Salt City Seven: Burning Questions, Trade Recap, Vets Survived & More

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. 

For several weeks now, the biggest question about the 2024-25 Jazz has been about what would happen in the ramp-up to February 6. But now that the trade deadline has passed (more on that later), there are still big, burning questions that matter over the final 31 games.

Here are a few of them.

Burning question #1: How real is Isaiah Collier as a starting-caliber NBA point guard?

Collier has become one of the absolute revelations of the 2024-25 Jazz season. His playmaking and vision are already unlocking things for the Jazz. He’s about to eclipse another couple of Jazz rookie records for passing, still with more than a third of the season to go. (We’ll revisit Collier next week when he surely will have a couple more records under his belt.) At the same time, the Jazz offense gets only a tiny bit better when he’s on the court vs. off, and a lot of that comes down to his general timidity about shooting from outside. He’s figuring out how to attack the paint and/or midrange when teams give him a runway, but in the modern NBA, 20.7% on threes is very limiting for a guard. Whether he maxes out as a change-of-pace bulldog guard or a starter-level facilitator depends in large part on how that part of his game develops.

Burning question #2: Is “bench scoring guard” Keyonte George’s proper role?

It’s remarkable how similar George’s year two numbers were to his rookie season, which was a little disappointing to those hoping for a nice sophomore bump. Instead, he found himself midway through the year with pretty consistent 39-33-83 shooting splits, hardly the stuff of future stars. So the Jazz decided to try something else; nine games ago, they moved George to a bench role to see if he could help more as a second-unit sniper. The sample size is small, but so far he’s scoring in bunches (16.8 ppg off the bench), but not necessarily with any greater degree of efficiency (42-28-83 splits). At some point it would be fun to see George begin to take off.

Burning question #3: Can Utah’s other young draftees find some momentum?

This is most directed at Cody Williams, a top-10 pick who has mostly struggled in his rookie season. But even Brice Sensabaugh is now in a protracted slump after back-to-back career games in Florida. He’s been held to single digits in the last seven games, and he’s shooting under 27% from deep since a brief absence in early January. Kyle Filipowski has shown some things, but opponent shooting at the rim when he’s the interior defender (73.6%) is practically the same as if nobody were there at all. So unless he’s going to improve there, he might need to start thinking about how to repackage himself as a big four who can pass and shoot. The 40% on corner threes is a good start.

Burning question #4: Is KJ Martin worth an extended look?

The one player they’re actually keeping from their trade season haul is the 24-year-old Martin, a 3-and-D specialist who showed the most promise in his three Houston seasons: 10.5 ppg with a positive net rating, great rim finishing and above-average efficiency overall. He’s been limited the last two seasons with injury woes and trades, but there’s an outline there of a useful player. If the Jazz like him, they can keep him for $8M next season, or they can cut him loose with no salary guarantee. The latter feels more likely in a vacuum, but who knows; having an extra $8M of expiring salary could be useful. (Side note: the Jazz also need to use these 31 games to decide whether Micah Potter should claim a standard roster spot for next season, since he’ll no longer be eligible to return on a 2-way.)

Burning question #5: How aggressive will the Jazz be about resting vets over the final 31 games?

The Jazz are 12-39 and currently possess the second best lottery odds, partially because they haven’t been afraid to rest guys with various ailments. Lauri Markkanen has missed 13 games, John Collins 18 and Jordan Clarkson 23. Even Collin Sexton, who has played all season with a broken hand, eventually missed five games for rest and now an ankle sprain. The Jazz also have the hardest remaining schedule among the sub-.400 teams, so they may not even need to shut guys down entirely to manage their lottery positioning, but it will be interesting to see who plays and how much over the next two months.

Other interesting things to note: Walker Kessler is extension eligible this July, although the Jazz may already feel like they have the data necessary to make smart decisions there. It will be interesting to see if Markkanen’s numbers normalize at all after a season of experimentation, and two players not mentioned above have non-guaranteed contracts.

