OnePlay: How the Jazz will create opportunities without a traditional point guard in 2023-24

The Jazz are attempting to play to players’ strengths and occlude weaknesses with their offensive sets. (Rick Bowmer via stlrib.com)

OnePlay is a micro-analysis of individual plays that summarize the basketball philosophy presented by the Utah Jazz decision makers. It comes with breakdowns of which strengths are being used, how advantages are created, and how value can be measured. In today’s OnePlay,the Jazz coaching staff gives us a taste of how Utah will create possessions without a traditional point guard using a preseason set against the New Zealand Breakers.

This is how the Jazz are gonna create possessions through their “superpowers” without a true point guard:

• Space the big with Olynyk
• Threaten uphill with Clarkson
• Pull weakside help to strongside corner with Collins
• Utilize THT’s passing
• Utilize Lauri’s finishing pic.twitter.com/ouqe68nF0S

— Riley (@rgiss11) October 25, 2023

The Strengths:

In the play we’ll break down in this edition of OnePlay, the Jazz run a designed ATO set designed to maximize Lauri Markkanen’s biggest strengths: a perimeter gravity that stretches defenders outside of the three-point line, and a downhill attack towards the rim. In the slow motion replay, you’ll notice a hop-step hesitation as Lauri threatens to reject the screen and attack uphill — which holds his defender high enough for Jordan Clarkson to step in and free Markkanen up. The pass is a fraction of a second later than Markkanen would like, which allows the help defense from Clarkson’s man get to Markkanen, who misses.

Utah also uses Kelly Olynyk and John Collins to space the floor, then leverages Talen Horton-Tucker’s passing accuracy to create the shot. None of these players are perfect; for instance, the set simplifies the decision-making to scheme out some of Horton-Tucker’s difficulty making decisions (as there is only one read), and plays to his strengths (as he’s a fairly accurate passer).

The Values:

In a perfect world, we’re able to assign exactly how much value each player adds to each play, how quickly that value stabilizes, and how much value that projects them making in future plays. Of course this is a bit of a Holy Grail within basketball stats that’s constantly being chased, but it’s a little easier to do in micro-evaluations like this so let’s go for it. 

Before any information is given, the NBA average out-of-timeout possession gives 1.11 points per possession; this can be broken down into beginning each play with a 15.5% chance of turnover, 84.5% chance of getting a shot off at a true shooting mark of 53.8%. In the case of a miss (roughly a quarter of free throw attempts, half of two point attempts, two thirds of three point attempts), the offensive team rebounds roughly 31% of misses and second chances are closer to 1.15 points per play.

Imagine those stats as levers to pull. If you increase your passing risk threshold, you increase your chance of turnover but you also increase your shot quality. If you send more players towards the rim, you’ll increase your offensive rebound percentages but the extra defensive density likely increases both turnovers and decreases shot quality; though it likely also increases chances of shooting fouls, which brings shot quality back up.

That’s a lot to take in, so let’s just dive in and measure, step-by-step, how each player affects the play. We won’t be more empirical than an eyeball test on these numbers, but that should give us an idea of each player’s value contribution.

The start of the play

Most important here is the spacing created by Olynyk, who even as a center is able to draw his defender to where his toes are on the three point line. However, both Collins and Markkanen have stretched their defenders away from the rim as well. All primary and secondary rim protection has been sacrificed. This raises the team’s shooting percentages if they can generate a rim attempt but hurts their offensive rebounding opportunity. I’d spot this at around 1.15 PPP, with a 50/25/25 split to Olynyk/Collins/Kessler. The added PPP is only +0.04, but it’s valuable nonetheless.

Neither Olynyk nor Horton-Tucker are threats as heavily contested three pointers. I’d throw their shooting percentage at around 25% while guarded closely. Clarkson’s defender’s positioning before Markkanen’s cut is advantageous for a potential rebound, though, and if Clarkson weren’t a good shooter it’s likely that the defender plays between Clarkson and the basket rather than standing between him and the three point line to prevent the pop-out, so we’ll attribute an added rebounding likelihood to Utah based on Clarkson’s inside position. Giving Utah an additional 5-8% rebounding chance raises the set’s worth to 1.18 PPP before any real movement. 

After the setup, Utah needs some way to generate a shot from the advantageous spacing. In recent years, a Jazz creator like Donovan Mitchell or Mike Conley would manage this load, but Utah doesn’t have a primary creator with quite the same strengths as either of those players, so they get creative. 

THT surveys.

