SC7: Bouncing Back from “Low Point,” Guard Rotation Math, Playoff Race Update & More

Among other things, we look at how guard pairings like this one have been working. (Melissa Majchrzak via espn.com)

Every 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.

An important quote from Jazz players or personnel from the week

“There’s certain games over the course of a season where you don’t play well, you lose, things happen.

“There’s other games that, when you look at, are low point type games. Those usually involve more than lack of execution, but lack of commitment to the things you need to do to win.”

-Jazz coach Quin Snyder, after a loss to Phoenix on Monday night

Quin Snyder is usually extremely measured, focusing nearly all of his answers on the big picture instead of honing in on a certain result. He also tends to keep his messaging very growth-oriented and positive, even after losses.

That’s why it was so remarkable to hear his postgame comments on Monday night. 

It takes a really rough performance to elicit words like “lack of commitment” from Snyder, whose words usually signal belief and support of his players above all else. But frankly, Monday was, in Snyder’s words, a “low point type game.” And it’s not the only one Utah has had recently.

The Jazz finished February with a 5-8 record, after a skid-snapping win over the Wizards on Friday night. But to Snyder’s point about commitment, the Jazz haven’t looked like a team built on defensive precepts. They had the fifth-worst defensive rating in the NBA for the month.

Fifth worst. The Utah Jazz.

“Defensively, we’re going to keep getting the same result if we don’t focus and execute on the defensive end,” Snyder added.

Utah is currently riding a streak of five straight games where their overall defensive efficiency¹ was in the bottom half of all NBA games played this season, per Cleaning the Glass. That’s their second such streak of five sub-average defensive outings in a little over a month, and 13 of their 15 overall games since January 25 fall into that category.

Again, the Jazz.

This is new ground for Utah, a team that has been perennially among the league’s best defenses since they made Rudy Gobert a full-time starter partway through the 2014-15 season. We’ve just never seen an extended stretch of bad defense quite like this one in the Gobert-Snyder era. And as the fifth-year head coach said on Monday night, the team’s defensive identity means little if they don’t go out and actually earn it every night.

“Who you are is who you are now,” Snyder panned. “Not who you’ve been or what you’re gonna do, or what you can do. It’s what you do. And what we didn’t tonight wasn’t — good. Obviously that’s an understatement.”

Luckily for the Jazz, Monday’s performance against Phoenix did prove to be something of a low point. The effort was better in Wednesday’s loss to the Celtics, especially in the halfcourt, where Utah’s defensive output (exactly one point averaged per every Boston possession) was merely “pretty bad” and not “next-level terrible.” Then they secured a win on Friday night, even if was primarily a victory for the offense on a night when the defense wobbled yet again. Washington scored 116.7 points per 100 possessions, and the halfcourt production was only slightly below average.

So things are trending vaguely upward for the defense and the team overall. But the principals here know there’s still a lot of work to do, especially in terms of restoring the team’s defensive mojo.

“The biggest thing, man: like, this win feels really good, but I want to keep it in perspective. It’s one win,” All-Star guard Donovan Mitchell said after Friday’s victory. “We gotta keep it moving forward… We can do better for sure, but we’ll take the win. But I want to keep things in perspective.”

“We’ve just got to keep working, keep watching film, and keep finding our identity back,” Gobert added.

They’ll find it by focusing on and committing to the defensive end of the floor.

Tracking the wild Western Conference postseason race and the Jazz’s place in it

Time to see what’s up in the Western Conference playoff race…

A tweaked format this week, since 4 teams are making a push for 8th.

Houston has just four games left against elite teams. Everybody else currently in a playoff spot has at least double that. They also have momentum, the inside track on a division title, and they have Russell Westbrook catching fire at the right time. They’re going to hold onto homecourt, and probably rise from their current No. 4 spot.

The rest of the teams here all have some losses left. The Clippers have an easy schedule by winning percentage, but they still have to play a lot of road games against elite squads, including the four teams right around them in the standings. Denver has relatively few “gimmes” left, while Utah’s and OKC’s schedules are both fairly balanced in terms of tough opponents cancelling out easy ones.

There is still a lot of time left: more than a quarter of the season remains. But given that Utah’s last five opponents have an average .612 record, the time for the Jazz to attempt an upward surge is now. What makes this race even more interesting is that the top teams are all mostly healthy, so nobody’s going to slide by default. If the Jazz want homecourt, they’re going to have to take it from somebody. They have two games left against Denver, one against LAC.

Stats that tell the story of the week or highlight a timely topic

114.9

One way to solve for an overall defensive malaise is to search for combinations that haven’t been working. When Mitchell and Jordan Clarkson share the court together, defenses score 114.9 points per 100 possessions, by far the worst DRtg of any duo with at least as many minutes as this pair’s 384.

