Salt City Seven: Jazz Playing Better, Christmas Basketball & More

December 24th, 2018 | by Dan Clayton

Things have been looking better lately for the Jazz. (Photo via utahjazz.com)

Every week here at SCH begins with the Salt City Seven — even on Christmas Eve! The SC7 is a regular feature for each day of the week as we 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.

An important quote from or about Jazz players or personnel during the week.

Ricky Rubio changed the premise of the question. He was asked in his televised walk-off interview on Friday night if it felt like the Jazz had turned a corner. The Spanish guard made it clear in response: no, that’s not what it feels like.

“We’ve been turning the corner for a while now. We’ve been playing better. Results weren’t there, but I think we’ve been playing better the last month. We’ll just pick up from here and start winning.”

-Rubio, on AT&T Sports Net

Rubio’s right. They’ve mostly played very solid ball lately. Sometimes that great execution has led to wins. Other times it has led to disappointing losses, but the Jazz just haven’t had that many bad performances, even while splitting their last four games, their last six, their last 10, and so forth.

Utah had a clunker in Mexico City against the Orlando Magic in their last six, but even that one was more a function of missing open shots than of poor overall play. And that’s their only really bad loss since getting blown out in back-to-back games in Oklahoma City and San Antonio. They have three quality wins in that stretch: hanging on against the world champs, and absolutely blowing out the Blazers and Heat. They lost in Houston in the final minute, and they fell by a single point to OKC at home, the product of a third-quarter stretch when the Jazz were executing their way to layups and wide open jumpers — but whiffing them.

They’d be in much better shape if the result had lined up with the effort, obviously, but Utah is playing much better. And the two main reasons are passing and defense.

The Jazz have been a generous bunch, averaging 28.6 assists per game since December 4. That’s an impressive average to sustain over 10 games, especially given the shooting woes they’ve encountered this month. Utah leads the league in the percentage of their offense created by assists in the month of December, and some of that is by necessity — but they really are moving the ball better, too. 

“Yeah when we play as a team, they can stop the first option, but we keep going,” Rubio explained in the same walk-off interview. “Keep shooting the ball, keep moving, and we find the open guy. It’s easy to play like that.”

And on defense, they’re starting to look like last year’s second-half Jazz, a team that knows it can control games from the defensive end when it wants to. Communication has been miles better than it was earlier this season, and Rudy Gobert looks like a world-wrecker again. Just this week, they had complicated schemes for dealing with the likes of Steph Curry and Damian Lillard, and then when those two sat, they switched back into normal defensive principles without anybody missing a beat or forgetting where they were supposed to rotate differently, or start switching.

Against Golden State they fully leveraged Gobert’s ability, basically letting the big man play free safety in the lane. In Portland, the Jazz’s scheme relied on the guards’ ability to ballhawk. Rubio, Donovan Mitchell and Dante Exum denied and iced Lillard into one of his lowest usage games of the season.

In all, since that first OKC game, Utah’s defensive rating is an absurd 95.4, best in the league over that stretch by a wide margin, and more than six points better than the best defense in the league this season (the Thunder’s). The Jazz are back in the top quarter of the league for overall defensive quality, tied with Denver for the sixth best figure. It’s doubtful that they’ll fall outside that range, provided they stay healthy.

So in other words: yes, they have turned a corner. Now we’ll see if the results follow them around the bend.

Stats that tell the story of the week or highlight a timely topic.

30

Per a tweet by our Riley Gisseman, the Jazz have roughly as many travel days in the final 109 days of the season (30) and they will have had over the first 67 days (29). After their next 4-game trip, they’ll spend roughly 73% of the remaining season at home. 

23-2

A 5:20 stretch of Saturday night’s third quarter stood between the Jazz and a 3-game win streak. How bad was it? OKC went on a 23-2 run, which featured 16 by Paul George, who went 5-for-5 from the field during that span. Meanwhile, the Jazz shot 1-for-13 and allowed a defensive rating of 177. Ouch.

And yet what’s crazy is that Utah didn’t even play all that poorly in that stretch. George made tough shots over good defense, while Utah’s offense was producing the right kinds of shots. Six of Utah’s twelve misses during the stretch were at the rim, and they also missed three wide open corner threes and a couple of good looks from angle left.

It’s actually remarkable that Utah got back in the game and had a chance to win after a stretch that tragic. The Jazz made a 9-1 run in the closing minutes to give themselves a chance to win, before a late miss by Mitchell at the line all but closed the door. But let’s be clear: Utah didn’t lose on that free-throw trip; they lost during the last 5:20 of the third quarter, when they were doing the right things but coming up empty.

17, 31

It turns out that the Jazz can play against the Warriors. If Utah’s 4-2 record against the champs in the last two seasons isn’t a good enough indication that the Jazz can bother Golden State, consider some individual stats. No NBA player has blocked more Warrior attempts over the last three seasons than Gobert’s 17, per Statmuse. And, as Twitter’s “Ryan” chimed in, Joe Ingles also has the most threes against them in that span. 

 

Breaking down the Xs and Os behind a Jazz score from the week.

Double flare leads to a crucial dunk

When you’re hosting the champions — a very good defensive team — and you’re up by two with just over 3:00 to play, you’re not supposed to be able to just waltz down the lane and dunk it.

So how did the Jazz do it? By tricking the heck right out of the Warriors.

