Olynyk’s Importance & Asset Value Present Choices

Olynyk’s skill set helped organize the Jazz last season. (Gerald Herbert via sltrib.com)

When the Jazz acquired Kelly Olynyk last summer, the word I heard over and over again was “organized.” Decision-makers liked what the veteran big man offered in terms of smarts and skills, and thought it would help them create a more intelligent, structured ecosystem in which to develop younger players.

None of that is any less true a year and one week later, and yet Olynyk nears his second Jazz training camp in a weird place. Because of his contract situation, he’s going to be part of every single Jazz-related trade rumor. And despite how scarce some of his skill sets are, he suddently feels slightly less essential after Utah remodeled its froncourt this summer.

With a long-dormant NBA trade market suddenly buzzing, it wouldn’t be shocking if Olynyk was packing his bags before you finish this paragraph. The Damian Lillard megatrade sent ripples out across the water, and if the Jazz want to get involved in any of those pursuits — in a central way or as a facilitator — then an expring, affordable contract tied to a productive basketball player could be the price. Since John Collins’ arrival (and Walker Kessler’s continued growth) will certainly eat into Olynyk’s minutes anyway, his name is going to surface in trade speculations… a lot.

On the other hand, Will Hardy trusts him, and his playmaking might be needed. 

So just how essential is the Canadian big man if the Jazz want to continue to play in an “organized” way? Or will there come a point when his expiring contract is just too valuable not to move?

Playmaking big

It took all of 86 minutes for veteran big man to win over swaths of Jazz fans. Three games.

He arrived to a somewhat rocky reception, as some fans were underwhelmed with the trade that brought him to the mountains. In addition to the desire to play with some order, Utah also knew the roster was unbalanced, with a ton of guards and perimeter players, but not a lot of proven talent in the middle. The offers they were fielding for Bojan Bogdanovic weren’t yielding unencumbered firsts anyway, so they made a deal that would reduce salary commitments and address a positional need. But fan excitement over the Bogey-Olynyk swap was tepid at best.

He spent most of his Jazz debut in foul trouble as the Jazz tangled with (and ultimately upset) 2-time MVP Nikola Jokic. Game 2 was a strong Olynyk performance, as he knocked down five threes to stretch out Minnesota’s new twin-tower alignment. But it was really in the waning seconds of his third Jazz game that the Gonzaga product started to become a folk hero.

Down one point with :08 to play in New Orleans, the Jazz got the ball to Olynyk on the wing. They ran a split action, with Mike Conley Jr. and Lauri Markkanen crossing Olynyk’s spot in opposite directions. The play was designed to produce a switch Utah could exploit and then let the decision-making big man make the read. That’s what #41 did: when 6-foot-3 CJ McCollum wound up switched onto him, Olynyk simply turned and barrelled to the hoop, scoring the eventual game winner.

What’s most interesting about that play isn’t the rumbling drive or the layup. It’s the fact that Hardy drew up a clutch play with the goal of letting 7-foot Olynyk handle the ball and make the read.

It would be easy to mistake Olynyk for a mere stretch big. And truth be told, his shooting does open up a lot. But he’s had more seasons below 36% (last year’s league average for 3-point percentage — he’s had six such seasons) than seasons above that mark (four). That’s not to say he’s not extremely valuable to spacing even at his career mark of 36.8%, because he is. But his archetype is more than that. Honestly, he is an elite playmaking big. Very few non-star players at his size make decisions with the ball in their hands quite as often. 

So yeah, the shooting is a nice bonus, but top NBA skill is without a doubt his court awareness and passing. He has an elite assist-to-usage ratio for a center, per Cleaning the Glass (.94, in the 90th %ile among pure bigs). 

A lot of his assists are swing-swing type passes or simple dribble hand-offs. But every now and then you’ll see a play where Olynyk legitimately is the guy making decisions with the ball in his hands. I don’t know how long the list is of centers who can make this type of play, but in terms of how many guys at his position do this as routinely as him, we might be talking about one or two other guys:

If Olynyk is driving, it’s most likely because he put the ball on the deck against a sloppy closeout, but he also ran a decent number of pick-and-rolls for a big man. In either case, his first, second and third instinct when playing as the ball handler is to wait for an opportunity to dish. 

