Salt City Seven: Trusting the Core, Ninth Man, D Sans Gobert & More

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.

Exactly half of the last four NBA champs made significant win-now trades at the deadline in their banner seasons, while the other two decided the best way to maximize their title odds was to keep their rosters and rotations mostly intact.

The Utah Jazz ultimately opted to emulate the latter pair of recent title winners last week. After checking around to see what their available assets and veteran contracts could (and couldn’t) get them on the trade market, Jazz brass made only a minor deal on Wednesday. Nothing else came together, at least partially because Jazz general manager Justin Zanik believes in the club’s current core.

“We’re a very competitive team. When we’re healthy and connected, we have a chance to contend for a title,” Zanik told reporters on Friday. “We want to bet on this group.”

To Zanik’s point, the Jazz are 22-8 when all five starters are available, a 60-win pace. They’re even pretty solid when a single starter is out: 12-8, or a 49-win pace. Their 1-5 record in the remaining games is slightly more worrisome until you realize that the Jazz played all six of those games with both Rudy Gobert and Donovan Mitchell sitting.

That doesn’t mean the Jazz stayed on the sidelines during the trade deadline. Whispers are that they were active, even pushing significant stuff to the center of the table at different points. The Jazz only had one tradable first rounder available because of nuances around trading future picks, and signs are that they were mindful that a far-out draft commitment could come due at a time when their roster could look very different. The earliest a pick could be traded is after the 2025-26 season, a year in which no current Jazzman is guaranteed to be in the roster. That said, I’m confident the pick was not fully off the table. Ultimately, the fact that many of Utah’s rumored targets didn’t move probably says a lot about where their price tags were set by their current teams.

The big names were just not available for what the Jazz could realistically offer. And instead of mortgaging the future on middling pieces, the Jazz made only a smaller deal: they used Joe Ingles’ contract, the young Elijah Hughes and likely the two lowest-value picks from their stash of second-rounders to add a couple of deep reserves. Nickeil Alexander-Walker is an interesting flier, a prospect with “skills and tools,” per Zanik. And Juancho Hernangomez at least gives them a more experienced option for the deep bench in case of emergency.

The latter is on a virtual expiring contract, but Alexander-Walker could ostensibly be a piece the Jazz build with, as he’s still on his rookie contract and the Jazz will have the option of extending his contract this fall or going into the summer of 2023 with matching rights.

“We’ve always wanted to bet on our coaching staff, our culture here, and our development staff to take some of the really good things that I think Nickeil shows, and make it even better,” Zanik said of the young guard.

Beyond that minor trade, the Jazz largely followed in the footsteps of the 2020 Lakers and 2018 Warriors in staying the course.

Those teams both sniffed around for upgrades at the trade deadline in their respective seasons, but ultimately didn’t find anything they felt raised their chances. They decided to trust in the rosters they had assembled¹, and those squads rewarded them by hanging banners.

The other two recent title winners, though — last year’s Bucks and the 2019 Raptors — made bold, win-now moves at the deadline. The Bucks gave up a first-round pick and unprotected another first they already owed Houston² to bring in P.J. Tucker’s defense, toughness and corner threes. Toronto gave up a second-round pick along with a lifelong Raptor who had started 96% of his career games³ for Marc Gasol.

Recent NBA history might look very different if not for those two moves. Tucker gave Milwaukee another option to bother Nets superstar Kevin Durant in the Eastern Conference Finals, and Gasol played a huge role as the starter in each of Toronto’s 24 playoff games. But both were short-term gains that came at a significant cost. Tucker has since moved on from Milwaukee, but the Bucks’ obligation still lingers, including with a completely unprotected 2023 1st they owe to Houston. And Toronto pushed chips to the center of the table to give Kawhi Leonard a shot at a title, but the star forward bolted that summer anyway, and the Raps remain mired in mediocrity ever since. It’s easy to say in hindsight that it was worth it — they won it all! — but what if Durant hadn’t toed the line on a late shot in Game 7, or if Kawhi’s infamous corner fader had bounced away instead of in? Would we still feel the same way about those aggressive moves?

