Salt City Seven: Bench Boost, Can Utah Climb to 3rd, Gobert on Defense & More

Alexander-Walker made the most of an extended opportunity this past week. (Rick Egan, 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.

The Jazz played all of last week’s games down at least two rotation players. Bojan Bogdanovic and Trent Forrest both missed the entire week, Danuel House Jr. hasn’t played since Monday’s first half, and starting guards Donovan Mitchell and Mike Conley Jr. took turns managing minor injuries and/or load-related rest over the weekend.

Yet somehow the Jazz hardly skipped a beat. They lost a close one to Milwaukee and then rattled off three straight wins — by 15, 29 and 15 — for a 3-1 week.

It’s honestly pretty impressive. Streaks like that aren’t that common to begin with, and the fact that Utah notched one while being down three to four rotation players makes this stretch of convincing wins all the more rare. Rudy Gobert has been dominant, and Jordan Clarkson has stepped up to fill the void left by absent facilitating guards. He has had 26, 23 and 20 point outings in his last three, on a combined .601 true shooting. Royce O’Neale has been more aggressive, too.

But teams don’t win like that without contributions up and down the depth chart, and the Jazz have benefited from some timely contributions of late. Three players who barely saw the court before this past week all contributed meaningfully.

Nickeil Alexander-Walker gave the Jazz good minutes when they had to sub someone in for absent rotation guards. His 14-point fourth quarter against Chicago is a big part of how Utah was able to pull away from the playoff-bound Bulls in what became a blowout. He also had a 13-4-5 line against the Clippers, and has played some pesky defense, including with a pair of strips on bigger players in the paint in New York.

Jared Butler impressed with a 21-point outburst while he filled in for Donovan Mitchell on Friday night. His Sunday evening at MSG, filling in for the resting Conley, wasn’t as eye-catching: the rookie was scoreless in 11 minutes. But the Jazz were able to win the non-Mitchell minutes (+7) thanks in part to Butler’s involvement, which is no small thing.

Juancho Hernangomez started three games for the injured Bogdanovic and while his numbers didn’t jump off the box score, his court awareness really helped the Jazz on both ends. His slingshot release on threes is hit-or-miss, but he made enough to punish teams for coming all the way in on Gobert/Hassan Whiteside rolls. He’s also been surprisingly plucky on defense (five steals in the past two games), swings the ball well in the blender, and has rebounded well on a per-minute basis.

In addition to those three, Eric Paschall bullied his way to 17 against the Clippers, and remains a viable option for fill-in opportunities in the frontcourt.

Utah suddenly having more faith in the deep bench is no small thing. Through last Monday, they were -8.6 (per 100 possessions) on the season whenever they had to go beyond their main 11 guys — the nine core roles plus Forrest and Paschall who have been on the edge of the rotation all season. One of the benefits of their February trade was that it brought them two more guys who actually know what it means to be in an NBA rotation, and simultaneously Butler has been growing in off-court development. Suddenly, it feels like less of an adventure to go past 11 on the depth chart.

Let’s be real: the performances from this past week aren’t going to prompt a rotation remodel. Quin Snyder remains the type of head coach who is going to trust his guys’ body of work and, proverbially speaking, “dance with the one who brung him.” That’s not going to change.

But you never know what a team might need in a playoff run. The reigning champion Bucks also had a pretty solid idea who their main nine guys were, but injuries pressed Jeff Teague into extended duty and he had his two best playoff games in ECF wins for Milwaukee. Same goes for the 2020 Lakers, who had exactly nine guys averaging 15 minutes or more in the playoffs, but had multiple vets with rotation experience contribute on the way to a title: JaVale McGee, Dion Waiters, J.R. Smith, etc. Stuff happens over the course of a two-month playoff run, and it’s a nice luxury to have options in reserve who know what it’s like to play competitive NBA minutes.

In other words, don’t expect Hernangomez or Paschall to contend seriously for Rudy Gay’s role. First of all, Gay is playing better himself of late, but also Snyder seems confident that a fully deployed Gay does a lot to raise Utah’s postseason ceiling. And he’s probably right. “As he plays more, he’ll continue to be able to give us more,” Snyder said in that Salt Lake Tribune article. “Getting him out there is important to us. Rudy’s obviously someone we feel like can really impact the game for us.”

But that doesn’t mean that having the Hernangomez and Paschall options won’t be useful in a particular game, quarter or short stretch. Those were roster spots previously occupied by players who had barely set foot on NBA courts.