Clarkson pushes his defender higher in the key, and in addition to maintaining the added rebounding odds by holding position in front of the rim, has now created an off-ball cutting lane f0r Markkanen. Markkanen hop-steps to freeze his defender, and Clarkson back-screens Lauri’s man. Jordan’s uphill gravity combined with Markkanen’s cut has created a small window for an open opportunity at the rim. Only the pass remains.

The pass.

Assuming this is somewhat a difficult pass, we can say that the average player would turn it over ~19% of the time. I’d then argue that the average player would be fouled 35% of the time, score roughly 65% of non-fouls, and rebounded on 30% of misses. This adds up to 0.35 SF * 0.75 FT% * 2 FTA + 0.65 FG% * 0.65 FGA * 2 PTS +0.3 OREB * (0.35 FTA * 0.25 FT miss + 0.65 FGA * 0.35 FG miss) * 1.15 points per second chance, and we’ll wrap all of that into the chance that the play is not turned over. This comes up to 1.2 PPP assuming the pass gets through 81% of the time, and 1.48 PPP once the pass does get through – so Markkanen/Clarkson’s action adds 0.02 PPP and Horton-Tucker adds 0.28 PPP with his passing.

Markkanen goes on to miss the layup, rebound, and miss again – losing the rebound this time. That effectively reduces the 1.48 PPP advantage to 0 PPP, making Markkanen’s contribution reduce from 0.02 from spacing and cutting to -1.46 PPP for failing to actualize the advantage.

Tracking possession value, step by step

This isn’t totally fair though, as Markkanen doesn’t miss these opportunities 100% of the time, and Horton-Tucker doesn’t avoid turnovers on similar passes every time. To stabilize (and therefore project) these stats, you have to get less binary results. Yes, Horton-Tucker’s pass got through 1/1 times, but how often do his passes get through when the chance of turnover is 20%? Markkanen did miss the shot, but how often does he make like shots? If it’s closer to 16% TO for THT and 70% FG for Markkanen, those percentages should be used for calculation. Free throw percentages and rebound percentages should similarly be inferred. 

Applying those percentages in place of “average player” inferences (75% FT, 65% FG, 19% TO to 85% FT, 70% FG, 16% TO), gives us a change from 1.48 PPP to 1.6 PPP on Markkanen’s attempts, or +0.16 PPP added to his existing +0.02 PPP on spacing and cutting, making him a +0.18 in total on this possession. Horton-Tucker, meanwhile, only raises possession expectations from 1.2 to 1.26, the pass is as valuable as 0.28 PPP if he never fails, but he’s not exactly immune to turning the ball over to the degree of a Chris Paul or Mike Conley. Of course, these are percentages we’d want to measure if possible but estimation will have to do for now.

This all totals out to the following “stabilized” value added from each player:

“Stabilized” possession value, step by step

Whew, okay. That was a lot of data. A few more thoughts:

• Collins man crashes the board, but Collins stays in the corner. John’s not adding any value by standing there once the shot’s up, especially with his length and athletic tools. I’d argue some portion of not securing an offensive rebound here falls on Collins. He’s been conditioned to stand in the corner in Atlanta, but I’d like to see that habit die.

• Olynyk and Horton-Tucker falling into the backcourt to prevent transition adds it’s own form of value by limiting defensive PPP. I’m not sure it’s big, but it’s tangible.

• This is a single-possession sample. Doing this for a 200-possession game, then adding up each player’s values will give you how much a player is contributing to each individual game – and averaging this out over the course of the season will give you a total average impact of each player in the league. This is a pretty impossible task, but in practicality what stats like BPM, EPM, and LEBRON are attempting to summarize with varying degrees of success.

The Philosophy

Individual player strengths can combine to create value that is greater than the sum of their parts.

The movie Moneyball portrays Oakland A’s executive Billy Beane in a lightbulb moment as Peter Brand spills his ultimate baseball philosophy. “Billy,” Brand says, “of the twenty thousand knowable players for us to consider, I believe that there is a championship team of twenty five people that we can afford. Because everyone else in baseball under values them. Like an island of misfit toys.”

The Utah Jazz front office are indeed searching for their own island of misfit toys; players with unique individual impact that can mesh with others to create value greater than the sum of their parts. You don’t need a player who can beat their man off the dribble, shoot, finish at the rim, and pass – when you have one player who can beat their man in space, another who can shoot, another who can finish at the rim, and another who can pass.

Ultimately the diversity of skillset grows in value when competing in postseason play where every players’ biggest weakness is targeted, but throughout regular season basketball, player value can be teased out of player strengths – even without a designated possession “creator”.