Salt City Seven: Stifle Snubbed, Trade Rumor Context, Letdown Losses and More

Gobert is the league’s top defender, but wasn’t named an All-Star by Western Conference coaches. (Cameron Browne via utahjazz.com)

The Salt City Seven drops every Monday throughout the regular season, with seven regular features meant to relive the week in Jazzland from various angles. Check in every Monday 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 Jazz players or personnel during the week.

“I was surprised… I feel disrespected. (It’s) disrespectful not only towards me, but towards the team, towards the organization and towards the game. Because all the coaches preach about defense, how important it is to get stops in order to win basketball games, and when it’s time to vote, they’re not able to reward the best defensive player in the world.”

-Jazz star Rudy Gobert, on his reaction to learning that he had not been selected by Western Conference coaches to participate in this month’s All-Star game

The story of the week, without a doubt, was the omission of the league’s premier defender — literally the best player in the league at something that encompasses 50 percent of every ball game — from the All-Star team.

Since this is the “Quotable” section after all, let’s crowdsource the analysis of Rudy’s snub to other people around the Jazz family and in the NBA universe.

• “He’s one of the most impactful players in the league. This is clear, not subjective,” Quin Snyder said to ESPN. “Rudy is the best defensive player in the league, and an offensive force when you consider his screening, his finishing and the space he creates with his presence.” 
• “For a game that preaches ‘defense wins championships,’ (Gobert) deserves to be an All-Star,” teammate Joe Ingles tweeted. “There’s no one like him in the league. Whilst being super efficient on offense! #robbed”
• “It’s lunacy!” exclaimed team radio voice David Locke on his podcast. “The Jazz defense is 7.5 points better than league average when Rudy Gobert is on the floor. There are only two players in the league who have the same impact offensively: Steph Curry and Kevin Durant. We just left the defensive equivalent of Steph Curry and Kevin Durant off the All-Star team. It’s absurd, and it was done by the coaches!”
• “Flabbergasted, disappointed, disgusted,” Jazz GM Dennis Lindsey said on the same podcast. “In our mind, a guy that’s first in Win Shares in the league — you know, I’ve got a very upset center on our hands… there’s no way to put into words our disappointment.”
• It’s not just Jazz people, either. Prominent ESPN columnist Zach Lowe chimed in: “This might be the worst snub in recent memory. I am honestly shocked… Gobert has been better (than All-Star picks Klay Thompson, LaMarcus Aldridge and Russell Westbrook) given his gargantuan impact on defense.”
• And then there was writer Shea Serrano’s all-caps rant: “PUT RUDY GOBERT IN THE ALL-STAR GAME YOU COWARDS”
• Donovan Mitchell tweeted a picture of him helping Gobert up in a recent game and added, “Together we will prevail, big fella. #robbed #uhoh”
• Ricky Rubio added: “Rudy is not an All-Star?? I guess defense and winning means nothing.”

Gobert has a top-10 level impact on winning. That’s not an subjective number, either, as rankings recently shared by our own John Keefer will attest. He was All-NBA second team last year, and the reigning Defensive Player of the Year¹, and yet won’t be among the supposed 24 best NBA players — plus two emeritus picks in Dwyane Wade and Dirk Nowitzki — later this month in Charlotte.

“I’m always going to be about winning,” Gobert added. “I don’t want to be focused on those things, but at one point, I would just like to get some recognition.”

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

140.7

Back to this week’s actual basketball… In Portland on Wednesday night, the Jazz allowed the Blazers to achieve an effective FG percentage of 69.2%. That ranks in the ZERO percentile — meaning it was literally in the bottom one percent of defensive performances by all teams this season. Their defensive rating of 140.7² made it literally Utah’s worse defensive night of the year.

Making matters worse is that they followed it up with a similarly futile outing on the offensive end. After beating Atlanta on Friday, the Jazz couldn’t find the bucket in Saturday’s bout with the Rockets, a game that may very well decide homecourt in a first round Jazz-Rox series. Their 88.5 points per 100 non-garbage time possessions against Houston ranked the third percentile of all games this season. Ouch.

