Salt City Seven: Mitchell, Streaking Jazz Hit Another Level & More

Mitchell has been superb during a 5-game Jazz win streak. (via ESPN.com)

Every Monday during the regular season, the week here at SCH begins with the Salt City Seven: seven regular 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 dissection of a big-picture topic or burning question relevant to the week in Jazzland.

A lot is working for the Jazz right now, but at the top of the list is a 24-year-old All-Star who has simply found another gear.

The Jazz are hard to beat when Donovan Mitchell is this good. Since the All-Star break, he’s averaging 30.3 points, 6.1 assists and 4.1 rebounds, and doing it with 50-45-90 shooting splits. The shooting is even sweeter over the last six: 55-47-95. He’s had good stretches before, but nothing like this. In fact, no Jazz player has enjoyed a stretch like this in more than two decades. The last time a Jazzman had six straight games of 27+ was during Karl Malone’s first MVP season: he did it once in January and once in February of 1997. If he goes for 27 or more against Cleveland on Monday, it will be the longest Jazz streak since 1993 (the Mailman again, naturally).

The combination of assertiveness and efficiency Mitchell is giving his team right now constitutes rarified air. It also makes the Jazz really, really hard to beat.

Utah is 16-1 this season in games where Mitchell’s true shooting hits 60%. That’s nothing new, either. In the 2018-19 season, the Jazz were 22-2 in such games, and last year they were 21-7. So over a 3-year span, the Jazz have won 85.5% of the games where Mitchell is at his most efficient. That’s a 70-win pace.

So why not keep him above 60% all the time and cash in on that ridiculous winning percentage? Not so fast. Mitchell’s role in the offense means that he’s sometimes going to be asked to operate at the edge of his comfort zone. His shot diet can range anywhere from “adventuresome” to “unwise” when teams succeed at defusing some of Utah’s core options, and Mitchell is still Utah’s clear main option when defenses are tightest at the end of close games¹. If you want Mitchell to be the guy, that means being OK with some shots and possessions where he’s creating stuff outside the system.

Having said that, there are some very sustainable things Mitchell has been doing over this highly efficient stretch that he can take with him.

One of the biggest changes has been his finishing at the rim. Before this torrid 6-game stretch, Mitchell was shooting just 56% in the restricted area, a below-average number even for a guard. Since the game in Washington, he has converted nearly 65% of those shots.

A couple of weeks ago we looked at this video, showing how often a mobile defender can keep him from turning the corner on slot drives, leaving him to shoot while his momentum is going away from the basket.

By contrast, look at these more recent drives. These all start similarly: drives from the top down either slot. But on these, Mitchell veers into the paint and gets his body going towards the rack, instead of keeping his drive perpendicular to the baseline.

On these more recent ones, he anticipates contact better and stays on his line even when the bump comes. But mostly, this is a big difference if you just look at the direction his body is going at the time of the release.

Comparison: Mitchell has been turning the corner more on recent drives and finishing toward the hoop.

Not shying away from contact has allowed him to cash in on more FT trips over this stretch, too (7.0 FTA/36). And also he’s been playing with great balance: his usage over these last six has been in the mid-30s (33.9%), but so has his assist percentage (34.5%). He has just found a really nice variety and rhythm.

And let’s be honest: some of this is just about shot outcomes, too. He’s shooting a silly 50% on pull-up threes, even higher than his 37% season figure. Outside shooting is a high-variance activity, so that number will come and go. But a lot of what we’ve seen in this recent stretch is stuff he could replicate.

Mitchell has been the Jazz’s centerpiece for so long that it’s easy to forget he’s 24 years old. A Twitter pal reminded me recently that John Stockton started two games as a 24-year old. What we’re seeing now from the precocious guard is so far ahead of the regular developmental curve for NBA guards that it sometimes escapes us that he’s still refining, and that he’ll likely get much better before it’s all said and done.

Right now he’s in the middle of a special, fun, dominant stretch. And when he’s this efficient and unstoppable, so are the Jazz.

Keeping track of the Jazz’s place in the wild, wild West.

