Salt City Seven: Distance, Depth, Defense & More As Jazz Improve to 5-1

November 1st, 2021 | by Dan Clayton

Donovan Mitchell and other Jazz shooters still haven’t found last year’s elite stroke, but it hasn’t slowed the 5-1 Jazz down much. (via ESPN)

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.

In their own words

“It can’t go in if you don’t shoot it.”

-Jazz coach Quin Snyder, per KSL’s Ryan Miller

The Jazz continue in their weird 3-point shooting funk despite being 5-1 overall. It appeared that the dam might finally break in Milwaukee, where the Jazz were shooting 40% well into the third quarter. But then they closed 2-for-12 from outside, tugging their overall percentage for the game down to 32.4%. That preserves a really weird streak for the Jazz: six games in, they have yet to have a single game where they’ve matched last year’s 38.9% shooting from deep, or where they’ve matched last year’s league-leading average of 16.7 threes made.

They’ve been particularly cold from the corners, where their 32.3% mark is the fifth worst in the association. That’s because that area is, generally speaking, the domain of pressure-release shooters like Royce O’Neale and Jordan Clarkson, precisely the shooters who have been slumping to start the year. The former’s 30% start from three includes 2-for-8 from the corners, and the latter is 2-for-13 from there, part of his 24% overall 3-point slump. Even Donovan Mitchell (0-for-6) still has yet to make a three from either corner. (Bojan Bogdanovic’s slump is from above the break, where he’s 4-for-18, but he’s mostly alone in that regard.)

But Snyder’s approach is the right one. All of those guys will see their percentages correct if they keep getting shots up. If anything, it’s actually really encouraging that the Jazz are 5-1 with a top-4 offense even before their shooters (outside of Joe Ingles and Mike Conley Jr.) have found their rhythm from deep.

“We’re taking good ones,” the coach continued. “Guys are good shooters and things even out over time.”

A quick dissection of a big-picture topic or burning question relevant to the week in Jazzland.

One of the biggest questions about the Jazz coming into the 2020-21 was whether they had finally succeeded in shrinking the chasm between their regular rotation and the deep bench. Continuity in the front seven meant there wasn’t a lot of mystery there, but the club was fairly active at reshaping the back of the roster, with new additions that were meant to make the drop-off after nine or 10 a bit less sharp.

Six games in, that hasn’t yet been the case.

Caveats abound. For one, Rudy Gay still has yet to appear, which means the newly acquired Eric Paschall has instead been manning the role of reserve forward. Also, the standard caveat applies around sample sizes at this early juncture.

Having said all that, the Jazz have had trouble getting deeper than nine so far. Whenever their lineup has featured any five of those nine main dudes — the starters plus Paschall, Clarkson, Ingles and Hassan Whiteside — they have been elite. Like really, elite: +19.0 per 100 possessions, the mark of a juggernaut ready to make history.

But all lineups that feature even one player from beyond that group have a combined -16.9 rating outside of garbage time.

Truth be told, this is mostly about three deep reserves, the only Jazzmen who have logged minutes outside of blowout time. Jared Butler, after a preseason that dared us to wonder if he could crash the rotation, hasn’t looked ready. Miye Oni, a bona fide 10th man last season, was part of one disastrous 4-minute stretch in which the Jazz were outscored 12-0 and hasn’t been heard from again. Trent Forrest lineups held up OK when Conley was on the court with him, but when Forrest played in lieu of the resting Conley in Chicago, the Jazz simply couldn’t score (0/4 FGs and 3 TOs in a short second-half span).

That’s the glass-half-empty angle. The optimist’s interpretation of this data is that the Jazz have enough guys to assemble an elite rotation when all are healthy, and that Gay’s eventual activation will give them 10 guys capable of playing winning basketball. The optimist is right. It helps that Paschall and especially Whiteside have been revelations.  The latter owns the team’s best net rating early on, and his rim protection numbers look like Gobert’s a half dozen games in. (More on that in a minute.)

The Jazz appear to have added to their elite 7-man core with two solid rotation additions, and still look forward to unleashing Gay, a veteran who possesses an uncommon blend of offensive skills and on-ball stopper ability. They’re solidly 10 deep, and most of those 10 guys are talents capable of starting and/or playing big minutes on the average NBA squad. “Starter depth,” as I call it, is a vital ingredient for title teams, and those bench upgrades could really lift the Jazz if they’re in a scenario where they’re without a body or two at key junctures.

But it’s also worth keeping an eye on what happens the next few times the club has to lean on the likes of Butler, Oni and Forrest. So far, those have been the most tenuous minutes for the otherwise dominant Jazz, so if at least one of those deep bench options can get himself ready to contribute positively, they’ll look even more solid and flexible.