He also frequently runs the break for Utah, another funny little look the Jazz can give opponents that they might not be used to seeing:

Once the Jazz moved on from Conley at the trade deadline, Olynyk might have been their best pure ball mover left. The only players with regular minutes that had a higher assist percentage than him after February 9 were Talen Horton-Tucker and Kris Dunn, who had the ball in their hands two to two-and-a-half times as much as Olynyk, per tracking stats. In terms of playmaking ability as a ratio to touch time, nobody touched Olynyk.

It’s also true that he has an usually high turnover rate for a center/forward, but again, that’s because few teams are having 7-footers initiate actions and run the break, unless that guy’s name is Kevin Durant.

Bottom line: few at his size and position see the court quite as well as KO. He’s a high-IQ player, his vision and passing are elite for a big, and he makes just enough outside shots to make teams honor him.

The rest of KO’s game

His other elite NBA skill is, in a word, guile.

He’s a crafty foul drawer, which is a nice way of saying he engages in much of the same chicanery that have made Jazz fans hate other serial ref-dupers. It’s hard to be mad at a guy who quite simply knows how to use the rulebook to generate an advantage in a few very specific ways… but there’s probably a reason The Athletic used Olynyk as the literal poster child for flopping in their recent article about the new in-game penalties for taking a dive.

Drawing charges is just the start. His contact-savvy ways appear on offense, too, which is why his ratio of FT to FG attempts was a Jazz-leading .417, up with the ball handling superstars and “hack-a” big men. Those easy points contributed to Olynyk’s most efficient pro season yet (.643 TS%), but it’s still not exactly thrilling TV when Olynyk flings his upper body into defenders in search of a whistle.

Yeah, that’s… whatever. Depending on your vantage point, that’s either annoying or shows an admirable awareness of the rulebook. This writer tends to lean towards the former. It’s not Olynyk’s fault that the rulebook rewards flailing, but spiritually this isn’t all that different from prime James Harden seeking contact or Chris Paul rushing to narc on a player with an untucked jersey. I suppose I’d just rather see basketball things happen, and there are plenty of guys on the Jazz who do basketball things in a way that is both fun and relevant to the future. But hey, getting to the line at will is an NBA skill. 

He’s always been “meh” with his defensive rebounding stats and a pretty terrible on the offensive glass. (In fairness, he is rarely by the rim on offense.) He’s not a paint protector in any reasonable sense of the term — opponents shot 63% at the rim with Olynyk nearby last season, and teams got to the rim way too often whenever he was on the court without another true center. So if you’re a believer in the Kelly Olynyk experience, it’s because you think what he opens up for the offense offsets that fact that he’s mediocre to bad at some of the more traditional stuff centers do.

So far, that theory tests out pretty well. Per Cleaning the Glass, the Jazz offense was +2.7 points better per 100 possessions if Olynyk was playing, and the defense holds (actually, it’s 0.8 points better). That makes the Canook a winning basketball player. He’s had a positive differential almost every year in the league, and his first Jazz year was no exception with a +3.6 outside of garbage time.

Which is why it sounds a little sensationalist to say that Olynyk might be the most likely Jazzman to finish the year elsewhere.

Olynyk the asset

Olynyk is both good and playing on a budget-friendly expiring contract, meaning that he could appeal to teams looking for rotational depth and/or teams who are looking to rework their books as a new cap and apron structure kicks in. On top of that, he’s generally liked as a teammate, and because he plays exclusively below the rim, he really almost never misses big chunks of games to freak mishaps. He should be on some teams’ whiteboards as a possible target.

Tim MacMahon of ESPN recently confirmed on a podcast that other teams “were asking about him a lot last year,” noting that he could help contenders.

Olynyk will make $12.2 million this season, which is slightly below midlevel exception money. Then he’ll be a free agent. A useful, winning player with an expiring salary in that range is important, and Olynyk could find himself being a part of the machinations is some 3- and 4-team deals fall out of the aftermath of the Lillard deal. He’s probably not drawing a good first-round pick on his own, but if he enables Utah to play facilitator to something larger, they could get an asset or an interesting player out of that. Or they could use Olynyk (and picks, of course) to start sniffing around some “buyer” trades instead. 

Then there’s the other reality: at some point, it might just be time for the Jazz to get on with their future. Collins is 26 and has at least two more years on his deal, and Kessler is just one year into a 6- to 7-year period of team control. Both those guys are way more likely to be part of Utah’s next contending roster than 32-year-old Olynyk.

Danny Ainge clearly loves him. Hardy clearly trusts him. Those things matter. But at some point his asset value might surpass his “organization” value — especially if things go the way the Jazz hope they go for the frontcourt triumvirate of Markkanen-Kessler-Collins.