The Jazz once again have the easiest average opponent of all the Western Conference playoff teams, including a whopping eight remaining home games against bottom-10 teams. Three of those will be played this week: Cleveland (25th), Chicago (22nd) and Orlando (27th).

Here is more detail about how the race looks heading into tonight’s games:

The Jazz have held the No. 1 spot in the West since February 2.

Of course, the biggest question at the moment is just how far the Lakers may slide as they slog through without LeBron James for another month or so (and without Anthony Davis for some portion of that). The Lakers signed 2-time All-Star Andre Drummond to try to slow their slide, but it remains to be seen how much that move will alter their trajectory. Advanced stats like VORP (0.3) and BPM (-0.3) view Drummond as essentially a replacement-level type at this point. He scores a lot and still rebounds at a high level, but his efficiency is problematic for a high-usage player. Only Russell Westbrook matches Drummond’s usage with a lower per-shot efficiency.

In other words, Drummond alone probably won’t prevent some slippage. They need their stars back.

With that in mind, let’s look at the key stretch facing each of the current top eight teams:

• Utah: The Jazz’s remaining games against great teams are pretty spread out, but the toughest it gets is a stretch starting April 30: at Phoenix, then home for Toronto, consecutive games against the Spurs, then Denver. Average opponent record .552.
• Phoenix: The Suns have a brutal 8-game stretch in the latter half of April that includes five of the six best teams in the league, concluding with Utah on April 30. Average opponent .623.
• LAC: The Clips’ gut-check stretch starts now: five of their next are against top-8 opponents. They’re all at home, though. Average opponent .586.
• LAL: Even the more optimistic scenarios have LeBron missing 11 more games. In those, the Lakers will face EC powers Milwaukee and Brooklyn, plus the Jazz (twice) and Clippers. Average opponent .577, and no LeBron.
• Denver: The Nuggets open May with a 5-game stretch that includes away games against Utah and both LA teams, home games against Brooklyn and New York. Average opponent .650.
• Portland: The Blazers’ toughest remaining stretch is their closing six: five of those are against top-10 teams, including visits to Utah and Phoenix on a back-to-back. Average opponent .586.
• SAS: Take your pick. Their schedule is brutal, but the entire month of May is next-level crazy. They will face the top four teams in the league a whopping six times, plus host #6 Milwaukee and visit #8 Portland on a B2B. Average opponent .649.
• Dallas: Like Utah, Dallas has most of its really harrowing stretches in the rear-view mirror. The toughest it gets for them is an early April stretch when they’ll host the Jazz, Bucks, Spurs and Sixers, with a quick interlude to visit Houston. Average opponent .584.

In their own words

“I think he’s just like me, just like us: he’s a competitor. I think he’s excited about the way we’ve been growing year after year, and to him it wouldn’t make sense to leave us now. He wants to be part of it.”

-Jazz center Rudy Gobert on lead assistant coach Alex Jensen staying with the Jazz

For now, at least, Jensen stays with the Jazz. It’s just another sign of the believe among the Jazz’s personnel that something special could be unfolding. Reports indicate that the head job at the University of Utah was Jensen’s if he wanted it. But as Gobert indicates here, Jensen evidently didn’t want to leave the Jazz when they have a real chance at reaping the rewards for a years-long reconstruction that was underway when the Viewmont High product joined the Jazz staff in 2013.

But as much as anything else, this could also be a sign that Jensen is on track for an NBA head coaching vacancy. It has become pretty rare for someone on that career path to leave the pro ranks for a college gig. Jensen has already been considered for two top bench jobs (Memphis and Cleveland) and he’ll certain get more looks as the coaching carousel continues to spin.

It’s hard for anybody outside the clubhouse to parse the impact a particular assistant coach has, but suffice it to say that Jensen is pretty valuable. Quin Snyder has said as much recently, and Gobert indicated that “it’s hard to put into words” the support and coaching he’s received from Jensen, whose Jazz career coincides exactly with his own.

“He really helped me grown as a person and as a player,” Gobert added. “He’s someone that’s always told me the truth.”

