Jazz fans would rather see Gobert in #27 than in a sport coat. But a deeper squad might be better able to handle short-term injuries. (Melissa Majchrzak via ESPN.com)
The Jazz are going to be good. That much we have pretty well estbalished after their splashy offseason acquisitions.
But an underdiscussed element of the club’s roster-building success is the number of guys on the team with starting experience and multi-positional prowess. This gives them the flexibility to be, one could argue, the most injury-proof of the elite teams.
OK fine, let’s dial that back — injury-resistant. After all, we wouldn’t want to tempt the wrath of the whatever from high atop the thing1, since we’re talking about a team that has had more than its share of injury struggles over the last two or three seasons. But Utah’s versatile, deep roster really might be capable of papering over just about any key player’s short-term absence. Sports Illustrate will validate in the coming days that the Jazz have five players in the top 15% of the league: Mike Conley, Donovan Mitchell, Joe Ingles, Bojan Bogdanovic or Rudy Gobert. That means they can shift responsibilities around and still have enough firepower at the top of their roster if they have to play a game or two without any of those five:
Longer-term injuries will sting any team, but the Jazz should be able to hang through some of the minor dings that happen here and there over an NBA season. This also means they might have the luxury of selectively resting key contributors. Remember, 60% of the presumed closing lineup is over 30. A strategically planned night off could yield big returns later, and the rest of the club has the talent to survive a given player’s night off2.
Don’t believe me? Let’s walk through exactly what Utah’s rotation could look like if any of their five top guys had to miss a handful of games. Those might not be Utah’s five starters, but they’re the main dudes and the probable closers, and yet Utah should be able to construct a winning rotation even when one of them takes the night off.
The Jazz went 10-4 without starting point guard Ricky Rubio last season, and this year’s supporting cast is arguably better. Granted, part of the reason they survivied without the Spaniard is that most of the games Rubio missed came during a softer stretch of schedule. But they have shown they can slide guys around and get other people involved in creating, starting with Mitchell and Ingles.
Another complicating factor in those Rick-less games is that reserve guard Dante Exum was also unavailable for 12 of the 14 that Rubio missed. A healthy Exum should give Utah some options, and even if the beleaguered Aussie misses time again, Utah has emergency options in Emmanuel Mudiay and Nigel Williams-Goss.
In terms of how they’d adjust sans Conley, my guess is that they’d actually shift Mitchell to more minutes as the primary ball handler. That’s how Quin Snyder has dealt with point guard absences in the past, rather than promote someone up from the bench unit. In the past, Mitchell playing at point guard enabled him to score a ton, but the team didn’t always operate as efficiently. But with Bogdanovic joining Ingles in Utah’s rotation, the club can still keep a couple of creators around Mitchell at all times, which will help him deal with the pressure he sometimes saw when Rubio was in street clothes.
Shifting a bigger body into the starting/main group and moving Mitchell down will allow Utah to hang without relying too much on its deep bench guards. Still, it’s safe to say that Exum will be pretty important to Utah’s success on any nights that Conley takes off for rest or health reasons. He’ll undoubtedly see more minutes on those nights, even if the Jazz keep him as the relief option. Mudiay would see the court more in some of those scenarios, too.
So which big body crashes the core group on Conley’s nights off? My guess is Royce O’Neale, but Jeff Green is an option, too.
Conley has such a unique blend of competencies that the Jazz would feel his absences as much as maybe anybody other than Gobert. But that’s still a quality rotation right there, with two capable ball handlers flanking Mitchell. Bogey can create his own shot, too. The Jazz could win a lot of games with that group.
Playing without Mitchell would force the Jazz to find scoring elsewhere, but that’s partially why they acquired a pair of scorers coming of 19 to 21 ppg seasons (Conley and Bogdanovic).
In all, their strategy for coping without Mitchell for a night would probably look a lot like their strategy for getting by without Conley. The Ohio State product’s creation ability and scoring prowess could keep Utah afloat and then some.
