Salt City Seven: Rotation Questions, Playoff Peek, Clutch Conley & More

How will rotation roles look in the playoffs for role players like Forrest (right)? (Francisco Kjolseth, The Salt Lake Tribune)

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.

It got easier this past week to narrow down the big questions that will ultimately shape the Utah Jazz’s playoff rotation.

For starters, we learned this week that the Jazz plan to begin ramping up Mike Conley Jr.’s minutes and role ahead of the playoffs. That means that the Jazz will slowly start resembling the fully-deployed version that’s going to matter in the postseason. That’s big news for Utah’s lineup quality going forward, since it is almost impossible for them to play losing basketball in lineups with Conley.

The other notable thing that gave Utah some rotation clarity happened quietly on Tuesday night, as the clock flipped from 11:59 p.m. to midnight on the east coast. When the calendar hit March 2 without any notable buyout or waiver candidates hitting the market, it became far less likely that a rotation-level reinforcement was coming from the outside.

This is the team. These are the Jazz players who will decide how far the club goes in a high-stakes postseason.

That leaves Jazz coach Quin Snyder with just a few outstanding rotation questions to sort through over the squad’s final five weeks of the regular season.

 #1 – What does Conley’s ramp-up mean for Trent Forrest

Forrest’s main purpose in the rotation has been to limit Conley’s minutes in an effort to avoid overtaxing the 34-year-old. It has worked: Conley, whose knee and hamstring issues took him offline for stretches of 14, 9, 6, 5 and 3 games in the past two seasons¹, has yet to miss consecutive games this season. If Conley gets through the postseason without suffering a load-related injury, a lot of the credit will go to Forrest’s ability to fill some minutes and protect the 14-year vet.

But if Conley is ready to take some of those minutes back, it’s worth wondering what role the Jazz still have for the second-year bulldog guard to fill.

With the ball in his hands, Forrest is capable of breaking the paint when he wants to, and he has started to pry open the defense with physical drives. The problem is that he is a limited threat when he’s off ball. It’s not just his lack of outside shooting — he has made five threes all year — it’s the overall passiveness off the ball. He doesn’t seem to want the ball to come to him, and the offense often dead ends when he gets it.

The easy solution is to play him in settings where he can handle, but every possession he has the rock is a trip where you’re not getting the most from Conley or Donovan Mitchell. Conley’s in the 80th percentile as a scorer out of pick-and-roll situations, and Mitchell is in the 91st. They’re also two of the very best off-the-bounce shooters in the league. The Jazz want the ball in those guys’ hands. Taking the ball away from Mitchell and Conley just to justify playing Forrest is something opponents would be thrilled about.

Here’s another alarming stat that doesn’t bode well for Forrest’s playoff minutes: the Jazz outscore opponents by 11.8 points per 100 possessions² with Rudy Gobert on the court in the non-Forrest minutes. Gobert and Forrest together get outscored by 5.8. The Jazz learned in the Ricky Rubio era that, for as special as Gobert is on both ends, it’s hard to fully leverage him when he is playing with non-shooting guards against focused defenses.

Forrest has earned his opportunities. He’s a plus defender, he’s tough, and he has pounded his way to an above-average true shooting figure despite not being an outside threat. He deserves the minutes he has gotten and we’ll likely continue to see him play, at least as an “on deck” guy who subs in when other guards are hurt, resting or in foul trouble. But as Conley gets closer to his playoff form, Forrest likely transitions to more of an emergency option. (The Jazz should convert his contract to a standard deal so he can log playoff minutes when needed.)

#2 – Can the Jazz get Rudy Gay back to November-December levels?

In his first two dozen games as a Jazzman, Gay demonstrated plenty of the ways he could help the team. He averaged 9.6 points, 4.6 rebounds (in 20 minutes) and shot 39% from three. While not a defensive stopper at this point in his career, there were times his length on the defensive perimeter tangibly impacted the opponent. The Jazz were 19-5 in those games, and +12.5 per 100 in his minutes.

Then he started missing games as the Jazz managed his heel recovery and some knee pain. He was in and out of the lineup — and when he did play, it was with a depleted roster — before the Jazz finally decided to shelve him for six in a row.

All of that in-and-out movement has really impacted his rhythm. He’s just 3-for-22 from the field (and 1-of-11 on threes) since returning from that 6-game absence, and overall he’s down to 6.7 ppg, 21.2% on threes, and a rotation-worst -5.8 net rating since January 7.