The Jazz run a little double flare action, and the victim of all the trickeration is poor Alfonzo McKinnie, a second-year guard who has played in just 37 games.

First they have Mitchell make a zipper cut (from the baseline up) and then a flare cut (toward the sideline) as a decoy. The Warriors don’t look very convinced by this clear decoy action, but McKinnie has to keep an eye on him just in case. If he doesn’t, Mitchell can just curl all the way around and back into the lane. McKinnie has to stay there and close that off, and because of that, he’s behind his man when the next action starts.

The second action is another flare screen, this time Joe Ingles popping out from the right-side slot to the angle left. But McKinnie’s so far behind the known 3-point threat that he’s sprinting to catch up. And then he sees it.

Gobert’s diving after setting the flare screen. Draymond Green had to step out to Ingles, and so Gobert has a wide open lane to the bucket. McKinnie realizes it, but way too late. He slams on the breaks so hard that he slides, and then Curry makes a token effort at helping from the corner. But it’s too late. The double flare has given the Warriors a tough choice: let one of the wings get free or concede the paint to Gobert. And it just straight bamboozled McKinnie.

After each Jazz win, Twitter helps us decide who was that game’s MVP or most memorable performer.

Jazz 108, Warriors 103: Rudy Gobert

That’s three in a row we’ve given to Gobert, but there wasn’t much debate this time around. He was simply superb. There were times he guarded multiple guys. There were times he helped up high and still got back to block a layup. He directed the defensive orchestra, blocked four shots and affected countless others. Oh yeah, and he also notched a 17-and-15 double-double while he was at. The bench was massively important, too. On a night when starting guards Ricky Rubio and Donovan Mitchell were ice cold, guys like Jae Crowder (18 & 11, five threes, team-best plus-13), Kyle Korver (12 points, 4 assists, undeniable gravity), and Dante Exum (3-of-4 shooting, no TOs, great defense) helped Utah survive. Oh, and Joe made sure Draymond Green heard about his 20-point night.

Jazz 120, Blazers 90: Ricky Rubio

You could look at the box score and assume this was an easy choice, but it wasn’t. Big wins against quality teams (especially on the road) never are because it takes multiple great performances to go into Moda Center and steal one. A Dante Exum-led bench unit pulled away for Utah’s first double-digit lead, and Exum had eight points, eight assists and no turnovers. A combustible Kyle Korver was part of that run, and he also almost extinguished a late Blazers run. Portland had pulled to within 12, but then he and Rubio combined for a 13-2 Jazz run, after which Korver threaded an assist to put Utah up 25 and send the Blazers starters to the bench. But Rubio just carved up the Portland defense in the second half. He was 9-for-10 after the break, for 21 of his 24 total points. Dribble moves, pull-ups and leaners, sweet passes and more great defense. He dished eight assists and didn’t miss a three all night (4-for-4). 

A quick look at the Jazz’s next seven nights of action.

This is a rarity: a “Look Ahead” section with no road games. The Jazz will end 2018 by completing a 4-game homestand. I’m not even sure what the word homestand even means anymore, but I’ve heard it’s good. 

Monday: Portland at Utah, 8:30 p.m. MT ***ESPN Game***

  • State of the Blazers: The Blazers won their last road game when Lillard hit icing free throws against the Clippers, but before that, Portland had lost four straight away from home.
  • Jazz-Blazers: Utah just hung a 30-point loss on the Blazers on Friday in Portland. That was their first meeting of the year after going 2-2 last season. 
  • Key for the Jazz: Utah won on Friday by getting the ball out of Lillard’s hands as much as possible. Expect a much more assertive Dame in the sequel. Portland’s counters will likely require to Utah to involve more help, so rotation communications are going to be key.

Wednesday: Philadelphia at Utah, 8:30 p.m. MT ***TNT Game***

  • State of the Sixers: Philly is all alone in third place in the East after a convincing home win over Toronto (sans Kawhi). But this will be their first trip of more than three games.
  • Jazz-Sixers: No love lost between these two teams. There’s the Mitchell-Ben Simmons feud. The Gobert-Joel Embiid rivalry. There’s Jimmy Butler’s beef with… well, pretty much everybody. The Sixers pulled away with a 6-0 run to get a win in Philadelphia in mid November.
  • Key for the Jazz: If the Jazz hadn’t gone 4-for-22 from deep, they’d have won that game. .

Friday: New York at Utah, 6:00 p.m. MT

  • State of the Knicks: The hapless Knicks have lost nine of 10, and face the elite Bucks twice before rolling into Salt Lake City on a 5-game trip.
  • Jazz-Knicks: The Knicks took two from the Jazz last year despite being generally a very bad team. The two teams haven’t met yet this season.
  • Key for the Jazz: Mostly just don’t take them lightly. They’re bad, but they’ve got athletes who can disrupt if you don’t execute. If Utah moves the ball, they’ll be fine: New York allows the most opponent assists and the second-highest defensive eFG%.

Tracking the wild Western Conference postseason race and the Jazz’s place in it.

I’m crowd-sourcing this section this week. Because nothing I could write here would sum up as succinctly as SCH’s Ken Clayton did exactly why the Jazz really aren’t in that deep a hole relative to the playoff race.

Because after all, we’re here to have fun.

Merry Christmas, everybody. Merry basketball, too!

That’s it for this week. Merry Christmas to all, and we’ll have seven more bits of Jazziness for you next Monday in the 2018 finale of the Salt City Seven.

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