If O’Neale slid into Mitchell’s spot with the other four main guys, you have a lineup with five plus defenders, and still with multiple creators. They’d of course miss Mitchell’s offensive dynamism, but a group of Conley, Ingles, O’Neale, Bogey and Gobert should produce really good outcomes on both ends of the court.
Once again, Exum would see his minutes spike in this scenario, but I think still leverage him as an attacker and facilitator in the second unit. That part of his role is sacrosanct, because I don’t think the Jazz want to find themselves relying too heavily on Mudiay to run the offense for long stretches4. He’ll certainly play, especially if Utah is down a guard, but they’ll be more comfortable with Exum as the bench creator, combined with some staggering of starters who can produce efficient offense.
So here’s where that leaves Utah if they have to play a game or two without Mitchell:
Again, they’d be better off with their leading scorer and young stud in the lineup, but that rotation could beat a lot of teams.
The new additions should give Ingles the luxury of being primarily a spot-up threat instead of directing the bulk of the bench offense behind Mitchell. That also means Utah would need less from a fill-in option if the 32-year-old5 should need a night off. That said, Ingles often tackles the toughest defensive assignment to start, so Utah would need to replace that AND his catch-and-shoot figures.
At the risk of sounding repetitive, this sounds like a job for Royce.
O’Neale narrowly outshot Ingles on catch-and-shoot threes last season (40.4% to Joe’s 39.9%), and he’s exactly who you’d want to have step in and guard the Paul George and Jimmy Butler types on a night when Ingles couldn’t go. So O’Neale is once again my pick for a short-term promotion if Ingles needed a night off.
The only problem is that giving Jingles’ defensive assignments over to Royce will keep the Baylor product from helping out on bigger forwards. O’Neale’s ability to guard bigger bodies is going to be a big key in terms of how Utah is able to run with Bogdanovic as the nominal power forward on offense, but if he is occupied with covering for Ingles on the wing, then suddenly Utah’s a little thinner defensive on the front line. Green’s minutes would likely be extended, and someone like Niang might need to be pressed into action. We’d probably also see more of Oni or another option who could help patrol the perimeter. With the guards healthy, those minutes would likely come at the expense of Mudiay.
That leave Utah with a starting/closing group that includes three creators, four good shooters, and a number of plus defenders. The bench unit here starts to feel a little more tentative, but Snyder could stagger through that.
Bogey’s role in the Jazz’s standard rotation is unique, because positionally he’s a bit of a chameleon — he’ll play a lot of stretch four, but isn’t always going to be the best option defensively against pure PFs. He’s also going to alternate between being a tertiary scorer in the starting group and creating more when lineups stagger. So if the 30-year-old combo forward needs to take a game or two off, Utah actually has to figure out how to replace him in multiple roles and positions.
Add all of that up and we’re actually going to vary from the standard answer of “slide Royce in there.” Without Bogdanovic, you need someone at that spot who is a truer forward.
People like to pretend that the 6-foot-8 Ingles in a smallball four, but he’s really not. Even when Utah goes to 4-out lineups around Gobert, pay attention to where the Jazz put Ingles defensively and the role he plays on offense. The reality is that he’s a lot closer spiritually to being a PG than a PF. Having Ingles and O’Neale at the forward spots can work in certain situations, but not as a staple. If you’re going to try to survive without Bogey for a night, this is probably where you need Green to play a bigger role.
Green has started more than half of his career games, and he has pretty much always played starter minutes6. He can hang with starters, and especially now that he has redefined himself as a stretchy big with average usage, his last two seasons have been his most efficient as a pro.
Sliding him into Bogey’s spot allows Ingles to keep his standard role and not be stretched into something he’s not, and it allows O’Neale to defend across multiple positions and not spend all 30-36 of his minutes guarding the likes of Anthony Davis, LaMarcus Aldridge and Blake Griffin. Of course, O’Neale will still see some minutes guarding the four spot, and the Jazz would undoubtedly call on Niang more in this scenario as well. Ingles would be playing more minutes as Utah’s third creator, which weirdly would mean you’d have less need to call on deep reserve guards.