It’s part of the reason why this pair just hasn’t worked up until now. Mitchell works fine alongside Joe Ingles (+4.2 Net Rating) or Mike Conley (+3.1), and so does Clarkson (+10.8 and +9.7, respectively). But up until now, the Mitchell-Clarkson combo has mostly cost the Jazz points, with a -3.6 Net Rating. It makes some sense; both guys have “iso scorer” at the top of their respective job descriptions, so there’s some redundancy when they play together. The offense can devolve into a bit of my-turn-your-turn when they share the court — Utah has a 45.9% assist percentage with these two on the court, the lowest of any high-volume duo by far — and both are also capable of spacy moments on the other end.

However, use lineup data like this with caution. Case in point…

+20

Coming into Friday’s game, Conley and Ingles were minus-39 in total points on the season, meaning that they had been outscored by a little more than a point in each of the first 35 games they appeared on court together.

On Friday, the Jazz outscored the Wiz by 20 with that duo on the court, wiping away more than half of their negative margin in just 16 joint minutes. It’s just another reminder that lineup data is more descriptive than predictive.

Still, the combination of those season-long figures for Mitchell-Clarkson and for Conley-Ingles kind of begin to paint a picture, don’t they? If the guardline is the two dynamic iso scorers, the results are generally not good. If it’s the two de facto point guards, the results are generally not good. If it’s either one of the first pair next to either one from the second pair, results are generally good.

107.0

While we’re on the subject of guard lineup math, let’s quickly bust another myth: that the Jazz can’t afford to play Conley and Mitchell, both 6’3″ or shorter, on defense. Actually, with those two sharing the court, the team’s DRtg (107) has been slightly better than the team’s average (108.7).

The reality is, though, that Utah’s recent problems aren’t really lineup-driven. Utah has six starter-quality guys, plus Clarkson who is perfect in the bench sniper role. If the Jazz were still adhering to their winning habits, it wouldn’t really matter which five of those seven good players started the game, who came in next, etc. They’re not playing well because they’re not playing well, not because Snyder has yet to solve a math equation.

30+

Let’s end on a positive note: Mitchell’s four straight games of 30-plus scoring make him just the second Jazz player since the year 2000 to have such a streak. Deron Williams had five in a row in 2009, and before that you’d have to go back to February 2000 to find a 4-game streak belonging to (who else?) Karl Malone.

Breaking down the Xs and Os behind a Jazz score from the week

Double pitch to blind pig slip

We talked last month about rub screens — when a cutter zigs in front of a zagging ball handler to create a little bit of space the ball handler can use to get downhill.

The setup to this week’s play is similar, except that the ball handler actually runs in front and pitches the ball backwards to a teammate. So effectively, the ball handler actually is the rub screener here in this double-pitch setup:

If either of those rubs/pitches had allowed Mitchell or O’Neale to turn the corner and get inside, they would have taken that. Instead, they go to their next option here: reversing back to the other side of the court. O’Neale makes a great read here: while he’s still gathering the ball, he sees Shabazz Napier run out to overplay Conley. So instead, he’ll pass to Gobert while Conley cuts against the overplay.

Longtime readers of this “Playbook” section will know that action is called “blind pig,” when a big man at the elbow relays the pass to a back-cutting guard. Thomas Bryant lunges out to stop Conley, so Gobert just dives down and treats this like he’s slipping the switch on a pick-and-roll. Bryant is commiting to Conley and Napier is out of the play, so the slip is the right read here, too. Davis Bertans thinks about helping, but assumes that Rui Hachimura (guarding Bogey in the left corner) is stepping in to cut off that interior pass. Hachimura doesn’t though, and this is actually Bradley Beal’s help anyway.

But the broader point here is that as soon as the blind pig action takes place, the Jazz are destined to have a good option somewhere because of that orginal smart read. If Hachimura had come in, Conley has Bogey lined up. If Beal helps, there’s the skip pass to Mitchell. If Bryant hadn’t lunged at him in the first place, he’s got a wide open pull-up three. And O’Neale is open pretty much the whole way too because of Bertans’ collapse.

The first pitch, the second pitch, the pass to Gobert and the blind pig handoff all take just under four seconds to complete, and after all that action in a 4-second span, Washington has very little chance of stopping the play.

After each Jazz win, Twitter helps us decide who was that game’s MVP or most memorable performer

The Jazz finally got one in the win column, which means the Game Ball committee finally had some work to do this week, for the first time since — get this — February 12!

Jazz 129, Wizards 119: Donovan Mitchell. Conley was a popular choice in the fan vote, and I was tempted to go with for symbolic reasons after all of the scapegoating nonsense he has endured. He also has a basketball case: 16 points, six assists, five boards, and because he was the second unit’s rudder during big runs in each half (21-8 and 18-4), he came away with a +18 for the game, best of the big minute guys. But 30-8-3 is also a pretty spiffy line, and then there’s the fact that Mitchell did it efficiently and did a bunch of his stuff while the game was still close late. Utah was up by just three with 5:18 to go, and then Mitchell did the following over just 90 SECONDS: drilled a three, set up an O’Neale three, hit a runner, dropped a stepback three, skied for a rebound, hit two free throws, Jazz up 11. That’s 10 points, an assist and a board during the most crucial Jazz run of the night.

