Salt City Seven: Post Trade Quality Check, GM Speaks & More

The Jazz disrupted their rotation with trades but kept core pieces like Clarkson, Markkanen and Kessler. (Rick Egan, 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. Because of some technical difficulties earlier in the week, this edition includes action through Monday night.

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

After a pair of trades that had the net effect of reducing the number of proven rotation contributors, it’s obvious what the big question is in Jazz world this week: exactly what will the post-trade Jazz look like?

We won’t do a full-on trade recap since that’s what Mark Russell Pereira, Ken Clayton and I did over the weekend in a SCH video/podcast. But with that dust having settled, it is worth figuring out where the trades leave the 2023-24 Jazz.

Three rotation players left in deals that were mostly asset-focused, bringing in somewhere between zero and two players who will actually play meaningful basketball this spring. So should Jazz fans brace themselves for a painful final 29 games?

There are a few ways to look at it, each one highlighted by a key stat.

Heading Out: 1.5

For starters, the Jazz traded away their 7th, 9th and 10th most used players, by minutes per game. These haven’t exactly been core pieces, though they have certainly contributed to the overall steadiness of the rotation.

Another way of looking at this: Kelly Olynyk, Simone Fontecchio and Ochai Agbaji contributed a total of 2.6 “EPM wins added” through the trade, per stat site Dunks and Threes.

If you assume their value to winning would have stayed the same, then proportionally, the cost to the Jazz in terms of win math over the final 30 games is something like 1.5 wins.

Now, where that math is a little suspect is that it assumes you’re replacing those 1.5-win players with guys who are a net zero. That might be untrue, in either direction. For example, some of Olynyk’s 20 nightly minutes will be distributed to Taylor Hendricks, someone who is still learning his way around the basketball court. But some will go to bump up Walker Kessler’s role, which EPM says will be an upgrade from a win math standpoint.

Either way, the point here is that the Jazz probably didn’t detract that much from the quality of their product, unless the developmental minutes going to certain youngster are going to be a total adventure… which they might be at times.

What Remains: +3.0

Losing three of your 10 rotation players is always going to be a big change to make midstream. At the same time, the seven regularly appearing Jazzmen who made it through the trade deadline without starring in a Woj-bomb have been pretty central, not to mention effective.

The top six minute-getters are still on the roster, as is Kris Dunn, whose minutes are trending up. Lineups with any five of just those seven players were a combined +3.0 (per 100 non-garbage time possessions) entering the week. Some quintets fare better than others, but overall that stat tends to indicate that Utah can still cobble together a lot of winning lineups using just those seven guys.

“Here we were able to keep our core intact,” Jazz GM Justin Zanik explained after the trades. “The three players we traded obviously had made very good contributions this year.” But, he added, “We traded one (player who) started basically half the year (and) the other two were rotation players.” At last year’s trade deadline, by contrast, they traded three starters.

The flip side here is that of course Utah is going to have to involve more than just those seven, and lineups with even one of the remaining Jazzmen are -4.6 outside of garbage time.

So how shaky things get could be a question of how much Will Hardy sticks to those main seven guys, and how much improvement we see from players like Hendricks, Brice Sensabaugh, Luka Samanic or Talen Horton-Tucker.

Management is on the record saying they want Hardy to try to win every game, and Hardy himself has made it clear that minutes will be doled out based on guys’ ability to perform their jobs well.

What’s real?: 3.9

If we’re going to forecast these last two months through pure arithmetic – what’s going out of the Jazz’s rotation and what’s coming in – then we probably need to be pretty careful about defining the baseline. Because more than almost any other team, the Jazz are playing with some house money.

Per Cleaning the Glass, Utah had exceeded its “expected” win total based on efficiency differential by 3.9 wins as of the trade. Only Sacramento has been luckier in that sense.

That’s a nice way of saying that even before factoring in trades and rotation changes, Utah might not be quite as good as a 26-26 record (as of the trades) would suggest.

Other unknowns

We also don’t know if they will preserve the good health they’ve enjoyed since around Christmas. Even if no major injuries occur (knock on wood), there may come a point where based on the standings, it makes more sense to be cautious with even little bangs and bruises. And how much time, particularly in these new few games, will they be devoting to pure experimentation? Maybe a lot.

All of this is to say that the Jazz probably won’t go from 26-26 at the time of the trades to, say, 5-25 after. But it’s likely that some erosion will happen from a combination of the outgoing contributions, more development/experimentation minutes and luck catching up with them.

Telling or interesting words from Jazz people

“Our goals (now) are to continue to develop our players, put them in a competitive environment, have them experience playing meaningful games, games that mean something.

“Eventually, and I won’t put a timeline on it, the goal is not to just play competitive games — that’s probably the goal this year — but eventually is to have a team that has a chance to go deep in the playoffs, in a Western Conference that is just brutal.”

-More from Zanik, from his extended interview with JP Chunga

This is interesting and relevant to the conversation above in that the Jazz seem to really believe there is more development value in meaningful contests than there is in a .250 win percentage team just throwing minutes to guys as they play out the string. Most models have the Jazz finishing in the high 30s and just outside the play-in range (which was true even before the trades). But entering the final eight weeks of the season with some stakes attached to games is developmentally useful.

That said, being realistic about Utah’s playoff odds is probably an important starting point in understanding the trades. With something like 3% playoff probability in most models, at some point it becomes myopic to chase that instead of capitalizing on opportunities to improve the asset cache and spread some minutes around to others who have a higher chance of sticking around long term.

“We need to see what everyone can do,” Zanik also said.

“Our plan has always been the same: to build a championship competitive team that can go deep into playoffs, accumulating assets to identify opportunities and be ready, and have that capital to spend and deploy when those opportunities become available.”

