Salt City Seven: Secondary Playmakers, Home At Last, Defensive Slippage & More

Jordan Clarkson was red hot in Atlanta, but otherwise has struggled of late. (John Bazemore via sltrib.com)

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 are coming off their first pair of consecutive losses of the young season, and that tends to spark a lot of “what’s wrong” type of talk.

In reality though, not every loss (or even losing streak) is indicative of some deep identity flaw. Utah still projects to win the conference’s top seed comfortably and then have a decent shot at a title. They lost by a one-possession margin in a battle of contenders in Miami, despite multiple shooters having off nights. Losing in Orlando was less expected, but once again various shooters struggled, and the Jazz played without one of their best offensive table-setters. In all, their three losses have all come during this murderous 7-games-in-11 nights stretch with non-stop travel, all three were 2-possession games (or closer) in the final minute, and two of them were in games Mike Conley Jr. missed for injury management.

To the degree that there is reason for concern, I’d start with that last piece. With Conley and Donovan Mitchell, the Jazz have two primary ball handlers, guys who can get the gears of the offensive machine turning. Despite somewhat modest counting stats, Conley has been quietly solid . He’s once again started the year inside the top 10 for 538’s RAPTOR metric, and when he’s on the court the Jazz offense really clicks, with an elite true shooting figure (.618) and the best passing figures of any Jazz rotation player.

But they have been without one of Conley or Mitchell in three of their past six games, which makes them more dependent on their secondary facilitators, who have struggled in their own ways in this young season. On Saturday, it was a perfect storm: Conley was out, Mitchell was in foul trouble, and that left the Jazz really dependent on Jordan Clarkson, Joe Ingles and even Trent Forrest during the decisive stretch. Those three combined for 1-of-6 shooting in the fourth quarter, with two assists and three turnovers.

To the degree that this 3-3 stretch has signaled anything worrisome about the Jazz, it could be in what it says about those secondary playmakers who get promoted up the pecking order when Conley or Mitchell miss time.

Clarkson is off to a 22% start from downtown, and his last six games have been especially bricky. He has shot 30-19-80 splits over that span, a far cry from the 43-35-90 figures from his award-winning season. He’s had one good half of basketball in the last six games, but that half was so explosive that it prompted a bunch of declarations that his slump was over (including mine). But following that 25-point, 9-for-11 half in Atlanta, he went right back to misfiring: 23% from the field and 18% from three in his last two. He is… off.

Jazz coach Quin Snyder has made it clear he has no interest in pulling Clarkson based on missed shots. “I believe in him,” the coach declared after Clarkson led Thursday’s comeback.

And that’s the thing people need to realize when they call for Snyder to rein Clarkson in. The Jazz’s offense if elite precisely because it’s so free-flowing, and guys don’t have to stop on the catch to ask themselves, OK, what is it I’m allowed/not allowed to do here? They trust Clarkson and his ball handling peers, and the result of that trust is a certain fluidity that is extremely hard to defend. That fluidity wouldn’t exist if players had different subsets of rules about when they can or can’t shoot.

But not all of the frustration with Clarkson comes down to ruing shot outcomes. There are also times he seems to bring that fluidity and ball movement to a grinding halt. A little too often, he’ll catch the ball on a play following a sweet series of actions, and just pause, letting the defense reset and erase any advantage the Jazz might have gained on the play:

Plays like that need to be a bit less common. 

And sure, Clarkson could stand to be a bit more discerning on some of his shot attempts, too. But Snyder is going to live with some of those, because that’s the toll you pay to unlock the flamethrower version of Clarkson. 

Ultimately Clarkson will be fine, but even “fine” in his case is a mid-efficiency iso gunner. That’s a nice weapon to have as a third or fourth creation option, but the problem when Conley sits is that Clarkson moves up the proverbial food chain and the Jazz are even more dependent on his high-variance possessions.