Of course, the hardest injury to paper over would be the big fella’s. Gobert is the soul of the team. His rise to prominence was so important that it prompted the Jazz to completely pivot in their roster-building approach and adopt a bold new identity. He’s more than their MVP — he’s the heart of the team.
If he misses time, this is where the Jazz will really miss Derrick Favors, whose defensive abilities approached Gobert’s and who brought extra versatility on offense. Instead of relying on Favors’ scoring prowess and paint protection if Gobert needs a night off, the Jazz will now rely on Davis, another of the league’s very best backup centers.
Davis isn’t as good as Favors in overall terms, but there are some things he does extremely well. He is an elite rebounder, scooping up almost a third of opponent misses from the field per Cleaning the Glass7. He’s also slightly more efficient than Favors overall, mostly a function of only using possessions in or around the restricted area.
He’s a solid paint protector, but not quite in Gobert’s or Favor’s class. Those two each held opponents roughly 9% below their expected field goal percentage inside 10 feet last season, whereas Davis held adversaries roughly 1% lower. Maybe that number gets a bump as he joins a better defensive team overall (he’s moving from the 15th best defense to the 2nd), but bottom line is he’s not going to be quite as good as either of Utah’s 2018-19 centers. What he’ll do is aggressively get after the basketball once the shot goes up, and that’s important in its own right.
On offense, he’s more limited than Favors — essentially a middle class man’s Gobert in terms of offensive optionality. Nine out of every 10 shots by Davis come at the rim, where he was slightly above average as a finisher. He has been fairly pedestrian as a pick-and-roll finisher in the last three seasons (25th, 52nd and 38th percentile, per NBA stat tracking), but at roughly a point per possession, that’s good enough to dissuade defenses from simply trapping the ball on every Davis screen.
Bottom line, though: if Utah finds itself relying on Davis for 30+ minutes, the offense is going to be significantly more perimeter-oriented than it is when Gobert, an elite roll man, is diving to the rim. They’re going to need to prioritize playmaking and shooting around him. He’ll help keep the defense decent and his flypaper hands will draw in a lot of rebounds, but he’s good enough to allow Utah to stand up to most teams for a night.
The trickier part is how the Jazz fill in the center minutes behind him if Rudy’s sitting. After two NBA seasons, Bradley still hasn’t played anything beyond garbage minutes. This might be a situation where Utah needs to try using Green for some small-ball center minutes behind Davis, which would naturally require more minutes from Niang to cover Green’s usual role.
This is the one injury that the Jazz really can’t afford to deal with for any length of time, but even without Gobert, that lineup should be able to score some wins against lesser teams.
No team wants to find out how injury-proof their roster is, and any club that is forced to play without one of its main guys is going to feel the pinch in one way or another.
But the Jazz are actually set up quite well if circumstances dictate that they plod through a few short absences. They have a solid five-man core, plus the valuble O’Neale, a still-progressing Exum, proven contributors in Green and Davis, and more. Somehow, they added star depth to their roster and still kept a decent amount of rotation depth, too. It helps that six of their main nine guys can and will play multiple positions, giving them the versatility to improvise through some situations.
Of course, the lynchpin that makes a lot of these scenarios work is O’Neale. Utah already asks a lot of him, but he’ll be a vital plug-and-play piece if Utah needs to shift around its rotation, and he may even be part of the regular starting lineup. Exum, Green and Davis will all need to be ready for extra duty when starters miss, and deeper reserves like Niang and Mudiay should always be ready for their numbers to be called.
If those players are ready, Utah can construct a winning rotation even when one of the main five guys needs the night to rest or mend. That’s a luxury that could amount to precious extra wins in the final standings.
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