Stats that tell the story of the week

31

Lauri Markkanen’s 50-40-90 stretch is now up to 31 games. Since Jeff Hornacek retired in 2000, only six Jazz players have had a span of 30 or more games with those shooting splits, and Markkanen is the only player with two such stretches. (He also had 39 games of 50-40-90 last season.) He’s also up to 63 dunks and 143 triples, meaning if he plays every game he is on pace to repeat his historic 100 + 200 feat from last season.

49.3%

Utah’s clutch 3-point percentage isn’t just the best figure in the league late in close games — they’re also the only team whose clutch 3pt% is higher than their clutch 2pt% (45.6%).

60-36

The Jazz’s comeback win over OKC featured a 60-36 advantage in paint points — which is good because OKC was red hot from the outside (51.4% on threes) and Utah had a lot to make up for there. Utah also outscored the Thunder 19-9 on second chance points.

6-15

In losses on Thursday (@ Phx) and Monday (vs. GSW), Utah allowed 30 and 22 fast break points, respectively. They are 6-15 this season when allowing at least 22 transition points — meaning they’re 20-13 otherwise.

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

Because of technical difficulties earlier this week, we’ll go ahead and include Monday’s game in this week’s exercise.

Jazz 124, Thunder 117: Kris Dunn. Dunn was the near unanimous fan choice for how he changed the game defensively. Thunder players shot 30% with Dunn guarding them, and he visibly disturbed Shai Gilgeous-Alexander’s flow; the MVP candidate had 19 points at halftime, but scored just nine on 3-for-10 shooting afterward. Dunn did a little of everything else too: 8 points, 5 assists, 4 steals, 3 boards and even 3 blocks. I’m still a bit conflicted over not giving it to Markkanen — who had 33 and 11 overall and whose 17-point third was also vital to turning the game around — but I’ll yield to the very enthusiastic majority on this one. John Collins has 22 and 9, as well as a perfect (4-for-4) 4th quarter, and Keyonte George hit a pair of off-the-bounce threes when the game was close.

Strong in defeat:

• Jazz 115, Suns 129: Walker Kessler. At first glance I thought this had to be John Collins (21 and 14), but he had his share of defensive mistakes and was a -20 for the game. So instead I’m going with Walker Kessler: 10 points, 4 blocks, 9 rebounds, 2 steals and 2 assists. Collin Sexton was also pretty good with 19-4-8, but on a night when the Jazz lost because they couldn’t get stops, Kessler’s 10/21 field goal defense put him in front of Collins and Sexton for me.
• Jazz 107, Warriors 129: Collin Sexton. The Jazz needed Jordan Clarkson’s 5-for-5 start in the worst way, and at that point in the game he seemed destined to be the prime candidate for Game Ball (if they won) or this consolation prize (if they didn’t). But he missed 9 of his next 11 shots, and overall it’s hard to give it to Clarkson for 22-4-1 when Sexton had 22-6-5 and scored more efficiently. But it was close. You could also give it to Kessler again for a very similar performance to the previous one: 11 points, 9 boards, 4 blocks, 2 steals and an assist.

Breaking down the Xs and Os behind a Jazz score.

This little screen-the-screener action caught my eye in the OKC game, and then when I went back to find it, I realized they ran the same exact action on the next play — but as a decoy.

The Jazz run a little perimeter flex here. “Flex” action most often describes screen-the-screener stuff run closer to the slot, but here the Markkanen pindown for Collins forces the defender to focus on that for a half second so that he’s in a disadvantageous position when Markkanen then flares to the corner behind a second screen.

Then on the very next play, the Jazz run the exact same action, but this time play to the opposite corner for Dunn.

Everything on the strong side of the floor happens the exact same: screen-the-screener for Lauri, and then Collins runs off the pindown into a ball screen for Sexton. This time, though, OKC just got burned by having Chet Holmgren hedge at the level of the pick, because it required the second defender to be engaged. So instead they have Holmgren drop back more so Jalen Williams doesn’t have to leave Lauri. But Sexton reads this right and drives right into the lane anyway to pull in the weak side help, freeing up Dunn for a wide open catch-and-shoot.

It’s an interesting example of how the same action can yield different options depending on how the defense reacts.

Looking ahead to the next seven nights of action

Just two more before the break, as the Jazz continue a 5-game homestand — or really two mini-homestands, broken up by All-Star weekend.

• Wednesday 2/14: Jazz vs. Lakers. LeBron James will miss this one, the sixth time he’ll have sat in his team’s last nine trips to Utah. But the Jazz will still have to deal with a team that’s won 10 of 15, led by All-Star Anthony Davis as well as D’Angelo Russell who has gone for 20+ in 11 of his last 15 outings — starting with his 39 points in Utah last month.
• Thursday 2/15: Jazz vs. Warriors. The Dubs’ Monday win in the Delta Center was their seventh victory in eight games. They also have the easiest remaining schedule of any West team (per B-Ref), so if Utah is to have any chance of catching them, they’ll have to make the most of this game and two visits to San Francisco in April.

Random stuff from the Jazz community

As an incurable dork, I like keeping track of things like this:

The Jazz have built their current team mostly through trades and the draft, with some budget signings along the way.

You could call Sexton a free agent signing since he had to agree to sign that contract knowing he’d be continuing his career in Utah. Similarly, Kessler arrived via trade, but as an unsigned draft pick, so you could put him in either column.

Interestingly, of the six Jazz free agent signings still playing with the team, five were initially signed as 10-day or 2-way contracts.

The break is almost upon us! Next week I’ll roll out the schedule strength graphics, as sure a sign of spring as a wood-eating rodent from Pennsylvania.