Stats that tell the story of the Jazz’s week.

9

Can we talk for a second about how crazy it is to block NINE SHOTS in an NBA basketball game? If you’re disappointed that Gobert missed a triple-double by one block on Monday night in Chicago, consider this: players have reached 10+ assists 352 times in this season’s 730 games to date, meaning it’s something that happens, on average, in 48.2% of games. A 9-block outing has happened just twice, or in 0.27% of NBA games this year. What Gobert did on Monday is way more rare than most points-rebounds-assists triple-doubles.

Even getting four blocks is significantly rarer than a 10-assist night: under 30% of games have featured a 4-block performance. Gobert has had 12 games this season where he had four blocks to go with double-digit rebounds and points.

91.1

The Jazz are getting their defensive mojo back. The defense wasn’t great in Toronto (Tampa), but Utah still managed to eke out a win with incredible shot-making and an improbably late run. Since then, though, the Jazz have had four straight performances where the halfcourt D was better than league average, per Cleaning the Glass. More than any other single factor, that is the stat that tells you when the Jazz are playing like the Jazz. Their 58.2 defensive efficiency in the halfcourt against Brooklyn’s skeleton squad on Wednesday was the single best game in that category in the NBA this season.

The Jazz are #1 in the league with their 91.1 halfcourt defense², and that’s more core to their identity than even their shot-making prowess. They’ve had six games this season where they’ve held teams under 72 in the halfcourt. No other NBA team has more than four such games (LAL, New York), and more than a quarter of the league’s teams haven’t accomplished that in a single game. Simply put, that it Utah’s competitive differentiator, and they need to be in tune there to make a deep postseason run.

3

The Jazz have now had three separate streaks of five or more consecutive wins, something no other Western Conference team can say. (Milwaukee has had three such streaks in the East.) 

50.7%

Even during the Jazz’s win streak, three of their main scoring threats are still struggling to shoot well. Bojan Bogdanovic is at 51.6% true shoting during the five straight wins, and Jordan Clarkson is at 43.5%. Quietly, Mike Conley has joined those two slumping scorers, at 50.7% during the streak. (Luckily for the Jazz, Joe Ingles remains hot at 79.9%, and both Gobert and Mitchell are in the 70s as well.)

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

Only wins this week, which means it’s been busy over here in the game ball department:

Jazz 120, Bulls 95: Rudy Gobert. Mitchell and Ingles were both unstoppable early, with a combined 33 points on 17 shooting possessions in the first half. Mitchell finished with 30-6-6 and Ingles’ shooting night was the kind that elicits giggles. But Gobert’s night was far too rare to not give it to him. He and the Jazz dominated the defensive end. Gobert contested everything on his way to a career-high nine blocks, and he was unstoppable at the rim on offense, too. All three were special, but Gobert (21, 10 and 9) was just a little too good to not give him the rock.

Jazz 118, Nets 88: Donovan Mitchell. Wins this lopsided make game ball hard, because individual stats get skewed by shorter minutes and more people contribute. You could easily recognize Derrick Favors here for double-digit rebounds in just 16 minutes, or Niang for an outlier night scoring the ball. I was tempted to recognize Bogdanovic for a slump-busting³ performance on the eve of the trade deadline. But giving it to a guy who had 18-3-3 for narrative reasons instead of the guy who had 27-6-7 in just 27 effortless minutes seemed like a stretch. So we’ll avoid overthinking this one and follow the crowd.

Jazz 117, Grizzlies 114: Donovan Mitchell. Mitchell was bonkers early: 19 first-half points on just 11 shots. Gobert was dominant late: 8-for-9 shooting as Memphis had no answer for him inside, plus more suffocating defense, holding Memphis to 37% on the 27 shots he contested. If we go straight game-MVP criteria, it’s really, really close. If we weave in narrative, the thing we’ll remember about this game in two months is the late duel between Mitchell and Ja Morant. Mitchell scored Utah’s final 10 points and ended the night with 35, 5 and 6. So he gets it by a nose over Gobert (25 & 9, 11/14 shooting).  

