Salt City Seven: Fact Finding, Draft/Playoff Watch, Skill Building & More

February 20th, 2024 | by Dan Clayton

We may see Markkanen with the ball in his hands a little more coming up. (Francisco Kjolseth, The Salt Lake Tribune)

Every week during the regular season begins here at SCH with the Salt City Seven, a septet of recurring features that let us relive the biggest moments, key performances and hot issues in Jazzland from various angles. Check in every week for the quotes, stats, plays and performances that tell the stories from the last 168 hours in the world of the Jazz. 

A quick look at the big, burning question of the moment in Jazzland

This Jazz season was always going to be as much of a fact-finding mission as anything. There were intriguingly competitive stretches along the way, like winning 15 of 19 games starting in mid December. But even at their 22-20 peak, they maxed out as a No. 9 seed in the West, with the star-laden Lakers and Warriors breathing down their neck. They’re 4-10 since reaching that acme, with the two California teams indeed surging past them and pushing them out of even the play-in range. 

Simply put, even the more optimistic projections on the Jazz’s best day pegged this season as an interstitial one for Utah. You can still learn a lot in that type of season; as we discussed last week, there’s value in having your players develop against the backdrop of meaningfully competitive basketball games. But if we’re totally honest, that 15-4 stretch likely distracted some of us in the Jazz universe from focusing on what the real goal of 2023-24 always was: to figure out what is and isn’t important to the club’s eventual ascent.

Utah is now 26-30 with nearly a third of the season remaining. Basketball Reference’s SRS projection model gives the club a 3.4% chance at making the play-in, and a 0.5% chance at fighting into an actual NBA Playoff contest. There’s enough of a chance that they will playing games that matter over at least part of the next seven weeks, which is great because consequential basketball is a better teacher than inconsequential basketball. But in a way, it’s kind of freeing to get back to tinkering with the bigger, broader questions that will ultimately define how quickly this team is ready to do more than just vie for an eighth seed.

A decent portion of that experimentation, it appears, will revolve around Lauri Markkanen. The 2023 Most Improved Player has already credentialed himself as a star-level player and a core piece, but the question of just how good he can become revolves around some specific creation skills that Jazz coach Will Hardy wants to expand.

“This last part of the season,” the second-year coach said, “I would like to continue to see Lauri add to his ability to punish switches… He’s got size, strength and he can shoot. There are times when you need to give the ball to somebody versus a switch and you need to space properly and then they’re the ones that make the decision.”

That’s not something the Finnish forward has done a lot of in his career. When he has tried, it hasn’t always gone swimmingly. Hardy pointed to a win over OKC where Markkanen used his size to overwhelm smaller Thunder defenders, but there was also last week’s 6-for-15 and 6-for-23 outings. Teams are increasingly having guys bump and knock him when he gets the ball at the elbow or at the nail, and he’s still working on how to respond to that.

Nearly three fourths of his 2-point buckets and virtually all (98%) of his threes are assisted by other people, which on the one hand is smart and good and efficient, and at the same time is not the same as how a lot of the game’s top stars operate. There’s some requisite level of self-creation that’s going to be important for him to become the best or even second-best scorer on an elite team.

“I’m hopeful that we can continue to put him in that spot as much as it makes sense,” Hardy added. “Lauri adding that to his game to a point where he’s looking for it — and it’s not just me calling it — is going to be really good for us.”

Another guy who will be treating these next 26 games like a laboratory is Keyonte George.

In a lot of ways, George’s rookie season has already been a wild success for a player selected 16th overall: he leads all rookies in total assists, is in the top 5 in rookie points, and he’s made himself pretty indispensable to an NBA offense.

But the Jazz need to evaluate whether his long-term NBA future is as a team’s lead ball-handling guard, or if at some point he contributes more as a secondary creator, like he was most often at Baylor. While he’s made some very precocious individual reads and passes, that’s not the same as just managing an offense for 48 minutes. There have been a lot of possessions lately where the Jazz aren’t getting into their actions until halfway through the shot clock or later. His pass ratio (and field goal percentage) on drives would suggest he could fine-tune some decision making as the floor and defense shift around him.

He’s coming off his best pro scoring performance, a 33-point outburst that included a rookie-record nine threes. He’s Utah’s best pull-up shooter from deep, both by quantity (44 made) and by percentage (37.3%). That’s a pretty good foundation to build on.

The Jazz also have a number of things to watch over the final third relating to contract decisions.

They have four unrestricted free agents-to-be, including Kris Dunn, who has at various points looked vital to the defensive cohesion. It seems easy enough to conclude that bringing back the other three will be a lower priority than maximizing cap flexibility, but who knows? Those players’ job over the next seven weeks is to play in such a way that it becomes a tougher choice. Same goes for Kira Lewis Jr., whom the Jazz technically can (but probably won’t) make a restricted free agent with a $7.7 million qualifying offer.

The Jazz also have three two-way players who can become restricted free agents, including two (Micah Potter and Johnny Juzang) whom they’d have to offer standard NBA contracts (albeit with only a small partial guarantee) in order to retain matching rights. These are decisions around the margins, but they’re decisions nonetheless.

Those aren’t the only guys the Jazz need to test and prod and poke over the final 26 games, but it illustrates why the hope is that they’ll be healthy enough and competitive enough to create legitimate basketball environments in which to try and evaluate things.

 

Projecting the Jazz’s place in the broader picture

The time has come! Every year, starting after the All-Star break, we start to dust off these handy charts to help you visualize the various races the Jazz are involved in as we head down the stretch run. So let the fun begin…

Of course, like last year, the Jazz are still feasibly within reach of both the Play-In tournament and a lottery position that would virtually assure them of keeping a top-10 protected pick out of Sam Presti’s hungry little hands. So we can’t exactly call this graphic just a playoff race graphic, or simply a pick watch. Once again, we’ll straddle two worlds and share with you the view of every team — in both conferences — within 5 games of the Jazz’s current position.