+2.0

Just to put into context why you’ll hear Utah mentioned a lot as this week’s trade deadline nears, let’s talk PIPM. Player Impact Plus-Minus combined box score data with plus-minus figures, then adjusts for things like luck and random  to try to measure player impact. Players who have a +5 or better are MVP candidates, +3 or better means you have a pretty good All-Star case, and +2 or better means you rank in the top 40-50 in the league in terms of total impact.

Gobert is at +5.02. Seventh best in the league.

But he’s the only Jazz player above that +2 threshold. Mitchell (+1.36) will get there as he continues to hone his game, and Ingles (+1.4) is really great at a bunch of different things. But the Jazz have fewer of those top-40 type of guys than most contending teams.

Jacob Goldstein calculates PIPM and shares his work and results online. His spreadsheet shows one reason why the Jazz may be looking to make an impact deal this week. Every Western Conference team that’s currently outperforming Utah in terms of Net Rating has multiple players with a PIPM of +2.0 or higher. The Spurs and Nuggets each have two such players, the Warriors have three, and the Blazers and Thunder have four apiece. (The Rockets, ahead of Utah in the standings but just behind on Net Rating, also have just one +2 player, although Chris Paul is close at +1.85.) Eastern Conference contenders Toronto, Milwaukee and Boston also each have four.

Simply, the Jazz could use more impact talent. It could cost them some of their depth and it could even mean parting with a beloved teammate and fidgeting with the chemistry balance. But all of this season’s serious contenders are working with more top talent than Utah. As Lowe wrote in a weekend trade rumor roundup, “Utah is really good, and one upgrade from being potentially great.”

79.8

But here’s where it gets tricky: Utah’s best trade chips are Rubio and Derrick Favors, yet this was a week when it was hard to imagine how the Jazz would fare without them. Those two and Ingles are the only Jazz players with positive net ratings this past week, and this was a week when it was hard to imagine life without either guy. In the 55 minutes that Rubio sat this week, the Jazz offense cratered to an unacceptably low 79.8 points per 100 possessions. Meanwhile, Favors posted the best net rating on the team for the week, at +9.1. Yet because of their contract situations and basketball value, those two may represent Utah’s best shot at swinging an impact deal. What do the Jazz do with that information heading into trade deadline week? Lindsey’s job is not easy.

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

Elevator doors decoy

The Jazz like to deploy an action called “elevator doors” to free their shooters. It’s a play where a pair of screeners let a shooter slip through, and then slide together — like a pair of elevator doors closing — so that the cutter’s defender can’t get through. Ingles and Mitchell both get elevator plays called for them at the elbows. 

But on the opening play against Atlanta on Friday, this elevator doors action for Mitchell was pure decoy. Watch the star guard’s movement through a double screen at angle left.

Because three defenders are occupied with that action, Rubio and Ingles have a simple 2-on-2 game going on over to the right. Ingles sets a ballscreen for Rubio just as Mitchell’s elevator cut begins, so nobody can help on the Ingles-Rubio action. Trae Young tries to go way, way under on Rubio, and then starts to lose him entirely when Joe’s roll kind of drags him into the paint³. As a result, Kevin Huerter isn’t sure whether they’re switching, and kind of freezes. So Ingles just gets his body inside and gets the pass. And there’s nobody to “tag” the roll — meaning no weakside helper to momentarily show on Ingles — because of the Mitchell elevator action.

This might have been just a good read by Rubio, but it looks planned, for a few reasons. First, the Jazz usually script actions on the first play of each quarter and out of timeouts. Second, the fact that Ingles’ pick and Mitchell’s cut were timed simultaneously tells me that was the case here. And finally, by the time Mitchell actually runs through the screens, he’s barely jogging. Which tells me he knew all along that he was the decoy.

Counterpoint: Rubio’s smirk at the end of the video could be a hint that he called an audible when he saw he could pounce on the poor defense by Young and Huerter.