The guard development is a little more interesting in terms of playoff optionality, just because Forrest remains a player whose offensive limitations could be a focus of opponent schemes in a 7-game series. Credit the second-year guard: his defense and driving have inspired Snyder’s faith and he’s gotten a lot of opportunities, specifically as the Jazz have tried to manage Conley’s minutes. But against a team that’s dialed in on every weakness, it might be harder to play him big minutes. Since teams almost exclusively go under on ball screens set for Forrest, he does most of his damage either driving without a pick, or driving away from the screen as soon as the defender inches towards it. That kind of stuff works on a random night in the regular season. In the playoffs, teams are going to be focused enough on scouting reports to take some of that away.

Maybe Alexander-Walker’s or Butler’s recent productive minutes will encourage Snyder to try something different in the event of a guard injury or foul trouble. Or maybe not — he clearly trusts Forrest despite the offensive limitations.

But regardless, there are multiple options now if Snyder has to go beyond the primary nine guys. That didn’t necessarily feel like it was the case a couple of months ago, and it’s meaningful because no title team has ever gotten through 20-28 playoff games without having to improvise somewhere along the way.

“Improvising” is a decidedly less scary concept all of a sudden, because of what some of those deep reserves have been able to show.

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

Since our last playoff race update, things have actually gotten *more* compressed in the middle. Steph Curry’s injury has GSW inching back towards the pack, and the surging Wolves have leapfrogged the Nuggets and gotten out of the play-in range… for now. Just seven losses separate No. 2 from No. 7.

With three weeks left, the picture is getting *less* clear.

The Jazz have a very tough week ahead, so the next seven nights will really help determine whether the Jazz have any chance of catching the Warriors. Both teams are on the road for their next five. If Utah goes, say, 3-2 and the Warriors go even 2-3, then suddenly that April 2 showdown becomes pretty huge as it could deliver the Warriors the tying loss AND give Utah the tiebreaker edge.

But if Utah struggles any more than that on this tough trip, the gap might be too big to close. Remember, the Warriors close with four straight opponents currently slated for the play-in or lottery, and they might have Curry back for some or all of those four. In other words, if the Jazz are going to catch them, they likely need to do so by the end of that April 2 game.

Other observations:

• Utah’s lead over Denver all but ensures them the division title at this point, which also means they’ll likely possess the Jazz-Mavs tiebreaker even if they lose in Dallas next Sunday.
• Motivations will play a big factor in late games, as always. Will Phoenix — who faces both L.A. teams and Utah in the final week — have their #1 seed locked up before then? If so, that’s a much less difficult game. The Kings, who still face the Warriors, Clippers and Pelicans, just shut down Richaun Holmes.
• Along those lines, will Memphis have any desire to influence their second-round opponent when they visit Utah on April 5? If they have a preference between GSW/Utah, that could influence the way they approach that game. 
• Big head-to-head games this week: aside from Jazz-Mavs, which could go a long way to determining homecourt in a potential 4-5 series, we also get two installments of Wolves-Mavs and a Clips-Nuggets game, all of which could impact tiebreakers and seeding order. Suns-Wolves and Suns-Nuggets won’t matter as much since neither of those teams can mathematically tie the Suns, but those games will impact the 5/6/7 race. Lakers-Pels on Sunday is also very important in the play-in range.

In their own words

“What people gotta understand about what I do on the court is: I’m not just guarding one player. When I’m out there, my mindset is to guard the whole team, like I’m controlling — there’s five guys on the court. I don’t go out there thinking, ‘Whoever I’m guarding, I want him to score zero points.’ But (if) everybody else scores and we lose, did I really impact my team in a positive way? So I’m going out there thinking, I got to guard this whole team and limit, make sure this team isn’t scoring 140 points tonight, and make sure I’m leading, helping my teammates. At the end of the day it’s a team sport. You don’t do anything on your own. My goal is really to go out there and communicate to my teammates and make sure that I have the most impact I can on my team and ultimately on the other team.”

-Gobert, to Bleacher Report’s Taylor Rooks, on his approach to defense

We’re approaching the especially feverish part of awards talk, which means Gobert’s defensive credentials are going to be discussed with varying levels of actual basketball understanding. So hearing the big fella’s own philosophy might be an interesting starting point.