Utah’s peers in the race for playoff spots and/or draft odds.

Keeping pace with the Lakers and Warriors was always going to be a tall ask, and now those two veteran squads are starting to surge in the other direction. The gap is now four in the loss column, which with 26 games left is a decent-sized advantage.

Utah has a large number of home games against bottom-10 opponents remaining. That probably ensures them a low-30s win total at worst, regardless of what else happens. That means in order for Brooklyn to catch them, the Nets would have to suddenly play .500-ish ball — with an interim coach and a road-heavy schedule. I’m calling that outcome a long shot.

Unless they go on a tear and put some pressure on the Lakers and/or Warriors, Utah’s most likely draft range is 9-12, straddling the protection on the pick they still owe OKC. Whether or not that pick conveys could rest partly on how serious Atlanta, Chicago and Houston are about wanting to win.

 

Telling or interesting words from Jazz people

“Improving ten things at once is really hard to do.”

-Hardy, on his approach to player development

Since we’ll be talking a lot about development, experimentation and skill testing over the next two months, I found a recent bit of dialogue between Hardy and the press corps really interesting. Specifically, he talked about wanting to “strip it down as tight as it can be” and focusing on very specific micro skills that will help guys.

We recently saw Hardy working with Markkanen on specific angles to generate an advantage when going to work at the elbow or nail. He also talked about coaching Walker Kessler on how to defend better when switched out onto a perimeter player. These are the types of hyper-specific skills that Hardy and, crucially, his deep staff are focused on with the fellas.

“It’s easy to start to think, I need to get better at everything, like the golfer that’s going to go to the range and work on every shot, every club. It may be better suited to take the next two weeks and just work on my chipping,” Hardy added.

 

Stats that tell the story of the week

11

Rui Hachimura’s 36 points in a Laker win on Valentine’s Day marked the sixth time this season the Jazz let a player set or tie a career high above 30 points against them. Tyrese Maxey (51), Keegan Murray (47), PJ Washington (43), Alperen Sengun (37) and Scottie Barnes (32) were the others. In all, 11 players have had their season high of 30 or more against the Jazz: the six above plus Kawhi Leonard, D’Angelo Russell, Bojan Bogdanovic, Klay Thompson and CJ McCollum.

9

The nine triples George hit against the Warriors on Thursday night trail only Bogdanovic (11) for a single-game Jazz total. Donovan Mitchell and Markkanen also have had games with nine threes as Jazzmen, but nobody else has. He also tied the NBA rookie record in that category.

20

After allowing the Warriors 120 points through three quarters, the Jazz remembered that you’re allowed to attempt to make it harder for the other team to score in basketball. Only one other team (Philadelphia, vs. lowly Washington) had managed to score 120 through three quarters this season. But then Utah tightened things up — and/or the Warriors got tired on the second of a back-to-back — and Golden State scored just 20 in the final frame.

261

The Jazz have let their last five opponents shoot 45% or better from downtown. They’ve surrendered 261 points beyond the arc in those five games, or 52.2 per game.

 

Recognizing the best (or most memorable) performances from each Jazz win

We included the Monday loss in our last SC7 as we played catch-up after some technical difficulties, so there are only two games to recap this week by handing out fake individual awards.

Strong in defeat:

  • Jazz 122, Lakers 138: Jordan Clarkson. Not easy to find someone with a rock-solid case. Most of the guys who stood out from a counting stats perspective had a rough plus-minus and/or got there by way of middling efficiency. Ultimately I chose the ex-Laker because he was the best thing about Utah’s best stretch: 13 points (4/5 shooting) and three assists in the Jazz’s only winning quarter. John Collins’ double double was probably my next choice. Collin Sexton (18 points) and Keyonte George (13-5-7) also deserve mention.
  • Jazz 137, Warriors 140: Keyonte George. By the purest “Game MVP” criteria, Sexton was probably more deserving. He had a 12-point fourth while the Jazz surged back into the picture in what had been a blowout. George was 0-for-5 in that final quarter, and while their overall lines were similar (35-3-9 for Sexton, 33-2-6 for George), I do think Sexton had a lot more to do with Utah having a chance down the stretch. But part of this is also about recognizing historic or memorable things. George tied a rookie record for threes in a game, and also tied for the second most by a Jazz player. To the rook by a nose, for a historic shooting performance!

 

Looking ahead to the next seven nights of action

The Jazz come back from their various beaches to a 2-game week, both contests in the Delta Center.

  • Thursday 2/22: Jazz vs. Hornets. Charlotte has quite surprisingly won three straight, still without LaMelo Ball and after dealing away their second, fourth and sixth highest minute-getters. Miles Bridges is averaging 21 during the mini-streak, but mostly Charlotte is doing it with a balanced attack: 7 in double figures over those three, and nobody with a usage over Brandon Miller’s 22.3%.
  • Sunday 2/25: Jazz vs. Spurs. The home fans get their first look at rookie sensation Victor Wembanyama, already a game-bending defensive force and now up to 20-and-10 averages for the season. The Spurs, though, have won just once in their last nine tries, with Jeremy Sochan averaged just 9.6ppg over that span and connecting on just three of his last 26 outside attempts.

 

Random stuff from the Jazz community

If I possessed Mark Russell Pereira’s investigative skills, I’d provide a round-up of where the Jazz guys spent their All-Star weekends. But alas, I’m not the same level of cybersleuth.

Also, I found this to be really cool. Even beyond the cause, Markkanen just hasn’t let us into his family life all that often, so getting to hear from Dad Lauri was kind of fun.

Twenty-six left. Let’s see where it goes from here…

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