Jazz 126, Grizzlies 110: Donovan Mitchell. Easy. Don was just silly in the rematch, with 28 points before halftime. He played just under 11 second-half minutes, so his final stats (35 points, 7 assists) didn’t look as gaudy as they would have if he hadn’t so thoroughly dominated before intermission. But he was in star mode every second he was on the court. Honorable mentions: Clarkson busted out with a 28-point night (on 21 shots, his most efficient game in a month) plus six boards and four helpers. Royce O’Neale scored 10 straight Jazz points in the third quarter and also did a superb job as Morant’s primary defender.

Looking ahead to the next seven nights of Jazz action.

The Jazz have another of the dreaded 4-in-6 sequences starting tonight, but only one of those four games will be played away from the Wasatch Front.

Monday 3/29, Jazz vs. Cavs: The young Cavs have lost eight of 11, and are currently playing without four veterans. One of those is Jarrett Allen, who gave Gobert some problems earlier this season while with the Nets. He missed Saturday’s game, but before that was averaging 15 and 11 in the previous five. But this Cavs team is mostly predicated by the play of the young “Sexland” duo: Collins Sexton and Darius Garland average a combined 40 points and 10 assists. Neither played when the Jazz won by 30 in Cleveland earlier this season, and that was also before the Allen trade, so Utah will see a very different version of the Cavs this time around — but they’re still a very schemable team. Cleveland owns the sixth worst offense over the last two weeks.

Wednesday 3/31, Jazz @ Grizzlies: What’s left to say about Memphis that we didn’t cover ahead of the weekend back-to-back in Salt Lake? For one thing, they have one of the worst “location eFG%” marks in the league, largely because they take the second smallest percentage of their shots from behing the arc. None of their top five minute-getters shoot even 37% from deep, and aside from Kyle Anderson, the rest shoot under 33%. That said, beating a good team three times in six nights is a tall order.  

Friday 4/2, Jazz vs. Bulls: The Bulls are very different from the last time the Jazz faced them… in a good way. They added Nikola Vucevic via trade, and the All-Star center gave them a 21-point debut, albeit in a loss. Fellow All-Star Zach LaVine had an off night in Vooch’s first game as a Bull, but over time those two are so skilled offensively that some great pick-and-roll chemistry is inevitable. LaVine (40%) and the Bulls (41%) had an off shooting night last time they faced the Jazz, but Vooch is certainly going to pull Gobert out of some of his favorite defensive spots and force Utah to rethink how they guard a team that just got better on paper.

Saturday 4/3, Jazz vs. Magic: The Magic are very different from the last time the Jazz faced them… in a bad way. They are the ones who sent Vucevic packing, along with veteran contributors Aaron Gordon and Evan Fournier. Orlando also has five perimeter players currently on the shelf due to various maladies, including super sub Terrence Ross and the recently acquired Gary Harris. Ross is day-to-day, so the Jazz might see him, but there just isn’t a lot of talent left/available. on this Orlando squad. They’re 2-13 in the last five weeks, and they’re the worst shooting team in the Association.

Random stuff from the Jazz community.

We already broke down the NBA’s trade deadline, which featured a lot of activity but not a lot that will really change the competitive landscape in the West. The Lakers stood pat (before adding Drummond). The Nuggets made a swing that added some athleticism but cost them a valuable perimeter defender. The Clips and Blazers made attempts at upgrading a rotation spot. The Suns stayed put.

But we mostly glossed over the Jazz’s addition. So let’s have a look, courtesy of YouTube’s “Down to Buck.”

Matt Thomas is as pure a shooter as you’ll find. He has a quick stroke, is deadly off of screens, and closeouts don’t seem to bother him much. You can picture the Jazz using him in some of the same sets and actions they used to run for Kyle Korver — if he can defend well enough to earn real minutes.

Thomas also has an interesting (and heavy) backstory. He’s under contract through next season (non-guaranteed in 2021-22), and then Utah will have matching rights in 2022 free agency.

We’re one week closer to answering some rather big questions!