Our Zarin Ficklin will have more to say soon on the DPOY race so I won’t steal his thunder. For now, suffice it to say really nobody does the combination of things Gobert is doing right now. He’s guarding in space more than ever, and really impacting shooters and iso scorers, all while still having an amazing year as a rim protector, even by his own lofty standards.

If versatility is the argument, you should know that Gobert guards more threes per game than Bam Adebayo, Draymond Green, Jaren Jackson Jr. and even top guard defenders like Marcus Smart and Mikal Bridges. Adebayo’s and Green’s rim protection numbers are legitimately not good, so the only players really offering anything like Gobert’s combination of rim denial and ability to guard outside are Jackson and Giannis Antetokounmpo.

Gobert’s backup just offered a ringing endorsement of his improved defense outside.

“They try (to expose Gobert on the perimeter), but it don’t go well,” Whiteside said this past week. “They put that perception out: ‘Hey, he can’t guard out here, he can’t guard the perimeter.’ But after seeing it, guys really don’t score.”

And back to Gobert’s original point, it’s more about how to uphold the integrity of the team defense anyway.

“My guy might score 30. I don’t want that, I have pride, obviously,” Gobert added. “But if my guy scores 30 but the other team score 80 points, that’s the best defense in the league, that’s amazing. I’ll take that.”

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

15+

There have been 20 streaks this season where an NBA team has won at least three straight games by 15+ points. The Jazz own four of them, including the active one. They won a trio of games by 35, 16 and 18 in November; then 32, 22 and 25 in December; then had a February streak with wins by 26, 15 and 34. They’ve won their last three by 15, 29 and 15.

10

Utah canned 10 threes in Monday’s first quarter against Milwaukee, the most in any quarter by an NBA team this season. They honestly dominated the game except for when the absences forced them into weird lineups: they were 59-47 in any lineups with Mitchell-Gobert-Conley.

+19.6

Conley had a 50% week from three, and the Jazz won his minutes by 19.6 per 48 minutes. Amazing how many people were ready to put him out to pasture just a week ago. Even in his one relative clunker for the week — an 8-point, 4-assist night with 2-for-12 shooting against the Clippers — he was +27. Conley is still really, really good.

56

The Jazz had 10 players available for Friday night’s win, and prior to that evening, they had played just 56 possessions all year with any 5-man combinations involving only those 10 players. And yet they dismantled the Clippers, leading by as many as 41.

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

A 3-1 week is nothing to shake a stick at, given the players who were in and out of the lineup. Let’s give out imaginary game balls to celebrate Utah’s three straight victories.

Jazz 125, Bulls 110: Donovan Mitchell. There’s a real temptation to overthink this based on Alexander-Walker’s “Oh, hi Utah” moment. The reserve guard was awesome during a stretch that really mattered: his 14 fourth-quarter points included six in the initial 8-3 spurt Utah used to build a cushion, then eight more during a 14-0 run that dropped the hammer. Just an awesome moment for the young fella. But Mitchell’s third-quarter explosion was even bigger and more protracted: a 25-point outburst that put Utah in position to enter the fourth in pole position. Even the 14-0 run was largely a function of the Chicago defense reacting to Spida. Overall: 37 points (on 22 shots) and five assists. Like I said, let’s not overthink this. Gobert was forceful on offense and dominant on defense (14 points, 20 boards, four blocks), and Clarkson (26 on 18 shots) was really good again.

Jazz 121, Clippers 92: Rudy Gobert. All four deep bench guys who were pressed into duty had a real impact on this one. Like, not just cute little “mini-surge” type candidates, but legitimate difference-makers in a big game. Butler highlighted that crew with team highs of 21 points and seven assists. Paschall bullied his way to 17 points, and Alexander-Walker turned in a nice 13-5-4 line in his first game as a Jazz starter. Even Hernangomez’s do-it-all line (6-7-2-2-3) and overall awareness helped. But to be honest, the reason it was out of reach early had a lot to do with Gobert and Clarkson. I was really close to giving this to Butler, but the Twitter voters talked me into being less cutesy and giving this one out on good old “who is the reason they won” criteria. Gobert had 19 & 16, and held Clipper shooters to 5-for-16 when matched up, including 1-for-6 at the rim. When Gobert was on the court, the Clipper offense managed just 69.6 efficiency. Clarkson was a close runner-up with a 20-8-5 line and underrated defense. He helped loosen up the Jazz offense early. Those two were game MVPs by a mile, but kudos to the young guys.