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

≤50%

Gobert and Whiteside have been a formidable rim defense duo thus far, with both guys holding opponents to 50% shooting at the rim or under. Gobert’s defending 8.2 shots per game in the restricted area and limiting the adversary to 44.9% shooting, while Whiteside is holding foes to 50% on 5.7 nightly challenges at the rim. Indiana is the only other team with two players challenging at least 5 rim attempts per contest and holding opponents to 50% or under. Whiteside has just been a massively pleasant surprise. Even people who more or less saw the logic behind that signing didn’t imagine him playing this solidly as a paint protector.

256.0

This isn’t the first place this has been pointed out, but keep an eye on Utah’s weirdly low passing numbers. Once a living shrine to “playing with a pass,” the Jazz are last or second last in the NBA this season in various tracked metrics around passing, including passes per game (30th), assists (30th), points created by assists (29th) and assist to pass ratio (29th). This could be just early static, or it could represent a subtle shift in how Utah leverages core actions. For example, they’re currently #2 in the NBA in points produced on the average possession used by a P&R handler, so maybe since they’re getting a lot of of having the ball handler keep it, they’re just not having to go deeper down into their list of options on that play type. Mitchell and Clarkson are both in the top one-eighth of the league in points per possession in that particular setting.

93.9

Last year, Utah scored 133.2 points per 100 possessions when they were able to turn a live defensive rebound into a transition opportunity, the best figure in the league per Cleaning the Glass. So far, they’re managing just 93.9 in the same scenario, the fourth lowest figure. That’s one to keep an eye on. 

13

Gobert, who just nabbed Player of the Week honors, is currently averaging just north of 16 points, 17 rebounds and 72% from the field, which makes the first time since 1970 that a player has hit those levels for the first six games of the season. He’s also had 11 straight games with at least 13 boards dating back to last season, which means he’s two such games away from matching the best such streak in Jazz history, his own 13 straight from January 2020. 

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

Last week, we looked at which teams were seeing significant movement in their early playoff odds, and then told you why it didn’t matter. The reality is that every season includes examples of teams that either start hot before fading into mediocrity, or come out of the gate slow but then go on to have great seasons.

To drive the point home, let’s look at the teams that duped us the most last year based on their record two weeks in.

  • The Lakers sat atop the West with a 6-2 after the first two weeks of last season, and then of course famously wound up having to earn their playoff spot in a play-in.
  • The Pelicans didn’t even make it into that play-in after a 4-3 start that had them tied for fourth in the conference.
  • The Pacers and Magic looked awesome early on (both 5-2), but in the end, of course, weren’t. Neither team made the playoffs in the East.
  • The Grizzlies looked like a mess at 2-5 and wound up four games over .500 and in the playoffs after an exciting play-in triumph
  • The Nuggets looked unspectacular at 3-4 with a barely-positive point differential, but of course would find themselves on a pretty elite track on their way to a No. 3 seed.
  • The Nets (4-4) and Knicks (4-3) looked pretty mortal early on, but both of Gotham’s teams wound up well over .500 and in top-4 seeds.

The Jazz themselves were projected by FiveThirtyEight to win 42 games based on their performance in the first two weeks, a projection they blew out of the water by 10 games. The Suns outperformed their 2-weeks-in projection by seven games, the same figure by which the injury-plagued Lakers undershot theirs. The Warriors wound up eight wins better than their early season projection.

Moral of the story: settle in, this is going to take a while before we know anything.

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

Jazz 122, Nuggets 110: Rudy Gobert. Aside from his 23-and-16 double-double, his 7-of-8 shooting, and the fact that he held the Nuggets to 9/22 at the rim and 2/7 on threes, this game wound up being largely about Gobert for narrative reasons, too. After Nikola Jokic exited with an injury, the Nuggets decided to play 5-out, an approach that purportedly trips up the 3-time DPOY winner. Only here’s the thing: it didn’t. Like at all. Gobert was phenomenal guarding in space and ultimately the Jazz pulled away with a comfortable win. Ingles and Conley both had efficient and heady performances, and Mitchell and Clarkson both scored a ton. But the Jazz pulled away precisely during the period when Gobert was most dominant: during his 14-and-8 fourth quarter.