(Interestingly, the 50% trend also applies to the last four runners-up. No moves for 2019 GSW, and 2021 Phoenix swung only a minor trade to add a back-of-rotation piece for the playoffs. On the other hand, 2020 Miami’s big deal brought in veterans Jae Crowder and Andre Iguodala, and 2018 Cleveland spent four total draft picks to completely redesign their rotation with an incoming starting guard and three key reserves.)

The point here is that there’s no one way to reach the promised land. Teams have gotten there by remodeling their rotation midseason, and others have gotten there by trusting who they were. The Jazz are once again betting on continuity, and that might prove smart if the main guys get healthy and go back to beating the crap out of opponents. Utah is +15.2 per 100 possessions with its starters, +11.6 with lineups that include only the main eight rotation players, and +10.8 if you widen that group to include fringe rotation players Danuel House Jr., Trent Forrest and Eric Paschall. Their offensive efficiency in any of those configurations is over 120, a historic level of offensive proficiency. 

That’s the version that the Jazz’s decision makers are banking on by keeping the roster mostly intact. 

“I’m excited about this group,” Zanik added.

“Today hurts… I knew it was a possibility but didn’t want to believe it.”

-Ingles’ tweet upon learning about his trade to the Portland Trail Blazers

This is the crappy part of trade season.

It’s weird to imagine Ingles, who has only ever appeared in NBA games as a Jazz player, stepping off the plan in Oregon to meet with his *gulp* new club, but that’s how the witty Australian spent his Friday. The sight of Ingles wearing Blazer colors was jarring, especially since he will be a free agent before he makes it back on a basketball court.

That said, it’s still fully possible that the Jazz look to bring the veteran playmaker back when he’s ready. Utah can legally sign him as a free agent when his current contract runs out this summer, although they can only do so by offering a minimum contract or using another salary cap exception. A minimum contract would earn Ingles around $2.6 million next season, and Utah would only be on the hook for $1.8 million⁴. If the Jazz waited until closer to his return from injury to sign him, those numbers would be prorated.

Bottom line: don’t close the book in Ingles’ Jazz story just yet. He may legally be a Blazer for the moment, and they appear to be taking advantage of that formality to essentially make their pitch for him to continue there past this contract. But if Ingles and the Jazz both envision a continuation of that relationship, that can happen.

What the Jazz have yet to do is establish clearly what will happen this season with the 25 minutes Ingles was playing. The squad’s front eight is pretty clearly set, but we haven’t seen them healthy enough in the post-Ingles reality to assess who might be the new ninth man.

• House, reacquired for the rest of the season, has the highest minutes-per-game average outside the top eight, but we haven’t seen him in uniform since the Ingles injury to know if he’ll be the primary beneficiary of Utah’s vacant rotation role. His experience, shooting and defensive chops might make him the frontrunner.
• Forrest has had the steadiest role over the course of the season, but with the rotation guys healthy, that role has mostly been a small-minute placeholder to keep Mike Conley’s minutes down. He’s getting to the lane at will of late.
• Paschall has played the most total minutes of anybody outside Utah’s main rotation guys, and has been impressive guarding even quicker guys with the basketball. (His attentiveness in certain *team* defense concepts is still a work in progress.)
• Jared Butler and Udoka Azubuike still play very sparingly when the Jazz are mostly healthy.
• If their Jazz debuts are any indication, Alexander-Walker and Hernangomez may not see minutes right away.

Utah could still look for external reinforcements, too. This could be an interesting year on the buyout market, or the Jazz could check in with some unsigned free agents, as they did when they initially brought in House.

For now, Utah’s deep bench is still far less experienced than the average third unit from the last 12 conference finalists. The chart to the right (click to expand) is an updated version of something we looked at last week — and even after the Jazz acquired two young veterans and added House back into the mix⁵, they still have much less experience on the end of their bench than recent teams who made deep playoff runs. Their most experienced deep reserve is Hernangomez, whose 4,358 minutes are still below the 12 other teams’ average deep bencher.