The Jazz would be thrilled if they could unlock Spurs-era Gay: a 12-and-6 stretch four who shot around league average on threes and had good outcome numbers in most on-ball perimeter defense settings. That version of Gay would help Utah maximize its title odds. If that’s not in the cards, then at least getting him back to those November-December levels is a puzzle the Jazz staff should be focused on solving.

If he can’t at least get there, then it’s going to get harder to justify not giving some of those minutes to Eric Paschall, who has been a better outside shooter and who gets to the paint and the line more often. Paschall has also had some impressive moments guarding the ball on switches. (His defensive focus away from the ball comes and goes.) He’s not quite the shot creator Gay can be, and that might matter in a post-Joe Ingles reality. Gay is also a better rebounder.

For better or worse, Snyder’s style as a coach has broadly been to trust a guy’s body of work over getting carried away responding to a short-term slump. That approach has helped multiple Jazz veterans weather funks of varying lengths, and it’s why I think the default choice will be to see if Gay can get himself back to providing what the Jazz envisioned when they made him their big offseason signing. But this one is worth monitoring.

#3 – What does Danuel House Jr.’s role look like come playoff time?

House has been something of a revelation so far: he’s provided some on-ball peskiness the Jazz have desperately needed, and he has made exactly half his threes as a Jazzman. He looks like a winning player, and let’s not forget that the guy has played a big role on playoff teams in the past.

Currently, House is averaging just 16.6 minutes since the Ingles trade, meaning he isn’t even fully backfilling the departed wing’s role. He doesn’t do all of the things Ingles did in terms of pick-and-roll creation³, but it still feels like there’s an opportunity to utilize him more. Snyder even opted to close with House in Royce O’Neale’s spot in Phoenix. (O’Neale is still a net positive defender, although he has had some weird brain farts lately.) Having a pair of House/O’Neale types is not at all a bad thing. O’Neale is considerably more physical, but House’s lateral movement and screen navigation has been impressive. They could even play together in situations; so far, they’ve played almost strictly opposite one another in the rotation.

 Aside from these three questions, everything else about the Jazz’s playoff identity is pretty much set, barring injuries or weird matchups that force Utah’s hand. There’s no rotation-altering help about to walk through the locker room door, and at a certain level, that’s fine. The Jazz are still +9.7 with their starters and +9.1 with any five of their main 11 guys. They have 19 games left to figure out how to answer these last three burning questions in a way that maximizes their chances of avoiding another awkward summer.

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

Right after the Jazz laid an egg in New Orleans on Friday, the Memphis Grizzlies returned the favor by blowing a 14-point lead to lowly Houston. Meanwhile, the Warriors have hit their own injury-laden stretch like Utah had in January. The result of all that is that the 2-3-4 race has gotten significantly more dramatic, with No. 4 Dallas and No. 5 Denver not far behind, and heating up.

The Western Conference race with five weeks left.

The Jazz have two chances — starting tonight — to clinch the tiebreaker over Dallas, which would give them tiebreaker help over the three teams right behind them, making it all the more likely that they finish fourth or better.

Catching Memphis was always going to be a tall order because of their soft schedule: the Grizzlies play their next eight against losing teams. But the Warriors keep slipping, which could give Utah a chance to get away from the bracket that includes both Pacific Division stalwarts. Draymond Green will be reevaluated in another week or two, and that will be an important prognosis for shaping the West playoff outlook.

Other observations:

• All of Golden State’s remaining games against WC playoff opponents are road games; all of Denver’s are at home. Those two teams play twice in Ball Arena this week.
• The Pelicans’ 9-5 stretch has opened up the possibility of the Lakers sliding to 10th and needing two road wins in the play-in just to qualify for the postseason. The Lakers are 11-10 when LeBron James and Anthony Davis both play.
• The Suns’ lead is big enough that even with star injuries, they may be able to wrap up No. 1 early. That could impact the playoff race for other teams as the Lakers (4/5), Clippers (4/6) and Jazz (4/8) all face them in the final week of the season.
• Golden State-Utah on April 2 is potentially a huge game.

And speaking of huge games…

In their own words

“We really need to get out tomorrow and show up and try to win a really important game.”

-Bojan Bogdanovic, speaking about Jazz-Mavs on Monday

Monday’s game will go a long way toward determining the middle of the playoff bracket. The Jazz can put three in the loss column between them and the Mavs while also clinching the tiebreaker… or, a hot team can pull to within a half game.