Utah’s other secondary creator, Joe Ingles, is having his own struggles, but in a very different way from Clarkson. Ingles is actually red hot as a shooter, with .667 true shooting and one of the best above-the-break shooting marks in basketball.

Ingles’ deficiency shows up as a ball handler against certain types of defenses. He’s an elite pick-and-roll orchestrator when he can get into the slot (especially down the left side), but more aggressive defenses can more or less neutralize him as a creator. He’s not a guy who’s going to break the defense on his own, so whenever he’s met by a switch, trap or hedge coming off a screen, he’s likely to dead end and get rid of the ball, often dumping it off to one of Utah’s non-playmakers. 

That was an issue in the Clippers series. LAC frequently switches, hedges and traps, and Joe isn’t going to be someone who just goes to work against a switch or confounds a hedger with sheer foot speed. And it was a problem on Saturday because the Jazz didn’t have Mike, and Don was in foul trouble. It won’t be a major problem most nights, but it’s something to watch whenever injuries/rest move Joe from the role of secondary creator to running a couple dozen pick-and-rolls, especially if it’s against a team that brings pressure to the ball in P&R.

Beyond Clarkson and Ingles, the Jazz have Forrest for break-glass-in-case-of-emergency stretches like that. So far he has not succeeded at producing winning offense as the lone creator. (Utah has an 88.9 ORtg when Forrest plays without either of Conley/Mitchell on the floor.) Jared Butler was supposed to solve some of that, but he hasn’t looked ready. Bojan Bogdanovic can help with some second-side creation, and Rudy Gay will eventually give the Jazz another playmaking four. Royce O’Neale has gotten a little more aggressive putting the ball on the deck in the last couple of games, but he’s not a creator in the same sense of the word, nor is Eric Paschall.

Again, let’s not overstate the degree to which this is a fundamental flaw. No team in the league has three star-level creators at Don’s and Mike’s level; take an All-Star table-setter away from any squad and they’ll feel the difference. Utah also won’t be strategically resting Mike when the games matter most. This is only something we’re talking about because Conley’s rests and Mitchell’s ankle have forced Clarkson, Ingles and Forrest to play a bit beyond their ideal roles in the last week and a half.

It’s just worth noting that one of the things that has limited the Jazz early on is a drop in outcomes whenever they have relied on their secondary playmakers to run the show. It’s worth keeping on eye on Clarkson’s and Ingles’ production in those settings where the Jazz are down one of their ball handling All-Stars.

In their own words

“The biggest thing for me: I love my teammates, bro. This is, like, the best group of guys I’ve ever been around hooping and it makes me love coming to work.”

-Clarkson, after Thursday’s explosion in Atlanta

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

25

The elder Clayton bro has appointed himself the head of the Jazz travel beat, and noted when the Jazz were getting ready to fly home from Florida that they’ll spend 25 of the next 27 nights in their own beds. They’re the only Western Conference team that hasn’t had a homestand yet, but that’s about to change, with five straight and 10 of the next 12 in the Beehive.

8th

Utah’s bad defensive weekend — they allowed 129.7 per 100 in Miami, 110.3 in Orlando — moved them outside of the top five for defensive efficiency (garbage time excluded). Their offense is still elite (3rd), but they now find themselves behind seven other teams on the defensive end. Miami (4th/4th) is the only team in the league in the top five on both ends.

58%

Miami made 22 of 38 midrange attempts, good for 58%. The Jazz’s defense tries hard to force a lot of shots in that area of the floor, and when teams have the talent to say, “OK, fine,” it can really mess up the overall integrity of the defense. This season and last season combined, the Jazz are 4-11 (.267) when their opponent shoots 50% or better from midrange, and 55-12 (.821) in all other games.

73.1

The Jazz’s halfcourt offense also wasn’t working in Central Florida: 73.1 points per 100 possessions. Part of that was because a season-low 6.1% of their shots came from the corners. Credit Orlando for a great game plan that didn’t let the Jazz get to one of their staples.

