Salt City Seven: Did the Plan Change? Plus Injuries, Graphs, Stats & More

Hardy and Markkanen are 1-8 over their last nine, and the latter is now dealing with an injury. (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 look at the big, burning question of the moment in Jazzland

Trying something different this week: here’s this week’s “Big Question,” but as a video diatribe. Was it really the Jazz’s plan back in October to make the playoffs their top priority?

Projecting the Jazz’s place in the broader picture

Every team within six games (in either direction) of the Jazz has an easier remaining schedule over their final 20-22 games. Utah is currently six games out of a play-in spot, with Golden State and Los Angeles both trending positively and the Jazz having lost eight of their last nine.

It’s getting tougher to imagine the Jazz in the play-in.

Down the stretch, motivations could be a big deal here. A lot of these teams don’t necessarily have a reason to pack it in, as they don’t own their own picks. 

Utah’s also in bad shape on the tiebreakers with both the Lakers (they already lost the season series) and Warriors (they’d need to win two game in San Francisco to tie), and the Rockets tiebreaker will only matter if both Houston and Utah catch up to one of those California teams.

The Jazz also have picks incoming from their February trades. Those picks are currently slated to be 29 and 31/32 (coin toss).

Telling or interesting words from Jazz people

“It probably hurt a little bit more because I’ve been dealing with a similar hit for more than a month. When you get hit on the same spot, it feels a little worse.”

-Lauri Markkanen, via the Deseret News’ Sarah Todd 

The “it” here is a hit Markkanen sustained in the early fourth quarter in Miami. Right from the moment it happened, it looked worrisome enough that I wondered if it would result in the Jazz bubble-wrapping the Finnish star for some period of time. Sure enough, he appeared on the injury report as being OUT for Jazz-Wizards on Monday.

It’s also interesting that he mentions having dealt with this hit for a month, because that’s about how long he’s been in an otherwise ineffable slump. Markkanen went from shooting 50-40-90 splits over a 2.5-month span to being suddenly and weirdly very off. His true shooting for the season was at 65.2% as of February 8, an unreal figure for someone who scores with his volume. Since then, it’s 53.6% — below league average.

Hopefully a little rest helps Markkanen get back on track.

Stats that tell the story of the week

39

The last time Andy Bailey updated his “Huge Nerd Index,” a composite of all-in metrics thusly nicknamed by Tim MacMahon due to Bailey’s size and geekery, Collin Sexton came in at 39th in the league, comfortably Utah’s second best player. At some point we need to talk about how much of Sexton’s stellar season is real. He’s shooting 50% on drives and also drawing fouls on 11% of his paint forays, while also making 40% of his threes. If we really believe Sexton is somewhere around top-40 level, that is kind of a big deal.

43.2%

The 43.2% Utah shot from outside in Orlando was the fourth highest they’ve shot in a loss this season. They’re 11-4 when shooting over 41%, but in this one they just couldn’t score enough inside to balance their hot shooting. Their 30 points in the paint in Orlando were a season low for them.

36%

Keyonte George is up to 36% on pull-up threes, which is just a huge development for a ball handling guard. For context there, that’s right behind Devin Booker (36.6%) and just ahead of known off-the-bounce assassins like Damian Lillard (34.9%) and Donovan Mitchell (35.0%).

40-20

A key ingredient in Utah’s fall-from-ahead loss in Miami — the first time Utah lost after leading at halftime — was the Heat’s second-half turnaround in the paint. After winning the paint battle 30-22 in the first half, Utah led Miami go 40-20 after the break. Utah also went from a 2-turnover first half to giving up the rock 9 times in the final 24 minutes.

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

No Game Balls this week, but we’ll still single out the top performers in Utah’s three losses.

Strong in defeat:

• Jazz 97, Hawks 124: Walker Kessler. This was not an easy one because nobody really had it in this blowout loss. Sexton led the way with 22 and doubled his career high with six steals. But I’m going Kessler here (14 & 12) because it’s crazy uncommon to have the win probability MVP in a 27-point blowout come from the losing team. Those two are the only real candidates; Markkanen had just 11, and George had 14 but on less than a point per shot.
• Jazz 107, Magic 115: John Collins. Four guys came away from Orlando with between 18 and 19 points, making this a tough call on the surface. But Collins gets overlooked precisely because of how consistent he is, so we’ll go with him since he had the best line anyway (19 and 10), he scored efficiently (7 of 10) and because right from the get-go you could tell he was determined to bounce back from his worst Game Score of the season in Atlanta. George would be my next choice with 19 and 9, and Sexton (with 19, 3 and 4) was solid again other than some uncharacteristic free throw woes.
• Jazz 120, Heat 126: Keyonte George. Pretty easy on this one. A 31-4-4 line for the rookie, and all six of his threes came on possessions where it was a 1- or 2-possession margin. He also had six buckets on drives. Markkanen made it through another rough shooting night to pile up 25-4-6, and Sexton and Collins each added 18.

Looking ahead to the next seven nights of action

Six of the Jazz’s next seven games are in Salt Lake. Here’s a couple of sentences about each of the coming week’s three games.

• Monday 3/4: Jazz vs. Wizards. The Wizards might be just the medicine the Jazz need, as they’ll enter the Delta Center on a 14-game losing streak and tied with Detroit for the worst record. Jordan Poole is shooting just 36% and 31% during the skid, but Kyle Kuzma is averaging 23 and Deni Avdija has been playing out of his mind. 
• Wednesday 3/6: Jazz vs. Bulls. Chicago currently has five guys out who have each started a hundred NBA games or more, but DeMar DeRozan averaged 26 over his 10 to drag the Bulls to a 5-5 split. But they’re enigmatic: they stunned the Pels in New Orleans, then lost to lowly Detroit at home; toppled Cleveland, then got blown out by the Bucks.
• Saturday 3/9: Jazz @ Nuggets. The Nuggets are currently sitting on a 6-game win streak, after spoiling LeBron James’ 40,000-point milestone. That’s all the more impressive considering Jamal Murray has been banged up, and fellow starter Kentavious Caldwell-Pope has also missed some games of late.

Random stuff from the Jazz community

Ben Anderson pointed out that George’s three 30-point games are tied for a Jazz rookie record, with 21 more opportunities to move in front of Deron Williams and Darrell Griffith.

George is also stacking up well against current rookies in a star-studded class.

George is having himself quite the rookie season.

The 20-year-old has a good chance of making one of the all-rookie teams, especially since it’s likely his role will continue to ramp up over the closing stretch.

A quarter of the season is left…