Either way, smart basketball and a good outcome for the Jazz.

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

Jazz 128, Hawks 112: Rudy Gobert

The night after learning he wouldn’t be heading to the 2019 All-Star game, Gobert was simply spectacular. His 25 points came on just seven shots (he made all of them), and he also had 13 boards and two blocks. He started slow because of foul trouble and even tweaked an ankle at one point, but nothing was going to stop the French Rejection from making a statement.

As much as Gobert drove the evening’s narrative & dropped the gaudiest stat line, don’t think it was easy to look past Rubio’s case. The Spanish guard woke up to his name being bandied about in trade rumors, and he still went out and delivered 22 points and 11 assists. The offense was unstoppable when Rubio was running it (135.4 ORtg) and really disorganized when he wasn’t (72.4). That’s why he was a game-best +30 for the night. He was really, really great. If co-game balls weren’t against my rules, I’d have considered it here. 

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

Let’s be honest: losing two straight against fellow Western Conference playoff teams didn’t help Utah. The twin 27-point margins in those games didn’t make things feels especially rosy, either.

But actually, Utah’s still in fairly good shape against their playoff peers. Aside from the Thunder (0-2) Utah is currently tied in the season series against each of the six teams ahead of them in the West standings. They’ve concluded their series with 2-2 splits against the Rockets and Blazers, and they’re currently 1-1 in their series against each of the Warriors, Nuggets and Spurs⁴. They’re also doing well against the teams right on their heels: they have a combined 9-4 record against the teams in spots eight through 13 in the conference. 

And OKC? Both of Utah’s losses against the Thunder came on the second of back-to-backs and after travel, while OKC was rested. The squads will have roughly equal rest when they play each other on February 22 and March 11. Those will be important nights for both teams. Playoff basketball.

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

The Jazz get a rare bit of rest, followed by a rare light week.

They have three straight days off before Wednesday’s bout with Phoenix, their first 3-game rest of the season so far. Then they’ll play just two games. With next week’s 1-game slate before the All-Star break, Utah will have played just three games in a 20-day stretch by the time they suit up for their stretch run starting February 22 against OKC.

Wednesday: Phoenix at Utah, 7:00 p.m. MT 

• State of the Suns: Phoenix has the league’s second-worst defense, third-worst offense, and has lost 10 straight games. By the time they come to Utah, that streak will likely be up to 11 after they host Houston on Monday.
• Jazz-Suns: Weirdly, this is the first matchup between rookie coach Igor Kokoskov and his former team This is the first of four matchups over the course of less than two months.
• Key for the Jazz: Execute the offense and attack. The Suns allow over 41 percent of opponents’ shots to come within four feet of the rim, the highest percentage in the league.

Saturday: San Antonio at Utah, 3:00 p.m. MT – Matinee alert!!!

• State of the Spurs: The Spurs have once again reinvented themselves on the fly and managed to stay relevant. They’re two games ahead of the Jazz in the standings, with an elite offense built around the third-best effective field goal shooting.
• Jazz-Spurs: Utah beat the Spurs in Salt Lake City in a historically prolific shooting performance — and then lost five days later in Texas, in a game where very little went right on either end.
• Key for the Jazz: The defense is going to have to be spot on: Utah’s usual gambit is to get the opponent into a halfcourt game as much as possible, but the Spurs own the third most efficient halfcourt offense. Utah might have to score to beat the Spurs.

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

Finding fresh material for sideline celebrations has to be among the hardest parts of an NBA player’s job; I mean sure, there’s the physical exertion, the miles of running back and forth, the mental preparation for every game… but being continually clever when literally dozens of good things happen for your team every night is a tall order.

Which is why I had fun with this Mitchell bit, right after Kyle Korver hit a running finger roll high off the glass.

Don with the spot-on re-enactment of a Kyle scoop shot pic.twitter.com/v4RkEjM36w

— Utah Jazz (@utahjazz) February 2, 2019

We’ll call that good for another week. Seven more juicy bits of Jazz coming next Monday.