Bogdanovic paint finishing has been a work in progress so far. (Game still)
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.
By now, Jazz fans have read thousands of words — including some on this website — about Mike Conleys resurgence this season, thrusting Utah into a 3-horse race atop the Western Conference. But as Conley and super sub Jordan Clarkson have heated up, last year’s second-leading Jazz scorer has appeared a bit unsure at times of how to make his mark. Now, 20 games into the season, Bojan Bogdanovic might finally be getting things going.
Bogdanovic was brilliant last season, averaging a career-best 20.2 points per game as not just a scorer but as a reliable creation engine for the Jazz offense. His start to the 2020-21 campaign looked vastly different. With Donovan Mitchell leading the way, Conley and Clarkson cooking, and Joe Ingles facilitating pick-and-roll offense with bench-heavy units, Bogey has found himself further down in the pecking order. His usage and raw number of frontcourt touches are down, and it certainly affected his rhythm, especially to start the year. Through 10 games, the Croatian forward averaged just 12 points on 36-32-78 shooting splits.
In the 10 games since then, he’s up to 17 points on 44-47-84 shooting, so he may be getting back on track. That includes these last two games where he has piled up 61 points while getting to the line a ton and shooting over 57% from deep.
But since the Jazz are fairly ordinary when Bogey isn’t that engaged in the offense (they’re 3-4 when he scores nine or fewer points, 12-1 when he crosses the double digit barrier), it’s probably worth exploring just how to channel the forward’s scoring ability.
This recent assertive stretch has brought Bogdanovic’s usage, free throw rate and 3-point shooting back to his career norms. There’s just one area where he’s still lagging: his efficiency inside the arc.
Bogey is converting just 46% of his rim attempts, worse than five out of every six players in his positional grouping, per Cleaning the Glass1. To make matters worse, he’s also been ice cold from on short mid shots, or what I call “floater range” in Utah’s offense. He’s making just 33% of those shots, bringing his cumulative percentage on everything inside 14 feet to 37-of-94, or 39%. That is not great, especially for a 6-foot-8 forward who is usually preying on size mismatches when he’s in that deep2.
I took time this week to look back at every single one of his close misses from this season to see exactly what’s plaguing Bogdanovic once he gets below the free-throw line.
Some of them have just been unexplainable misses, like going up strong with the defender well behind him and just shooting over the rim. But one common problem has been his insistence on focusing on contact. Bogey fervently believes he gets fouled on every paint attempt. Sometimes he’s absolutely right. Sometimes he’s technically right, but it’s a 50-50 call and you don’t get all of those. But at least as often, it’s Bogey who twists and contorts into a mostly static defender, and then casts an evil eye at the zebras when their whistles stay silent.
It would be easy to worry that a decline in rim finishing is the sign of a 31-year-old losing his lift. I didn’t see that. It’s mostly about patience. Contrast these two plays, for example:
Both are catch-and-go drives from the perimeter. In the first (and more recent) one, he lengthens his stride to slow down the drive, then gets his feet under him as he redirects his momentum toward the hoop, through two defenders even! On the other, he doesn’t take his time and never directs his momentum toward the basket. Instead, he veers away from the defense, flies *past* the rim, and then flings it back sideways in a hurried miss. (This also includes another ref staredown for good measure.)
After watching every single one of his drives and close pull-ups, I would guess that the percentage difference is pretty stark when he uses a jump stop or otherwise shoots off of two feet, versus when he shoots on the fly like in that second clip. He’s much more under control when his feet are under him and he can direct his momentum. Again, that’s a patience thing.
Patience will also buy him a beat to read the defense, something he’s been a bit inconsistent at early on. Here, the Jazz have just run their classic “Spain P&R” play — a high ball screen for Mitchell with Bogey setting a backpick on Rudy Gobert’s man. But watch how it unfolds:
Minnesota recognized the play, and they did what a lot of teams are doing now to blow up this Spain P&R action: they simply have the two smaller defenders switch, and the advantage the Jazz had hoped to create evaporates. Mitchell gives the ball up, and Bogey tries to go to work against the smaller Josh Okogie, but he fails to see that Karl-Anthony Towns has fully committed to stopping his drive. A dish back to Gobert here results in an almost sure dunk, but Bogey has blinders on and instead gets his shot swatted into some unknown realm.
Something similar happens here: he makes the right read initially, U-turning away from Brook Lopez’s solid paint protection on the first P&R. When he drives again, he beats his man without a screen, but this time doesn’t realize that Lopez has him beat at the rim — OR that Derrick Favors has sealed the helper, leaving Royce O’Neale completely open.
As he has come on in the last couple of games, he has been addressing all of those issues: the patience, the physicality and the awareness of the help. Watch him here as he plays through some bumps and still carves his way in deep. And throughout, he’s keeping his eye on the helper: he doesn’t go until Willie Cauley-Stein recedes, and then when he sees him inching back over, he spins away to dissuade the big man from crowding him.
