Salt City Seven: Brutal Opening Slate, Body Language & More

October 28th, 2024 | by Dan Clayton

The Jazz have a rough opening schedule, per Vegsa projections (Francisco Kjolseth, The Salt Lake Tribune)

Every week during the regular season begins here at SCH with the Salt City Seven, a septet of recurring 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 exploration of a big-picture topic

The Jazz completed their first partial week at 0-2, and if preseason win total expectations are any clue, it could be a while before they play a game as a favorite.

Utah’s first two opponents were slotted by DraftKings as a 47.5-win team (Memphis) and a 43.5-win team (Golden State). That’s a tall order for 28.5-win Utah, even though both games were at home.

But that’s just start of an absolutely brutal opening slate for the Jazz. Their next three opponents had over-unders of 49.5 (Dallas), 46.5 (Sacramento) and 36.5 (San Antonio), meaning that the Jazz will face just one projected losing team before they head out to play eight of their subsequent 10 games on the road. Said road-heavy stretch is also fraught with quality opponents. They’ll play at Denver (52.5), Chicago (28.5), Milwaukee (50.5) and San Antonio (36.5), then come home to face Phoenix (47.5) and Dallas (49.5) before another 4-game trip to face Sacramento again (46.5), the Clippers (33.5), Lakers (43.5) and Spurs (36.5).

That means in their first 15 contests, they’ll face 10 opponents who are projected to be winning teams. They won’t face a team with a lower preseason over-under than their own until December 6 when they visit Portland (22.5).

Beyond opponent strength, Utah’s heavy is front-loaded with tons of travel. When their January 5 game against Orlando goes final, they will have played six more games outside of Salt Lake City than in it.

In other words, this might be a tough year for Utah to follow it’s typical recent pattern of blowing away expectations early. During Will Hardy’s inaugural campaign, the Jazz jumped out to a totally unforeseen 10-3 start, and were still sitting at .500 as late as February 27. Last year, the Jazz were a .500 team at the trade deadline, despite the fact that their net rating was consistently well below league average.

Such a start is significantly less likely for this year’s Jazz, given the schedule during the first month of the season: 9 of 15 on the road, no opponents with a lower Vegas projection. Even if Utah weren’t running a youth brigade with eight players on their main roster having zero to two years of experience, this opening portion of the 2024-25 season could get pretty rough, record-wise.

As I’ve habitually advised fans at this point in recent seasons, it might be a good time to find things to watch for beyond wins and losses. Enjoy watching players progress. Keep track of who’s developing the most pick-and-roll chemistry with whom. Pick a stat that’s fun to watch, like Lauri Markkanen’s dunks-and-threes ratio, Walker Kessler’s rim protection stats, or Keyonte George’s off-the-bounce threes. Watch to see how often Cody Williams and Taylor Hendricks take some liberties on offense, or see if Brice Sensabaugh or Isaiah Collier makes a case to carve out more minutes.

Because if you’re watching strictly for wins, it might be a struggle early on.

 

Telling or interesting words from Jazz people

“The games are way too long and the season is way too long to overreact to everything that doesn’t go our way. The body language piece is a big deal for us as a group…

“When we talk about building habits, it’s not just dribbling and shooting and screening and guarding pick-and-roll. There are habits of competition that we have to develop as well.”

-Will Hardy as the Jazz look to bounce back from a 41-point loss 

It’s fun when Hardy, in the middle of a very specific answer to a question, slips into basketball philosopher mode. He was talking about how the Jazz needing more urgency in their big loss to the Warriors, and then suddenly he was on a long, illuminating tangent about body language and responding to tribulations.

He said there was a moment after consecutive second-quarter turnovers (looks like it was after a Collin Sexton lost ball and then a passing miscue by George), his guys looked like it was the end of the world. But keeping your focus during those stretches is a big part of being competitive, the third-year coach said.

“We need to develop that mindset as a group every night that we should not expect anything, we shouldn’t ask for anything,” he went on. “We need to go out and play really hard as a team and we need to be able to navigate the hard moments.”

 

Stats that tell the story of the week

119.2

Utah’s 119.2 ORtg from their season opener is the fourth highest offensive output of a team in a loss so far this season. Utah shot well (.592 true shooting) and rebounded 39% of their own misses. Fouling out defensive stalwart Zach Edey should have helped, but actually they were able to score 143.3 per 100 when the rookie big was on the floor, and had a slightly harder time executing against smallball lineups with improvisional centers Jay Huff (119.6) and especially Brandon Clarke (78.1) on the floor.

41.6%

On the other hand, Utah’s Friday matchup with Golden State was the league’s lowest true shooting performance so far this year (41.6%), lowest eFG% to date (36.4%), and second lowest overall ORtg (82.7). There just wasn’t a lot that was redeeming about this outing. At one point, Hardy even seemed to send a message with a mass substitution just two and a half minutes into the third quarter.

15+

The Jazz have five players in their first, second or third seasons who have cleared 30 minutes so far this season. No other team in the league has five such players averaging 15 minutes or more per night.