But more than anything, this quote is here to comment on just how often we’ll hear about playoff-style showdowns in the next five weeks. The Jazz winning either game in Dallas would be huge. The Jazz-Grizzlies game on April 5 could be the clincher in the race for No. 3 or even No. 2. The Jazz still have to host Eastern Conference elites Chicago and Milwaukee, plus visit Brooklyn, Boston and Charlotte as they jockey for position.

But far and away, the April 2 showdown in San Francisco could be the biggest remaining regular season game of the Jazz’s year. Using FiveThirtyEight game percentages, Golden State has a projected 6.84 wins between now and then, putting them right at 50 heading into the encounter. FiveThirtyEight gives Utah 8.73 wins, or 49 total. This game would also decide the tiebreaker⁴, and could wind up being the first full-strength game between the two squads.

If you care about seeding at all, that game is massive, rivaled only by the two remaining games in Dallas and the Grizzlies’ visit to the Salt Lake. This is fun.

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

12

Nobody was thrilled that Wednesday’s game in Houston went into the final minutes undecided, but it did lead to quite the display from one of the league’s best long-range clutch snipers. Conley hit all three of his “clutch” 3-point attempts, bringing his season total to 12 makes and 52.2% accuracy in those conditions⁵. That’s the third highest figure in the league, behind only Fred VanVleet’s 17 clutch triples and Kyle Kuzma’s 15. Bogdanovic is also right between Conley with 11 clutch threes.

.405

While we’re talking about Conley, it looks like the veteran has still not fully bounced back from shouldering that extra load during January’s injuries. At one point starting with Snyder’s “Mike Conley spilled his guts on the court” comment, Conley averaged 16.4 pts, 41-43-88 shooting and .561 TS over a 7-game span. In the 7-game stretch since then, he’s at 8.7 pts, 30-25-75 shooting and .405 TS. We’ll see if the rest night in OKC helped him reset things.

-8.4

Gobert is shooting 73.2% from the field since returning from his calf injury seven games ago, but his impact hasn’t quite been the same. His net rating before that absence was +7.3, and since returning it’s -8.4. His offensive rating is 10.3 points worse since the injury, and the defensive rating is 5.0 points worse. Now we’re learning the strained calf is still bothering the big guy.

28.9%

That was the shooting percentage of the five starters in Friday’s debacle in New Orleans. The team’s 41.3% effective field goal percentage outside of garbage time made it the worst shooting night of their season. Their 85.1 offensive efficiency was also a season-worst.

81.7

Conversely, Sunday night in OKC was the first time in the last six games the Jazz held an opponent below league average (94.8) in their halfcourt offense. That’s an area Utah needs to start to shore up their defensive integrity. Their season figure is still strong: 92.5, just barely off of last year’s league-leading 91.3. But the last six games have included some rough outings in that sense.

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

A pair of game balls to give out this week, and both were fairly easy calls.

Jazz 132, Rockets 127: Donovan Mitchell. Mitchell and Gobert scored the Jazz’s first 19 points. Mitchell and Conley scored the Jazz’s final 19 points. The common denominator here was Spida, who was special all throughout a 37-point, 10-assist effort. Mitchell’s 1-for-6 fourth quarter did open the door for Houston, but they were all good shots, and he more than made up for it by making one right read after another. He assisted two of Conley’s three clutch triples, and helped himself to six OT points of his own. It was the first time since 2010 (Deron Williams) that a Jazz player had at least 35 points and 10 assists, and he added three steals to boot. Professional bacon-saver Conley (13 of his 15 in the 4th and OT, plus eight helpers, four boards and four steals) had a case despite early struggles, and Gobert (27 and 17, near perfect shooting) was worthy of mention, too.

Jazz 116, Thunder 103: Bojan Bogdanovic. Kind of an easy one, all things considered. Bogey not only had a case as the hero of this game (with a nod to Mitchell’s 24 & 10) with his 35 points, five boards and three assists, but he also made personal and franchise history. His 11 threes were an NBA season high, the most ever by a Jazz player, Bogey’s own career best by three makes, and moved him into seventh on the all-time franchise triples ranking. They were also timely: OKC pulled to within eight points three separate times in the final four minutes, and each time, Utah’s answer was a Bogdanovic triple. Dude was just feeling it. Mitchell was the clear runner-up, but Jordan Clarkson deserves credit for his 12-point fourth, and Gobert had a 12-and-17 double-double and a game-best +26.