That’s a patient, precise and aware Bogdanovic. Getting him back on track in these situations is going to unlock more potential in an offense that’s already in the top five. The Jazz don’t need him at 25% usage now that Conley is playing like an All-Star, but a more fully deployed Bogey will raise the ceiling. They don’t run a ton of pick-and-roll for Bogey unless they’re matchup hunting or unless the ball lands with him after the first set of actions3, but he needs to be able to score putting the ball on the floor if the Jazz hope to weaponize his gravity the way they did last season.
This weekend had a lot of positive signs in that department. If the Jazz can get him and Mitchell finishing better inside while keeping Conley going and mainaining their torrid 3-point efficiency, they’re going to be ridiculously hard to defend.
In their own words.
“I really think it’s probably the first time since I’ve been here that I’ve seen that much focus from every single one in this locker room. I really feel that we are playing for something bigger.”
-Rudy Gobert
There’s not much commentary to add to this very encouraging Gobert quote, uttered after the Jazz had won 10 straight. Eventually Utah stretched its NBA season-high win streak to 11 before Denver snapped it on Sunday, but this team still has all the markers of an elite squad. We’ll get to some of those in the playoff watch section, but perhaps no stat is more tantalizing than Gobert’s belief that something is just culturally different about this year’s version of the Jazz.
We’ll see if that vibe continues into February, as some stiff tests lie ahead on their upcoming schedule. (The Jazz have played the 14th hardest schedule so far, so it’s not like they haven’t faced anybody. But coming up, they have the Lakers, Bucks, Sixers, Celtics and two against the Clippers.)
Stats that tell the story of the Jazz’s week.
The Jazz finally did experience a fourth-quarter deficit this past week, the first one since their win streak started. On Tuesday, they opened the final frame down one to the Knicks. They scored 57 seconds in and never looked back, then then blew out the Mavs twice. In eleven conseuctive fourth quarters (132 minutes), they trailed or tied for a grand total of less than a minute… by one. Then on Sunday it was their turn to be looking up at their opponent for the entire second half, prompting our Tyler Crandall to tweet: “The way you all feel right now is how every other fanbase has felt against the Jazz the last 11 games.”
The Denver game might have felt like a setback, but the Jazz still have a very good record against quality teams. They have the third best point diff (+1.2) and fourth best record (4-3) against teams with a top-10 efficiency differerntial. They have the 7th best defense when facing the league’s best 10 offenses, and the fifth best offense when facing top defenses. In other words: they’re still on the right track. They have a lot more opportunities coming up to measure themselves against elite teams.
Conley has had eight games so far this season with a plus-minus of +20 or better. No wonder he leads the NBA in both raw plus-minus and real adjusted plus-minus. Gobert is third in both of those rankings.
Utah’s defense on Friday night allowed the Mavs to score just 78 points per 100 possessions in a halfcourt setting. On Sunday, Denver scored 131.7 per 100 in the halfcourt. That’s a 53.7-point difference in consecutive games! And what’s even crazier is that they tried similar defensive stuff in both games. I didn’t love what they tried in Denver, even though some of the same tactics worked well against Dallas. Just in the month of January, Utah had the best haflcourt defensive performance of the NBA season (58.4 vs Cleveland) and the worst (Denver).
Recognizing the best (or most memorable) performances from each Jazz win.
Jazz 108, Knicks 94: Rudy Gobert. O’Neale won the popular vote after scoring a career-high 20. Had more of his points come when the game was still in question, I’d have obeyed the masses and given it to Royce for the narrative. But Gobert was absolutely the game’s MVP. Aside from the 18, 19, 4 blocks, +27, the game turned because Gobert completely owned the defensive paint. The Knicks had a 35-point second half on 30% shooting. Gobert certainly doesn’t get ALL of the credit for that (in particular, Conley, O’Neale and Joe Ingles were all great on defense), but Knicks did finish 11-for-20 at the rim and shot junder 45% overall from inside 14 feet. That’s Gobert’s domain. O’Neale is a very close second, and Conley (19-7-5) took over as facilitator and got Utah out of their offensive funk with a 14-point third quarter.
Jazz 116, Mavs 104: Rudy Gobert. Just completely dominant. He had a historic stat line with his 29 points, 20 boards, three blocks and three steals, but what clinched it was the way Dallas was totally exasperated on both ends when Rudy was around. He got to the rim at will, and the visitors only made 12 of 22 attempts in the restricted area as Gobert hung around the paint and essentially played free safety. Jordan Clarkson was a human torch in the first half. He had 22 points in under 18 minutes, including a personal 10-0 run, and he did more than that to help the Jazz extend their lead, including big defensive plays during that stretch. Ingles was also tremendous as a lead creator (21 points, 8 assists), and Conley (17) got it going late to stave of Dallas’ last push.
