Salt City Seven: Rising Stock, Passing Big, Close Games & More

Sensabaugh is advancing as a ball-in-hands scorer. (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. 

A quick exploration of a big-picture topic

The Utah Jazz are approaching the halfway point of the season, and three of their guys — all 23 and under — have already improved their stock significantly. In a year that was supposed to be about the continued development of their young draftees, some guys in particular appear to have understood the assignment, as the saying goes.

Taylor Hendricks’ trajectory is paused due to injury. Keyonte George’s per-minute stats are basically carbon copies of last year’s. The rookies are mostly just trying to establish their footing.

But no worries, because three of their recent draftees are having extremely interesting seasons.

Brice Sensabaugh. He’s the toast of Salt Lake City right now after scoring 61 total in consecutive nights in his home state. But Sensabaugh’s awakening goes far beyond Florida towns.

He’s battling a couple of veterans (more on that soon) for the highest 3-point percentage among frequent shooters. Just over 42.7% of his attempted threes go in, including half of his off-the-bounce tries. The question with Sensabaugh was always about how much of his offensive creation would translate to the NBA, but that pull-up shooting starts to present the outlines of an interesting ball-in-hands scorer.

In all, he scores 1.3 points per possession that he ends as a pick-and-roll ball handler, 1.2 points for the average trip that ends with an isolation try. Both of those figures are in the top 5% of the league. It’s not a ton of possessions yes (15 isos, 43 P&R), and play type stats are famously finnicky… but so far, putting the ball in Brice’s hands has resulted in good outcomes.

He was a late first-round pick in 2023 and probably didn’t enter the season as a red hot commodity after a 7.5-ppg rookie year on 39-30-90 shooting. Now, seemingly all at once, the game has slowed down for Sensabaugh and he’s scoring at a 48-43-92 clip.

Walker Kessler. A ton has been said about Kessler’s turnaround. He’s leading the entire league in the percentage of available offensive rebounds he secures, and he’s one of just three players (with Wemby, Brook Lopez) to contest more than 200 rim attempts while limiting opponents to under 55% on those shots.

But more than anything, it’s just that the joy looks to be back. Kessler is back to joking with teammates, with opponents, with refs. He smiles more, and not just because his girlfriend is literal Miss America.

After a weird dip in rim efficiency — where more than two thirds of his shots comes from — he’s back to converting 79% there. And it’s not all dunks, although he leads the Jazz with 67 rim smashes. His touch and footwork from an impressive rookie season appear to be back. All of that has him back at #2 in the league in FG%.

Johnny Juzang. A year ago, when the Jazz were contemplating in-season moves to shuffle the rotation, one thing that people pointed out to me as motivation was that they needed to take a more earnest look to see if Juzang was worthy of a standard contract. He wouldn’t be eligible for another two-way, meaning that to keep him, the Jazz would have to decide to use one of their 15 regular roster spots on him, and that was going to require some evaluation over the final two months of 2023-24.

That was a year ago. Now, he’s a rotation fixture. The Jazz basically have six guys averaging starter minutes, and after them, Juzang is next in minutes played. The reason is simple: the Jazz have had success reimagining him as an instant spacing threat.

Juzang shot a ho-hum 36% from outside in his first 20 appearances, but he’s shooting 52% since mid-December, a 10-game span during which he has not dipped below 40% perimeter shooting in any game. That’s actually the longest streak of 40% games (minimum 2 attempts/gm) this NBA season, and since the start of the 2022-23 season only Jamal Murray and Buddy Hield have had 11-game streaks.

Honorable mentions: They’re not as young as the three guys mentioned above, but Collin Sexton and especially John Collins have bolstered their value. Both have flirted with 50-40-90 seasons: Collins was there for a 23-game span, but has since cooled a bit from the line, and Sexton is just two points off from the field, which is remarkable for a guard. Young Bull is shooting above 40% on pull-up threes, which has helped him maintain his .600-plus true shooting despite the fact that he’s not drawing quite as many fouls. Of the main guys, the ORtg is best when Sexton (112.8) or Collins (112.7) is on, and worst when those two guys are off.

Other observations:

• This writer remains pretty unconcerned with Lauri Markkanen’s statistical dips. They clearly are encouraging him into a pretty gutsy shot diet, which is exactly what they should do during an experimental season, especially with a player who literally can’t be traded anyway.
• George has made some specific qualitative improvements, but it’s almost uncanny how similar his per-36 numbers are from his rookie campaign to this year.
• Jordan Clarkson’s shooting has bounced back a little from last season, and overall he’s right back at his career level of 53.9% true shooting.
• Don’t fixate on Cody Williams’, Isaiah Collier’s or Kyle Filipowski’s stats. Their job this season is to survive the 82-game grind and find some NBA skills they can build on.