Strong in defeat:

• Jazz 90, Pelicans 124: Hassan Whiteside. Honestly, this is by default. Almost everybody else has an objectively bad game. Not a single starter hit his season average for points, and as a group the first five shot 28.9% from the field. Clarkson was inefficient on offense and didn’t have it on defense. Gay missed all five shots. It really had to be Whiteside or House, and the former was a little better with a 13-and-12 double double. But the fact that only two guys even qualified for consideration here is a pretty good sign of just how ugly this one was. 

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

Sunday’s win in Oklahoma City kicked off the Jazz’s last remaining 5-games-in-7-nights stretch of the season. Here are the other four contests in that busy week.

Monday 3/7, Jazz @ Mavericks: The Mavs have the league’s second-best defense since January 1 and are 22-7 over that span. More recently, they’re 10-2 over their last dozen, with the losses coming to Miami and Utah. This is a possible first-round preview, so the tactical questions here are pretty fascinating. Will Mavs coach Jason Kidd decide again that Gobert guarding Luka Doncic is “to (their) advantage?” Will the team that’s second worst at getting to the rim make enough midrange shots to make Utah’s core defense uncomfortable? Or will they play more Maxi Kleber-at-5 minutes to try to force the Jazz into a different configuration altogether. These questions will matter even more if the teams involve find themselves in the 4-vs.-5 (or even 3-vs.-6) matchup.

Wednesday 3/9, Jazz vs. Blazers: The Joe Ingles revenge game. I jest, but Ingles’ new employers did win four straight after that trade…  and then promptly evened things out by losing four in a row. Still no Damian Lillard or Jusuf Nurkic for Portland, and C.J. McCollum and Norm Powell are no longer there. Which means the scoring punch will have to come from Josh Hart (17.5ppg as a Blazer) and Anfernee Simons (17.3 this season). The latter had 38 in a loss to the Timberwolves, but has been ruled out of Monday’s sequel in Minnesota. We’ll see if he’s back in the picture for Wednesday night.  

Friday 3/11, Jazz @ Spurs: One of the most inexplicable home losses off the season came against the Spurs when all of the rotation players were healthy. But since then, the Spurs have evidently decided to pack it in for the season, sending out decent players in three different asset-producing trades and then buyout out some of the playable vets they got back in those deals. (Known Jazz target Josh Richardson is still there, but averaging just 3.3 points so far as a deep reserve for the Spurs.) Dejounte Murray leads them with 20.4 points per game and is third in the league with his 9.4 assist average. The Spurs have lost four straight and currently sit three games outside the play-in range. 

Saturday 3/12, Jazz vs. Kings: The Jazz saw the Kings three times in quick succession early on in the season — winning all three by an average of 11 points — and then haven’t seen them since. In the meantime, the Kings have remodeled their frontcourt, adding the stretchy Domantas Sabonis, a player who can test Utah’s defense with his ability to shoot and pass in space. That said, they’re 4-6 with Sabonis in the lineup and they’re four games behind the last play-in spot. De’Aaron Fox is averaging 28 points and four assists since the Kings traded prized guard Tyrese Haliburton in an implicit nod toward Fox’s talent. The Kings have lost six of eight, but will be at a rest advantage when they visit SLC — they don’t play on Thursday or Friday, so they’ll be waiting in the valley while the Jazz zip to Texas and back.

Random stuff from the Jazz community.

It’s the season of madness, which provides the perfect excuse to use this space to boost Jay Bilas’ post featuring a fresh-faced Quin Snyder…

By saying “yes” to Coach K, I had the honor of having Quin Snyder as a teammate and friend for over 37 years. Quin was a great player, and the smartest basketball mind I’ve known. A hoop savant. pic.twitter.com/AqxcFZOpgk

— Jay Bilas (@JayBilas) March 5, 2022

Snyder’s alma mater will likely be a top-2 seed heading into the tournament when the committee makes its selections next Sunday. O’Neale and Jared Butler’s Baylor Bears will vie for a top seed.

Conley’s Ohio State, Gay’s UConn, Paschall’s Villanova and Udoka Azubuike’s Kansas are all projected to land top-6 seeds, although a lot will be determined by this week’s conference tournaments. The alma maters of House (Texas A&M), Forrest (Florida State) and Nickeil Alexander-Walker (Virginia Tech) are not likely to be dancing this year. Mitchell’s Louisville is having one of its worst seasons in recent memory, and Clarkson’s Missouri (where Snyder coached for seven seasons) is second-to-last in the SEC. Whiteside’s Marshall and Xavier Sneed’s Kansas State both posted losing records this year as well. 

But as you know, the dance that matters to us here at Salt City Hoops is the one that starts in mid April. And we’re drawing ever closer!