So yeah, there’s a lot to monitor still as we move into the final 38% of the season.

 

“UT🖤H”

-Clarkson, in a social media post just after the deadline passed

Perhaps the biggest surprises about how the Jazz came out of trade season had to do with what didn’t happen, as opposed to what did.

The Jazz made it through yet another transaction window with Clarkson still in their employ. In fact, it’s somewhat surprising that the Jazz made four separate trades (and in a sense, five separate negotiations, since the Martin portion of the deal was hashed out well after the initial framework of the Jimmy Butler trade was announced) without really altering their rotation at all. Sexton, Collins and Clarkson were all thought to be varying levels of available, but all were still Jazzmen at 1:01 p.m. MST on Thursday.

This writer posited all along that it would take a real offer to get Utah to part with Sexton. Collins may have been close to being dealt to Sacramento, according to a rumor from the Kings beat, but might have more value as an expiring contract this summer anyway.

In Clarkson’s case, the market may just have not been overly frothy for small backup guards. Other than those involved in bigger deals or salary dumps, there just wasn’t a ton of movement in that tier of guards. Davion Mitchell got moved for a 2nd and cash.  The Clippers got three 2nds for the Terance Mann-Bones Hyland tandem of bench guards. The Jazz got an incremental second for Dennis Schroder, but only after getting a second for taking Schroder, which kind of illustrates the broader point here: the market for 6’4″ and under scoring guards is fairly eye-of-the-beholder.

The Jazz might field better offers for any or all of these three later on in their contracts, but even if they don’t, there’s a certain amount of basketball and development value to having them lend some legitimacy to the basketball environment in the short term. Collier getting P&R reps with Collins is simply more instructive than running them with, say, Potter or Oscar Tshiebwe. That’s not a slight to anybody, it’s just a basketball reality that playing alongside more complete teammates will open up different menu options that players like Collier need to understand in the long term.

So for now, the Jazz’s high-minute vets remain a part of the project. All three can receive extensions this offseason, though it’s more likely that Utah prioritizes keeping options open.

 

≥9

Collier had nine or more assists in every game this week, the longest such streak by a rookie in franchise history. He has reached that level in 10 total games this season, already just one game behind Trey Burke for the most games at that level by a Jazz rookie… ever. His next double-digit assist game will also tie Burke’s Jazz rookie record (7) for outings with 10+.

+23

The Jazz lost to the Pacers despite a 60-37 rebounding edge. It was only the second time this season a team has lost a game in which is outrebounded its opponent by 20 or more. They also shot better from outside and got to the line way more, so you can probably guess what the culprit was behind Utah’s 1-point loss: turnovers. Indy won 26-12 on turnover points.

20-6

Utah trailed the Warriors on Wednesday by a score of 122-111 inside the final three minutes, before an impressive 20-6 flurry by Utah. The Jazz scored on all of their last nine possessions, and as the team account posted, it was the first time in two NBA seasons that a team won after trailing by 11 in the final three minutes of regulations.

99.0%

They almost had another fourth-quarter comeback locked up when they stormed back from 13 down with a 22-5 run. That resulted in them being up four with less than five seconds left, a scoreboard that Inpredictable’s win probability calculator says results in a win 99.0% of the time. Alas, instead the Suns forced OT with a pair of threes by former Jazz draftee Grayson Allen, and then Phoenix won 13-5 in the extra session. 

78

With no Walker Kessler and other Jazz big men also out against the Clippers, Utah rolled out about as small a rotation as you can get away with, and consequently struggled to guard the paint. The 78 paint points scored by the home team were tied for the sixth highest game in that stat of this NBA season.

 

It’s pretty rewarding seeing a young team figure out how to deploy something against a specific type of defense. It’s even more fun watching them get a firmer grasp on broader concepts that they can apply even against different types of schemes and defenses. 

For example, the Jazz generated a bunch of backdoor opportunities this past week, but the setup wasn’t always the same.