Telling or interesting words from Jazz people

“I love when our team plays in the games that are back and forth all night. It keeps you focused (and) tests your discipline on every possession. I thought the guys did a great job.”

-Will Hardy

Utah has played in a ton of games like that lately, and it’s been pretty fun. They got massively blown out on December 16 at the Clippers’ new place, but almost every game since then has been competitive and/or a Jazz win.

They won in Detroit and Brooklyn and then had it to a 1-possession game in Cleveland in the final two minutes. Portland and Philly were 1-possession losses, and Denver was never totally out of reach (as close as 109-107 in the fourth). Then New York was the only game in the last batch where they weren’t really close in the final frame, and then they swept their weekend in Florida.

Stats that tell the story of the week

±36

Here’s something: the Jazz are currently the only team in the league to have won multiple games by at least 36 (2) and to have lost multiple games by at least 36 (3). It’s something only three teams have done in the last two FULL seasons: Dallas in 2023-24, Brooklyn and GSW in 2022-23. We’re not yet haflway through the season.

+0.7%, +4.2%, +1.4%, -11

On Monday, Utah became the only team this season to have multiple losses in which they outshot their opponent from the field, from three AND from the line. Only 11 other teams have done so at all, and the Jazz accomplished the feat against the Clippers in mid-November and the Nuggets in the final game of 2024. In this more recent case, the 11-point loss was mostly the product of a huge rebounding difference (51-37) and a Denver’s pace. As Will Hardy noted postgame, Denver had 55 combined points from second chances and fast breaks.

34

Four of the top 13 performances of the season in fast break points have come at the Jazz’s expense, including Denver on Monday and the Knicks on New Year’s Day. Both teams hung 34 transition points on the Jazz.

<10

There have only been 11 games this season in which four starters from the same team failed to reach double figures, and one of them was on Sunday when Cole Anthony was the only Orlando starter to reach 10+ against the Jazz. A night earlier, they also held three starters to single digits in Miami, including 3-time All-Star Bam Adebayo who went scoreless from the field. Weirdly, Utah and Memphis are the only teams to hold four opposing starters shy of 10 in multiple games.

25%

Ooooh boy, is Markkanen cold. He’s his just 10 of his last 40 shots, for 25%. He’s also had three straight games under 20 points, something that until this season had only ever happened twice since the Finn joined the Jazz.

Dissecting a Jazz scoring play from the week

Another thing Kessler is doing really well at lately is moving the ball in response to pressure.

Kessler has always gotten a certain amount of assists from DHOs and from the way the Jazz use him at the elbow while guys are flare cutting and such. But lately I’ve noticed a lot more times when a crowd assembled around him in the paint, Kessler’s dishing to the perimeter, to pretty good results.

He’s also made some really quick reads lately as the elbow ball mover which have helped the Jazz counter high ball pressure.

The first two are pretty simple “blind pig” actions, even though the second one looks a bit sexier with the behind the back pass. Blind pig is the hoop nerds’ way of describing when a defense ball-denies on the wing, so the passer gets the ball to the big instead so he can safely get the ball to the denied player on a backcut. It gets Sexton a drive on the first one, and then on the second, Russell Westbrook tries really hard to recover, so Sexton just changes direction.

But the last clip in that trio is another, more daring example, of the same concept. The Nuggets switch the wing-wing action, so now Christian Braun has Markkanen and is “top-locking” him to not let him come to the dribble hand-off. No problem, says Lauri, as he simply seals the inside position and dives to the rim instead. But the impressive thing here is that Kessler goes ahead and makes a pretty gutsy pass over the top. Nikola Jokic frankly almost gets it, and in order to avoid the steal, Kessler has to let it hang long enough that the athletic Braun might have gotten to it. But instead, Markkanen gets a layup.

Frankly, that’s a pass I wish even the Jazz guards would make way more often when Markkanen has a smaller guy on his shoulder.

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

If you had told me a month ago that the Jazz would sweep their Florida back-to-back, I’m not sure I’d have believed you. But thanks to Orlando’s health and Miami’s drama, we have two balls to give out.