Jazz 108, Knicks 92: Donovan Mitchell. Clarkson was F-U-N to start this one, with 18 points in his first 13 minutes on the court. He shot 8-for-10 in that stretch, part of a 23-6-4 night. But when Mitchell gets cooking the way he did late, it just has to be him — especially in NYC. He had 13 fourth-quarter points and a 36-8-6 output for the night. When the Knicks pulled to within four late, the Jazz broke off a 17-4 run that started with Mitchell’s wicked baseline dunk and ended with his pull-up three. Just too much Donovan. Clarkson is runner-up, though, and Gobert scored 14 points on just three shots (?!), in addition to a whole bunch of great interior defense. (He went to line a ton and buried 10-of-12 once there).

Strong in defeat:

• Jazz 111, Bucks 117: Mike Conley. Mitchell’s 29-6-8 looks glitzier than Conley’s 29-1-7 at first glance, until you realize that Conley’s 29 were a lot more efficient (10/13) than Don’s (10/32) and he had a quarter of the turnovers his backcourt mate had. Mitchell’s night was special despite some fourth-quarter woes, but ultimately Conley’s awakening has farther reaching implications. He was superb, and it said a lot that they had him handle during key stretches, including the 13-0 run to open the second half, during which Mountain Mike was the primary playmaker. 

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

The Jazz continue a positively brutal trip, starting with the second half a back-to-back.

Monday 3/21, Jazz @ Nets: As of this writing, the NYC health department’s restriction for private employers remains intact, meaning that Kyrie Irving will not be able to play Monday night. That said, the Jazz had a pretty good Irving-centered game plan in their February 4 win, holding the All-Star to 15 points on 6-for-20 shooting. This time around they’ll have to deal with Kevin Durant instead. KD is averaging an even 30.0 since returning from injury, on 54-39-92 shooting splits. The Nets have won five of their last six, and in those games they are +76 with KD on the court, but impressively, they have also played winning basketball (+12) in the non-KD minutes over those six.

Wednesday 3/23, Jazz @ Celtics: Another toughie on the Atlantic coast, this time against an absolutely transformed Boston team. Just two months ago, they were sitting a game below .500 before they flipped the switch and reeled off a 21-4 surge. Since January 22, their defensive rating is an absurd 102.1, their net rating is +16.0, and their record is the best in the league over that stretch. Simply put, they are a machine right now, largely due to the defense but also due to the fact that Jayson Tatum is averaging 29.7 over that span. 

Friday 3/25, Jazz @ Hornets: When the “easy” stop of the week involves visiting a winning team (36-35) on the fourth game in six nights, you know it’s a brutal trip. The Hornets have won four straight, and six of eight since they went through a 2-11 stretch that dropped them into the play-in range. This mini-surge has included blowout wins over Cleveland and Dallas, and has coincided with hot shooting stretches for their three-headed monster of LaMelo Ball, Miles Bridges and Terry Rozier. Those three all average 20 (rounded) for the season, and all three are shooting over 40% from deep during this 6-2 push. Gordon Hayward remains out since an ankle injury he suffered on February 7. 

Sunday 3/27, Jazz @ Mavs: This could be the biggest remaining game of the year. It’s a chance to not only send a message to the Jazz’s most likely first-round opponent, but also secure homecourt for said series. The tiebreaker is already all but decided (thanks to Denver’s recent slippage helping the Jazz zero in on the division title, Utah will likely own the Jazz-Mavs tiebreaker regardless of this game’s outcome), but a win in either direction really shifts the odds for #4. That’s especially true if the Jazz pick up another loss or two on their tough trip before Sunday. Dallas, meanwhile, has two games against the surging Wolves, sandwiched around a visit from the Houston Rockets. This is a big week in the 3-4-5-6-7 race!

Random stuff from the Jazz community.

It’s honesty hard to choose between the image of multiple Jazz players playing rock/paper/scissors with some courtside kids or Mitchell getting instruction from Snyder so he could lead the timeout huddle that same evening.

Quick Jazz-themed NCAA tourney update:

Udoka Azubuike’s alma mater, No. 1 seed Kansas is still alive. But fellow #1 Baylor, where Butler and O’Neale both went, was shocked in the round of 32 by UNC. Snyder’s #2 Duke Blue Devils are heading to the Sweet 16, and Paschall’s Villanova (#2) got the better of Conley’s Ohio State (#7) in the second round. Alexander-Walker’s Va. Tech (#11) was sent home in the first round by Texas, and Gay’s UConn was upset in the 5-12 matchup.

Eleven left!