hard time recapturing his rhythm. Bogdanovic and O’Neale, both 40%-plus shooters from deep, shot in the mid-30s in February, and had stretches in there where it was even worse. Gobert’s not seeing the ball enough — his usage was down to 13.9% in February.
But the real issues are on the other end, where Utah somehow ended February as the fifth worst defense in the league for the month. That is perplexing and unconscionable for this team to be that bad. Everybody has contributed to the defensive funk, too. Even Gobert had a baffling 5-possession run against Phoenix, which I shared on social media precisely because of how out-of-character it is for the typically dominant defensive anchor. (Of course, many tweeps around the league missed the point and used my tweet/clip as a way to dismiss the 99.9% of the time when Gobert is mind-blowingly good on defense — sorry about that, big fella. That wasn’t at all the point of sharing that.)
Bottom line is that the Jazz haven’t been themselves recently. But they also have played just eight games with a fully deployed Conley and the new-look bench. The group as presently constituted is still learning each other.
That’s not to say their struggles aren’t real, or that the issues behind their 5-8 funk don’t need to be fixed. If Utah doesn’t remember and return to its defensive identity, it’s going to be a pretty disappointing spring for the club and its fans.
This version of the Jazz is still rather new and has mostly faced good competition. But this is the version of the Jazz that matters going forward. This is the version they’ll take into the postseason, where they had hoped to join the legitimate contender class after a splashy offseason. This group needs to come together fast if it’s going to have any shot at all of being relevant in May.
A few overarching observations after looking at the season this way:
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