Jazz 136, Heat 100: Brice Sensabaugh. I actually think if we based this entirely off of who was the game’s most valuable player, Kessler has a real argument. Sensabaugh’s most pronounced flurry, after all, came late in the game when things were pretty well cooked, and this was a defensive win where Kessler absolutely set the tone. He completely neutralized Adebayo and his DRtg for the night was 77.2, with a meaty double-double of 14 and 16. But also… c’mon. Sensabaugh was the story of the game. Sure, 20 of his 34 came in the fourth quarter of a blowout, but when we think about this game in a couple of months, we’ll think about Brice getting silly. He also had seven rebounds, two assists and two steals. Collins was also good in his comeback game (24-9-3) but Sensabaugh is clearly 1a and Kessler is clearly 1b.

Jazz 105, Magic 92: Brice Sensabaugh. On this one Sensabaugh might have been both the story of the game and its MVP. He had another big fourth quarter (13 of his 27), but in this came those late buckets really mattered. He was 5-for-6 from three and with the Jazz’s absences they were really running a lot of Markkanen and Clarkson actions for him. Kessler was solid again: his was the first name Hardy mentioned in the postgame, and a big part of Utah’s game plan was denying Orlando the paint. But once again, Sensabaugh kind of took over the spotlight.

Strong in defeat:

• Jazz 121, Nuggets 132: Jordan Clarkson. Agent 00 had a stellar start with 13 in the first quarter, and finished with 25-5-4 on a really efficient night (7/15 and a perfect night at the line on seven attempts). Sexton (22 and 4) had big buckets late, and Juzang added 14 in his first start of the season, but to me, Clarkson’s only real competition here was Kessler. The big man had a double, plus four assists and two blocks, but also just made Jokic’s night far less comfortable. He was putting in a lot of effort to get back and protect the basket in transition, and he made the MVP use 33 shots to get to 36 points.
• Jazz 103, Knicks 119: Collin Sexton. The veteran guards combined for 50, but Sexton’s half of that came much more efficiently (10/13 from the field with four triples) and more complete (25-4-5 compared with JC’s 25-4-1), so we’ll go with him. Both had turnover issues, but there really wasn’t another super strong candidate. Markkanen had a double-double despite another cold shooting night. 

Looking ahead to the next seven nights of action

The Jazz have 27 home games remaining to just 21 roadies, but that starts with this 4-in-6-night stretch:

• Tuesday, January 7: Jazz vs. Hawks. B-Ref gives the Hawks a 70.5% chance at landing in the play-in for the fourth straight year, thanks to a streaky season: they won six straight around Thanksgiving and four straight to close the year, but they also own losing streaks of four, three, three and their current 0-3 start to a road trip where every loss has come by 17 or more. They’ve got a ton of banged up guys, but leading scorer Trae Young is probably to play in Salt Lake City.
• Thursday, January 9: Jazz vs. Heat. The Heat remain at the epicenter of the league’s drama rankings. Jimmy Butler will miss this entire 6-game western trip with his team-imposed suspension, and just when it looked like the Heat might cleanse the palate after their 36-point loss to the Jazz, they coughed up a 17-point lead in Sacramento and lost in double overtime. They’re back down at .500, and they’ve played one of the easiest schedules to date, so depending on how the Jimmy drama plays out, the wheels could come off.
• Saturday, January 11: Jazz @ Suns. A rare day game! Phoenix is also teetering, having lots seven of their last nine even with Kevin Durant healthy and averaging 30-7-5 on 52/43/86 shooting splits during that span. They tried a lineup change on Monday and it worked in the short term, helping them upend the shorthanded Sixers in Philly. Bradley Beal, who moved to the bench, had the second most points he’s had in a win all season (25).
• Sunday, January 12: Jazz vs. Nets. Brooklyn has been shuttling players in and out of the lineup pretty liberally since they lost to Utah just before Christmas. They’re 2-6 since then, with leading scorer Cam Thomas having only played twice, Cameron Johnson only five times, Ben Simmons four, etc. D’Angelo Russell is back in Kings County after a midseason trade, and he’s averaging 8.0 assists but isn’t shooting well yet (25% from outside).

Random stuff from the Jazz community

It’s time for a new entrant into the Jazz’s jersey history:

𝗧𝗢𝗠𝗢𝗥𝗥𝗢𝗪 👀#TakeNote pic.twitter.com/n5qpUv4D4S

— Utah Jazz (@utahjazz) January 7, 2025

Happy New Year! Hope all our online friends have an excellent 2025!