Jazz 120, Mavs 101: Joe Ingles. Bogdanovic got red hot in the third quarter (17 of his 32 total, thought only 2 assist and no boards) and on any other night probably gets the game ball for that performance. Gobert (17 on seven shots, 12 boards, insane defense) and Conley (22 & 9, +30) were probably the game MVPs, and Juwan Morgan got big narrative points for 12 points and great defense while filling in for Favors. But sometimes, a little bit of history trumps all of that. When you go to Springfield and see the actual game balls encased there, they don’t say things like “great third quarter” or “nice spark off the bench.” They say things like “became the franchise leader in 3-pointers.” Ingles was also important to this game, doing great defensive work on Luka Doncic and also scoring 10 early as Utah surged to a 37-12 first quarter without Mitchell. That helps his case, but honestly, the franchise history angle was probably enough to clinch this one.
Strong in defeat:
Keeping track of the Jazz’s place in the wild, wild West.
Utah is now exactly 20 games in, which is the point at which you can start to trust a sample size a little bit more. We still won’t see some projection systems come on line just yet, since some teams have played far fewer than 20 games (damn coronavirus!), but there are plenty of macro indicators that say you can believe in the Jazz’s 15-5 start.
Here is a sample of some metrics where the Jazz rank in the NBA’s top three.
Looking ahead to the next seven nights of Jazz action.
After a home date tomorrow, Utah spend the rest of the week on the move, facing three good (but beatable) Eastern Conference teams.
Tuesday 2/2, Jazz vs. Pistons: A loss tonight in Denver would guarantee that the Pistons arrive in Utah with the league’s worst record, yet they also surprised both the 15-6 Sixers and the 15-6 Lakers just last week. At 5-15, they have a bottom-five eFG defense and allow the second most shots at the rim. They’ll be on a back-to-back for Tuesday’s game, too.
Thursday 2/4, Jazz @ Hawks: Atlanta has won five of its last seven, but all of those wins came at the expense of likely lottery clubs, except the Clippers who were without their two superstars due to contact tracing. In other words, it’s hard to get a handle on how good the 10-9 Hawks actually are. SRS and 538 both see them as a pretty solid top-8 team out east, and they have a top-10 defense and a decent offense. Veteran scorer Danilo Gallinari has also been back in the lineup for them for the last five games (averaging 10 points on a minutes limit), so that should help them achieve some consistency.
Friday 2/5, Jazz @ Hornets: This will be Utah’s first look at former Jazz All-Star Gordon Hayward in his new teal duds after he dropped Gah-den green. Hayward is having a career year there, averaging 23 on 50-43-86 shooting splits. Charlotte is 6-2 when he gets 26 or more points, but overall this team is still a work in progress. Rookie LaMelo Ball is still coming off the bench, and they like to play small with the 6-foot-7 PJ Washington sliding to center. They have a pretty disciplined shot profile on offense, but they don’t convert well at the rim, and they allow opponents to shoot a ton of threes and paint shots. On paper, this is the easiest stop on the trip.
Sunday 2/7, Jazz @ Pacers: Indiana peaked at 8-4, but has since teetered with a 3-5 stretch. TJ Warren (foot) and recent trade acquisition Caris LeVert (kidney surgery) remain out indefinitely. All-Star Domantas Sabonis (averaging 20, 12 and 6) and Malcolm Brogdon (23, 40% from 3) have been trying to hold things together, but depth has limited them to being a fairly average team at both ends. They will run when opponents let them, so Utah will have to watch the turnovers here.
Random stuff from the Jazz community.
It’s still kind of amazing that someone who was literally a waiver claim six years, three months and five days ago now sits atop the Jazz record book in anything. Joe didn’t need much time to ensconse himself in the Jazz’s culture and make himself a fan favorite, but even after that first season — when he averaged a whopping 0.9 made threes per game — it would been inconceivable to think that he would be the one to bump John Stockton off the top spot.
Ingles made history this week, breaking John Stockton’s franchise record for career threes.
Ingles didn’t even make a 3-pointer until his seventh Jazz game, when he buried three of them in a narrow road win at Detroit. At the midway point of that season, the 27-year-old rookie was shooting 27% from deep.
Now, he’s not only one of the 15 NBA players shooting over 45% this season, but he’s also the most prolific outside shooter in franchise history.
Another week in the books. Thanks for reading!
Every week during the regular season begins here at SCH with the Salt City Seven, a septet of recurring features that let us...Read More
Every week during the regular season begins here at SCH with the Salt City Seven, a septet of recurring features that let us...Read More
Every week during the regular season begins here at SCH with the Salt City Seven, a septet of recurring features that let us...Read More
Every week during the regular season begins here at SCH with the Salt City Seven, a septet of recurring features that let us...Read More
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