37.2%

In 14 games without Gobert this season, the Jazz are 6-8, and the impact isn’t just in the obvious places. For example, in those 14 games, Jazz opponents have shot 37.2% on threes, significantly higher than the 33.7% they’ve shot in games Gobert has played. That’s why it’s undoubtedly positive that Gobert appears to be progressing toward a return. But here’s the good news: during this 5-game win streak without Gobert, they’ve dialed in the defense and have held opponents to 34.7% from outside. It really seems as though the Jazz have slowly figured out how to defend even without the Defensive Player of the Year, and his return could take that progress and magnify it.

5.8

As mentioned above, Forrest just suddenly figured out he could get to the rim whenever he wanted. Through January 21, Forrest was averaging 3.7 drives per game, and shooting a fairly solid 50% on said drives. In these last nine Jazz games, both of those numbers have risen sharply: his drives per game have more than doubled to 9.7, and he’s now shooting 60% as a driver. In that span, he’s scoring 5.8 points per night just off of drives.

34.7%

Alexander-Walker is a career 34.7% shooter on catch-and-shoot threes, which is somewhat encouraging since he has been on bad teams without much spacing. He is also a career 37.5% shooter from the corners. That’s workable.

.558

A modern big man almost needs to able to either space the floor or impact the defense in order to play a major role, and those are two areas Hernangomez hasn’t really stood out so far in his 6-year career, which is probably why his minutes and opportunities are at a career low. He may have hard time earning minutes in a somewhat crowded fromtcourt, but if he does it will be because he returns to Timberwolf form: he had a .558 true shooting figure over two partial seasons in Minnesota, where he averaged 8.4 points in 20 nightly minutes. It was by far his most productive stop yet.

25

Bojan Bogdanovic has made just 25 of his last 94 shots, or 26.6%. He also has had seven 20-plus scoring nights in that same 15-game span, and was absolutely vital to recent wins over the Warriors, Nets and Nuggets, so this isn’t meant to sound the alarm. But that finger injury may be affecting his rhythm.

Data scientist and Nylon Calculus contributor Tom Bassine touched on something Sunday that you’ve been hearing from this writer all throughout Utah’s January woes: the Jazz are dang good when their stars are healthy.

An update on “healthy” contender performance: pic.twitter.com/q0sx3bODC5

— Tom Bassine (@tvbassine) February 13, 2022

The Jazz having played more than 35% of their games missing at least one of their 2022 All-Stars. But when the two have played, the Jazz have been as good as literally any contender with its best guys available.

And note that these aren’t just the on-court stats for the Mitchell-Gobert duo; the table in Tom’s tweet shows the teams performance in full games where those two have been available. That’s because when they are involved in a game, everybody else gets to perform their usual job description, as opposed to worrying about compensating for an absent superstar.

Look at the D-Rating specifically. As much as we talk about Utah’s defensive deficiencies — and there are obvious weak spots in their armor — that 107.4 figure would be tied with the league’s sixth best defense for the season (Miami). So when the stars have their sneakers laced up and everybody else is in their usual role, the Jazz are actually quite stout at that end.

Of course, this chart also contains some cause for worry: the grid there should also tell you that Phoenix and Golden State are also very, very real with their respective superstars, and the Jazz will likely have to win road series in both of those teams’ cities in order to come out of the West. This lines up with our Riley Gisseman’s latest True-Lo calculation, which shows the tight cluster of the West’s three top powers.

The Jazz are still as formidable as we thought before that January tailspin. But they’ll have to beat some similarly formidable squads to make this postseason a special one.

The Game Ball department was buzzing this week, thanks to three Jazz victories. One of these might have been the easiest call all year on who got the imaginary Wilson, while another might be the hardest ever.

Jazz 113, Knicks 104: Donovan Mitchell. Pretty easy one here: 32 points, seven boards, six assist and four steals. But beyond the stats, it’s the way Don slammed the pedal down in the final minutes to ensure the win. His crazy rebound-and-assist sequence late was just a refuse to lose type moment, and then he closed the refrigerator door with a steal that led to a rare in-game windmill. Azubuike got some credit for a 14-rebound, 3-block performance, and all of Bogey (20), Conley (18) and Jordan Clarkson (16) did their thing, as well. But Spida made this one easy.