42.7%

Even after two bad games for the Jazz defensive overall, Rudy Gobert’s rim protection numbers are still in pretty silly territory, at 42.7% opponent shooting at the rim. His lowest ever full-season mark was 47.2%, during the first of his three DPOY campaigns. Unfortunately, Hassan Whiteside’s ticked up in a pretty serious way: after allowing 8-for-12 shooting at the rim in the last week, he’s up to 54.3% for the season. 

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

It’s still too early to obsess over playoff positioning, so let’s make this a quick look at one way to peek at the standings that equalizes some for big early home/road disparities.

The Jazz have played more road games than any other Western Conference contender (Houston has also played 7 on the road). One way to see how that has impacted records is to take a team’s road wins and subtract home losses. Here’s what that looks like in the West right now: 

• Utah +4
• GSW +2
• Dal, Den, Mem +1
• LAC 0
• Phx, Por, Sac, OKC, SAS -1
• LAL, Hou -2
• NOP -3
• Min -4

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

Jazz 119, Kings 113: Donovan Mitchell. All three All-Stars have legitimate cases. The Twitter vote leaned Conley, but this is one of those nights I’m going to step in with a rhetorical question: how can you look past 36-8-6 (Don’s line) and give the game ball to 30-3-2 (Mike’s)? You could make the efficiency argument, but Mike’s assist-to-turnover was upside down and Don’s wasn’t, so that’s kind of a wash. You could say Conley put his stamp on it with a 13-point fourth, but Mitchell had a 17-point third. Both guys had their best games of the season by far, but I can’t find a justification to ignore what Donovan did, especially after (scarily) sprinting to the locker room with a right ankle tweak. Gobert (12 & 20, plus several key late plays and the game-sealing stop) was as worthy as his All-Star peers, and Hassan Whiteside’s personality and rebounding were both memorable. And we haven’t even talked about Bogey, who had 20 points on 11 shots.

Jazz 116, Hawks 98: Jordan Clarkson. Sometimes the story of the game and the most valuable contribution of the game from the same guy, and that makes the Game Ball department’s job pretty easy. Clarkson absolutely dragged Utah out of the first-half funk while screaming, beating his chest and dropping shot after shot. He had 25-3-3 on 9/11 shooting and 4/5 from deep over the final quarter and a half, precisely the period during which the Jazz outscored Atlanta 65-40 to turn a 7-point deficit into a blowout win. And it was totally contagious, too, because sometimes a player is capable of oozing his confidence all over the game in a way that simply imbues something different in the team as a whole. Before Clarkson’s second half explosion began, the Jazz’s ORtg was 95.1; starting with his bucket at 6:26 in the third, it was 154.8. And even the non-Clarkson shooters saw their True Shooting go from a decent 58.7% during the guard’s 1-for-8 start to 67.0% after the dam finally broke. Ingles (19 points, 7/9) and Gobert (13 & 15) were both excellent throughout. Conley also had 11 assists, and Bogey (23 total) got going in the second half. But there was absolutely zero question on this one.

Strong in Defeat:

• Jazz 115, Heat 118: Royce O’Neale. Had the Jazz pulled off the comeback, the game ball likely would have been Mtichell’s. He was the game MVP in a traditional sense with 37 points and seven assists, and if they had pulled out the win it likely would have meant he had made at least one more of his 15 3-point attempts. Instead, I’m going to take the liberty of recognizing O’Neale’s best game. Down 19 late, O’Neale made one big play after another to help the Jazz claw back. During those last six minutes, he had two of his rebounds, two of his career-high SIX steals, and two assists (both for Conley 3s). In the game as a whole, he scored 15 (his first double-digit outing of the year) and also allowed Jimmy Butler just two points as the All-Star’s primary defender. (Butler scored 25 on the other Jazzmen who guarded him.) He shot 5-for-7 from the field, and his overall line (15-5-2-6) and defensive effort were the perfect representation of O’Neale’s undersung value. Mitchell would be a fine choice, though, and Conley (18 points, 7 assists) also deserves consideration.
• Jazz 100, Magic 107: Rudy Gobert. The Jazz came back from their early deficit behind Gobert, who had 7 points and 6 boards during Utah’s 37-22 second quarter blitz. He had three blocks in that period alone, part of an afternoon where he held all Magic shooters to 12-for-27 shooting while nearby. Then he was the only Jazz player to have a good fourth quarter (8 points on perfect shooting) while Mitchell was in foul trouble and the other Jazz playmakers struggled. Goberts overall line (21-and-15 with three steals and four blocks) edge out 21-7-7 from Mitchell and another fine night from O’Neale (14 points, 7 boards, and more aggressive attacking than we’ve seen from him all season).

Looking ahead to the next seven nights of Jazz action.

The Jazz have traveled non-stop over the first 10, with no two consecutive games in the same city so far. That’s why it’s nice that 10 of their next 12 are in Salt Lake, starting with three games this week.

Tuesday 11/9, Jazz vs. Hawks: Atlanta will have only had to wait five days for a chance to avenge a home defeat to the Jazz, one of five losses in their last six times out. They’ll also face league-leading Golden State on Monday night before they visit Salt Lake City, which means they could enter Vivint Arena 1-6 in their last seven and on the second night of a back-to-back with West-to-East travel that costs them an hour. That’s a brutal set of circumstances. That said, it’s unlikely the Hawks shoot 25% from deep again, as they did in round one of Jazz-Hawks last Thursday, and Trae Young’s slump — 27% from outside over the last six — won’t last forever. Mitchell missed Thursday’s affair, but Clarkson and Bogdanovic combined for 42 second-half points to help Utah survive in the absence of the star guard. 

Thursday 11/11, Jazz vs. Pacers: Another sub-.500 team comes to the Wasatch Front on Thursday, again on a back-to-back against the rested Jazz. The Hawks will face Denver the night before in the third stop on their current 4-game swing. Leading scorer Malcolm Brogdon (22.3 ppg) missed Sunday’s game in Sacramento with a non-COVID illness, ironically Indy’s first road win of the season. He likely will be ready by Thursday, though. The big debate in Indiana remains centered on their two big men, which give new coach Rick Carlisle something of a Sophie’s choice. Lineups with both Domantas Sabonis and Myles Turner can’t score (103.5 per 100), but Sabonis lineups without Turner can’t defend (118.5). Turner lineups without Sabonis generally do better, but most of those minutes come against opposing benches, meaning Turner will have to outduel a 3-time DPOY for his minutes to be a positive on Thursday. With 176 points, Chris Duarte is the rookie scoring leader so far. 

Saturday 11/13, Jazz vs. Heat: Another quick rematch, with just 7 days separating encounters in Miami and Salt Lake. Utah will ostensibly have Conley this time around, and the fourth-quarter comeback could be a sign that the Jazz found some answers for dealing with Miami’s long, aggressive, switch-happy defenders. Gobert had a weirdly discreet night in South Beach last Saturday, with season lows in points, rebounds, free-throw attempts, assists, and shots defended at the rim. If Utah is going to win this sequel he’ll need to be far better. A plugged-in Gobert and Conley in uniform should make this a different outing altogether, but Miami appears pretty real. They have the East’s best efficiency differential and top-5 offense AND defense ratings, plus enough versatility to compete no matter what kind of contest unfolds on Larry Miller Court.

Random stuff from the Jazz community.

can we just take a moment to appreciate ✨𝐀𝐑𝐓 ✨#Pura3Pointer | @pura pic.twitter.com/jAUr4aTxj3

— Utah Jazz (@utahjazz) November 5, 2021

Another week in the books here at SC7 headquarters.