Jazz 122, Rockets 91: Bojan Bogdanovic. Blowouts against hapless teams usually muddy the waters in terms of finding a true game MVP. That was probably Gobert if we’re honest (16 points on 7 shots, 14 boards, 7/26 opponent rim shooting), or maybe Ingles, who had all 14 of his points in the first half while Utah built a lead that would never dip below 18 after the break. But in hyper-balanced games like this, I think it’s OK to lean a little more toward narratives, and when we remember this game in a couple of months, we’ll remember the personality that Bogey, Whiteside and Paschall lent to the affair. Bogey and Whiteside both had it going for stretches, and let everybody know about it with little celebratory outbursts that, to these eyes, defined the game as much as any stat line. Paschall got a lot of your votes in the Twitter discussion, but I went with Bogey because he did a bit more of his work when the game was still (theoretically at least) in the balance: 19 points (on 12 shots), +25, and a whole bunch of whatever that money signal he kept making to the bench was. (My guess: somebody owes Bogey some scratch after his team-high performance.)

Jazz 107, Bucks 95: Donovan Mitchell. O’Neale got some well-deserved mention in the game ball discussion, after helping hold Giannis Antetokounmpo to a relatively quiet 25 while keeping him off the free-throw line. (Giannis shot 2-for-7 while O’Neale was on him.) There’s also a real case to be made for Mike, whose numbers (20-3-2) weren’t quite as glitzy as Mitchell’s (28-4-2), but whose playmaking and shooting were sorely missed on Saturday. But Mitchell is the obvious (and correct) choice. Other than a weird 0-for-5 funk in the second quarter, Don shot 10/13 for the night. He personally put the pedal to the metal every time the Bucks made it interesting, like during his 11-point fourth quarter that allowed Utah to withstand two separate late surges by Milwaukee. 

Strong in Defeat:

(Starting last year, we also dole out a little consolation to guys who were the most valuable even in a losing effort.)

  • Jazz 99, Bulls 107: Donovan Mitchell. There really weren’t a lot of options here, which often is a pretty reliable signal than things didn’t go great. Conley sat, Clarkson and Bogey were both saddled with inefficiency, and Ingles randomly struggled as the second-unit facilitator. The stars playing like stars were the only reason the Jazz had a chance late: Gobert had 17 points, 19 boards, and three blocks, while Mitchell turned in a tidy 30-7-6 line. He forced the Jazz back into the game late, and despite some missed shots and turnovers was the easy choice here.

Looking ahead to the next seven nights of Jazz action.

After completing their first 4-in-6 stretch, the Jazz get a whole whopping one day of rest before their next 4-in-6, again in four different arenas.

Tuesday 11/2, Jazz vs. Kings: The Kings gave the Jazz about all they could handle last week in Sacto, before the more veteran Jazz were able to pull away behind a dominant close from Gobert. But the Kings look surprisingly composed early on, with all three of their wins coming on the road and in the clutch, and they almost made it four with a late run in Dallas. They haven’t even tapped into the best version of De’Aaron Fox yet, but but they’re still putting pressure on teams behind unreal shooting and scoring from Harrison Barnes (23ppg, 46% on 3s) and Buddy Hield (17.3, 40%), and the rookie Davion Mitchell can really defend.

Thursday 11/4, Jazz @ Hawks: Count Hawks snipers Trae Young (29%) and Kevin Huerter (15%) among the truly awesome shooters who are having inexplicably bad starts to the season. At some point guys like that will get it going and Atlanta’s overall efficiency will rise meaningfully from its current #23 ranking. That said, Atlanta’s shot diet isn’t great: they rank dead last in Location eFG%, a measure of expected shot value based on location. That’s a fancy way of saying they’re way too dependent on the midrange game, where they’ve taken 40% of their attempts, the highest ratio in the league. They take the second lowest portion of threes, and they are third worst at limiting opponent accuracy at the rim. So coach Nate McMillan still has some work to do.

Saturday 11/6, Jazz @ Heat: At 5-1 with some quality wins, Miami looks real. They’re the only team with a better point differential (excluding garbage time and heaves) than Utah, at +16.3, and also the only team other than Utah in the top 6 for both overall defense and offense. They’re 5-0 in game Kyle Lowry has played, and they rebound the hell out of the basketball on both ends. They take a boatload of long twos, but they make them at a decent enough clip (43% on all midrange) to defy some of Utah’s core principles on defense. At the other end, they have an inside-out approach to defense that results in a lot of opponent 3s — the most of any team in the league — but a pretty low percentage, because they still challenge everything. They’re tough. This is the toughest game of the week.

Sunday 11/7, Jazz @ Magic: They’re fully embracing the rebuild in Orlando, but that doesn’t mean they don’t have some fun pieces. In fact, their core 5-man group actually is the best high-minute lineup in the league early on, quite surprisingly. Having said that, their overall defense is the worst in the league, and they project to have a pretty long year of learning in front of them.

Random stuff from the Jazz community.

Hope everybody had a fun and safe Halloween. Looks like these fellas did.

Seven more bits of Jazziness will come your way next Monday.

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