 

Dissecting a Jazz scoring play from the week

We’ll save the nerdy X-and-O stuff for later. This week, the play I loved the most was this quick-hitter.

What makes this play cool wasn’t some otherworldly design on a clipboard, but rather just the fact that Hendricks got this shot. The Jazz were on an 8-1 run when Jordan Clarkson ripped this ball away from Desmond Bane, and Markkanen had made his last four shots, including two threes. Having an open three in transition seems like the easiest excuse ever for the All-Star to let it rip.

But Hendricks needed it more. The second-year forward officially recorded just one shot attempt before intermission in this game, and he was finally starting to feel his way into the Jazz offense with a 3-for-5 (at that point) second half. For the undisputed star of the team to have the ball pretty dang open and instead give the ball to you to make it a 1-possession game has to feel pretty cool to the 20-year-old.

Plus, I keep saying that Markkanen should more frequently wind up with a handful of assists almost by accident, just by virtue of him getting the ball as often as he does. He still does most of his decision-making work off the ball, choosing when and how to navigate staggers, pindowns and the like so he can catch in a position to shoot or attack downhill. But still, he makes the absolute right read here, and even sells the shot attempt for a half second to really make the defender commit to him. Nice selfless play by a guy who had every right to let it fly himself, but shared some of the team’s momentum with a kiddo instead.

 

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

Longtime readers know we’ll use this space to give a fake Game Ball to the most important (or sometimes most memorable) performer from each Jazz win. There were no victories during this first partial week, but fret not: we’ll still recognize each game’s top Jazz performers.

Strong in defeat:

  • Jazz 124, Grizzlies 126: Lauri Markkanen. Markkanen going off to the tune of 35-and-9 on 60/57/93 shooting splits was a perfect start to the Finnish forward’s season after he recommitted to the Jazz this past August. Before the game was 200 seconds old, he had banked in a three and soared for an alley-oop dunk. He was a game-best +16 in a game the Jazz lost by two, so it’s not an exaggeration to say he might have been the best player on the court, game result notwithstanding. Kessler was also awesome in a game Hardy called possibly his best performance as a pro. He was plugged in mentally, showed tons of passion, and tallied a monster line of 16 points, 14 boards, and 5 blocks.
  • Jazz 86, Warriors 127: John Collins. It was quite a bit harder to find a solid performer out of this Friday night mess. Collins gets it almost by default: not only was he the top scorer, but he and Jordan Clarkson were the only players to exceed a point per shot (on more than one attempt). Collins overcame characteristically spotty defense and some early mistakes to salvage a decent line: 14 points, 7 boards, 4 assists.

    Looking ahead to the next seven nights of action

    As outlined above, it doesn’t get easier for the Jazz, who are about to play their first 4-in-6-nights stretch of the season:

    • Monday, October 28: Jazz at Mavericks. The new-look Mavs are 1-1, but Klay Thompson is fitting in nicely. The longtime Warrior is averaging north of 20, and has already made 11 threes in two games. Kyrie Irving, on the other hand, has fewer points than shot attempts, and playoff flamethrower PJ Washington is regressing hard to the mean with his 3-for-12 start from three.But watch out for Luka Doncic: he’s coming off a 40-point explosion.
    • Tuesday, October 29: Jazz vs. Kings. Speaking of new looks, the Kings added DeMar DeRozan this summer, and the newly formed big three of him, Domantas Sabonis and De’Aaron Fox combined for 72.5 points on average over the first two. They were, however, both narrow losses: a 2-point home defeat to reigning West finalist Minnesota, and a 4-point loss at Los Angeles thanks to LeBron James’ triple double. They’ll also be on a back-to-back on Tuesday, but theirs is the dreaded west-to-east variety, as they’ll be coming from a home date with Portland.
    • Thursday, October 31: Jazz vs. Spurs. Chris Paul hasn’t exactly set the nets ablaze in his first two games as a Spur (six total points), but is orchestrating the offense to the tune of 8.5 assists per game. That’s helping Jeremy Sochan (17.5 ppg, a big jump from his career 11.3 figure) and Julian Champagnie (15 off the bench) get off to a good start. But CP3 has already connected on three alley-oops with Victor Wembanyama, making good on his promise to bring Lob City to his 2-man game with the impressive Frenchman.
    • Saturday, November 2: Jazz at Nuggets. The season is off to an inauspicious start for the 2023 champs, but not because their superstar is off his game (29-11-9 for Nikola Jokic, rounded). For that matter, even Jamal Murray appears to have shaken off his puzzlingly bad FIBA performance. The issue for now is that none of their high-minute wings made shots in losses to OKC and the Clippers. Aaron Gordon, Michael Porter Jr., Christian Braun and Russell Westbrook are a combined 6-for-34 from three so far.

    Random stuff from the Jazz community

    Let’s end here, with the coach imparting some wisdom and culture before the first of 82 games:

    We’ve officially launched the Salt City Seven madness for the year.

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