Bogdanovic (21 points) was also good and helped put the nail in the coffin. Clarkson (20 points) and Tony Bradley (a lot of nice plays during the bench runs) also got some love from Jazz Twitter in the game ball discussion.

A quick look ahead at Utah’s next seven nights of action.

The Jazz’s upcoming road trip isn’t terribly tough in terms of opponent quality — Boston is the only winning team — but they play four times in four cities over the next six nights. This is going to be a whirlwind, at a time when the Jazz badly need wins.

Monday 3/2, Jazz @ Cavs: The Cavs had lost 12 of 13 games before trading for Andre Drummond at the deadline. They’re 4-4 since then (3-3 in the games the big dude has played). Their defense has also tightened up and they’re better from the field and from three, even factoring in that 41-point drubbing they suffered in his Cleveland debut. So they’re certainly looking more competent since adding the two-time All-Star. It should be pointed out, though, that Gobert has played really well against Drummond throughout their careers: the Jazz are 10-3 in games that featured both big men. Reunion game for Clarkson, a former Cav. (The Jazz won’t get a Dante Exum reunion this time around, after the former Jazz lottery pick suffered a pretty gruesome-looking ankle turn last week.)

Wednesday 3/4, Jazz @ Knicks: The Knicks have beat exactly one winning team (going off today’s records) since January 12, and that was a win in Indiana when Victor Oladipo was still fighting his way back from injury. The Knicks have had losing streaks of 10, six, five and four, and own the league’s third-worst offense. This could be a place for Utah to find some of its defensive rhythm back. They sent their leading scorer (Marcus Morris) to the Clippers three weeks ago for Moe Harkless and draft compensation, and since then they’ve basically been the Julius Randle show; after him, the highest-scoring Knick since February 6 is RJ Barrett at 12.6 per contest.

Friday 3/6, Jazz @ Celtics: Jazz fans got an up-close look at just how good Boston is this year as the Cs were smacking the Jazz by double digits in their own gym — and that was without second-leading scorer Kemba Walker! Walker is day-to-day (missed the game against Houston on Saturday), but whether or not he plays, this is a tough one for Utah. Boston remains elite in halfcourt defense, and is also best in the league at defending transition. This will not be a game where Utah can bank on simply outscoring them; if their defense doesn’t start to resemble Jazz defense by Friday night, this could quickly get out of hand.

Saturday 3/7, Jazz @ Pistons: This should be Utah’s easiest stop on the trip, except that it will be the second of back-to-back games and the fourth in six nights. The Pistons were already below average on offense and defense even before they gave Drummond away for a song (John Henson & Brandon Knight, neither of whom is averaging more than 19mpg since joining the Pistons). Blake Griffin and Luke Kennard are both out indefinitely, and Detroit just doesn’t have much left in the way of high-level talent. They’ve won three of their last 17 games, and you could argue that their best player over that stretch has been Christian Wood, an undrafted big man who’s on his fifth team in three years after being claimed off waivers in the offseason. He’s averaging 18 and 8 over that 3-14 stretch.

Because after all, following a basketball team is supposed to be fun

Every team does a lot of great community work, but I love that the Jazz make regular visits to Primary Children’s Medical Center. It’s obvious that the trips up the hill add a bit of brightness to families who are facing some real stuff. That’s obvious, even when the people smiling in those photos with Jazz players are people you don’t know.

I know Steve, though. And if you’ve followed this website over the last two years, you know him, too.

I love the Jazz as a bball team but that love gets deeper because of the people they are off the court. To see them interact with your kid? Heartwarming. To see them do that with kids and families going through challenges, in a place hard and sacred like Primary’s? No words. pic.twitter.com/tvcZHQwaee

— Steve Godfrey (@stgodfrey12) February 26, 2020

Steve has been a big part of our Jazz coverage for the last two seasons. Earlier this year, his family welcomed a beautiful baby girl who was born with some physiological anomalies, the most concerning of which has been a series of airway problems. Steve’s young family has practically lived at PCMC for the last month-plus while their baby girl has had a series of surgeries and many tense moments. Our thoughts and prayers are obviously with the Godfreys.

These Jazz drop-ins always produce heartwarming video and photos, but it makes the impact far less abstract when someone you know experiences the positive emotional jolt these guys give families by stepping away from basketball for an afternoon.

Steve’s whole thread of videos and photos is awesome. You should definitely follow the tweet link and check them all out.

We’re coming down to it now. Twenty-three games left.