Jazz 111, Warriors 85: Hassan Whiteside. The fact that Mitchell didn’t get more love here is more evidence of our obsession with round numbers, because if he had gotten two more assists he would have been the easiest choice of the season. Instead, we get to pretend like his night was just OK because he “only” got 14-10-8. (Also, we’re a little spoiled when Bogdanovic’s 23 don’t even get mentioned.) But yeah, Whiteside was probably the bigger story. Even Dubs coach Steve Kerr said at the half that Hassan had controlled the game, and the Jazz held Golden State to an unreal 69.6 points per 100 when he was on the court. He ended with nine points, 17 boards and seven blocks in 29 minutes. Forrest keeps impressing, too: 11 points, five assists in this one. 

Jazz 114, Magic 99: Royce O’Neale. So many ways this one could go. Azubuike was again a popular answer, although longtime Game Ball aficionados know that I don’t love “just give him one” type logic. His 12 & 7 on 6-for-6 shooting was timely and important, but it’s hard to send the Wilson there when Whitside had 15 & 18 on 7-for-9 shooting. Then there was Mitchell willing his way to 24 on a tough night for the offense, and playing some of his best defense of the season. Clarkson’s had nine of his 18 points — and two lobs to Dok — in the fourth quarter alone, and Forrest got some love. But a lot of you mentioned O’Neale, too, and often when things are this close, one of the places I’ll look to break the tie is the Inpredictable calculation on who boosted Utah’s win odds the most. Per their math, Royce’s four second-half treys were vital to blowing this one open. The Jazz also went back to using him as the screener and short-roll decision maker in the non-Whiteside minutes, and he made every right read. For the game: 14 points, 5 assists (all for threes or dunks), 4 steals, and of course good defense.

The Jazz wrap up a homestand tonight, and then have one more matter to attend to in Tinseltown before the team adjourns for a quick break.

Monday 2/14, Jazz vs. Rockets: Ever since the Rockets stunned the Mitchell-less (and Gay-less and Whiteside-less) Jazz, they’ve gone right back to struggling, with eight losses their last nine times out. They kept top 3-point sniper Eric Gordon through the trade deadline, somewhat surprisingly, but the veteran is mired in a bit of a funk, shooting just 20% from deep since his 3-for-4 night in Utah. On the other hand, young Kevin Porter Jr. has been on a tear, making 51% of his threes in the his last 10 outings. New Rockets acquisition Dennis Schrodeis should help with Houston’s lack of playmaking — they’re dead last in assist-to-turnover ratio — and the German guard is expected to make his Rockets debut in Salt Lake City.

Wednesday 2/16, Jazz @ Lakers: The Lake Show is in a bit of a freefall: this 2-7 stretch has dropped them to ninth in the conference. They will have had three full days of rest before hosting the Jazz on Wednesday, which comes at a good time for them since all three of their future Hall of Fame starters are playing dinged up. LeBron James (knee), Anthony Davis (wrist) and Russell Westbrook (back) all played in Saturday’s 2-point loss to Golden State, but have been listed day-to-day. Davis is averaging 23 and 10 since returning from a lengthy absence, but has made just one of nine 3-pointers in those nine games.

**Sunday 2/20, NBA All-Star Game**: Gobert (Team KD) and Mitchell (Team LeBron) will again wear opposing jerseys in the NBA’s midseason classic.

We had Mitchell showing up at middle school games, Gobert and the Ingles coming through with $4,527 donations to a grieving family, and Clarkson professing his love for Utah after dancing on stage with Ice Cube. There was a lot of fun/heartwarming stuff.

But let’s end here, with the fun tie-in between the Jazz and the Winter Games after Utah’s own Nathan Chen secured a gold medal in figure skating. 

After @NathanWChen‘s gold medal win, we surprised him with a special message from his favorite @NBA player: @utahjazz superstar @spidadmitchell. #WinterOlympics pic.twitter.com/2HwLnWPN3j

— NBC Olympics (@NBCOlympics) February 11, 2022

In Chen’s words: “That’s super sick.”

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Just two more before the break, and then a wild stretch run remains.