In these examples from earlier in the week, the Jazz had gleaned enough intel by those points in the game to recognize how the opponents were scheming off-ball, wing-to-wing screens. They knew that based on opponent schemes, there might be some confusion as to whether to switch or not. George’s shooting ability is a helpful red herring on both plays, because the defender who’s behind the screening action has to worry momentarily about him popping out for a pass or sprinting into an unguarded handoff. That freezes the back guy long enough on both of these plays that the cutter gets halfway to the hoop before any helpers even realize what’s going on.

Later in the week, we saw more plays that looked very similar on the surface, but were actually the product of a different basketball situation.

On all three of these, Filipowski and George make it look like the latter is coming over for a DHO (dribble hand-off), because they had recognized that LAC’s defensive game plan included trying to cut the guards off from coming to the ball there. Three different defenders jump up above the would-be DHO screener to cut off that option, so all three times George just dives in right behind them. All three of these are then perfectly placed by Flip, but the second on in particular is gutsy and beautiful, right in between three blue shirts.

In both videos, what the Jazz are weaponizing is teams’ desire to limit that DHO action involving George. But what’s impressive is how the Jazz figure out against completely different schemes how they can use opponents’ schemes to generate the same kind of backdoor opportunity.

 

It was a good week for guards:

Jazz 131, Warriors 128: Jordan Clarkson. George had the go-ahead three and then helped put the game away with free throws, but it a vintage Clarkson stretch that put the game within reach in the first place. After starting the game with a flurry, Clarkson really started the run when Utah got down by 11 with three minutes to go. He had eight of the points in a 16-4 run, part of a 13-point quarter and a 31-4-5 night. But George wasn’t far behind: 12 points in the fourth, 26-3-6 for the night. Collier scored 20 to go with 11 assists, and Kessler had a monster double-double with 15 and 18.

Strong in defeat:

• Jazz 111, Pacers 112: Keyonte George. For a franchise as starved for triple-doubles as the Jazz have been for the last 17 years, getting as close as George did (16-11-8) is a pretty big deal. As solid as Collins was in this game (21 and 12, game-best +11), it felt like this had to be one of the young guards. George and Collier became the first duo of first- or second-year players in nearly four calendar years to both log a points-assists double-double on the same night. (Two nights later, a pair of Wizards guards matched the feat, but still.) If it comes down to those two, George’s 16-11-8 trumps Collier’s 11-10-1, but both were really good, and Collins was super, including with a go-ahead bucket late.
• Jazz 127, Suns 135: Walker Kessler. In the moment, it felt like this had to be Collier after he tough-guyed his way to the bucket to give Utah a 4-point lead just minutes after they had trailed by 13. But if we don’t give this to Kessler on a night with 19 points, 22 (!) boards, 4 assists, 3 blocks and a steal, then when the hell is he going to earn our pretend recognition? I’ve written many weeks in this space just how undervalued Kessler might be, so I can’t ignore that type of line. But that feverish 22-5 run was a real collective effort: it started with a quick five from Johnny Juzang, featured five putback points from Kessler, six points off of Collier drives, plus three points apiece from Collins and George.
• Jazz 110, Clippers 130: Johnny Juzang. Clarkson’s was on fire early, scoring 14 points in the game’s first five minutes as Utah built a big lead. But he shot 3-for-13 the rest of way. On the other hand, George managed 21-4-4, but the Jazz lost his minutes by 39. So I think this probably comes down to Juzang or Filipowski. The former scored an efficient 19 and came up with three steals, while the latter filled in nicely for Kessler by posting 13, 8 and 5. I’ll go Juzang by a nose only because the interior defense was the Jazz’s biggest pitfall.

 

The Jazz have played three straight Pacific Division teams, and have three more ahead before heading off for the All-Star break.

• Monday, February 10: Jazz @ Lakers. OK, this is going to fun. Luka Doncic’s first game isn’t just the start of an era for the Lakers; when a top-5 player changes teams and joins up with an all-time great, that’s a new era for basketball as a whole. Whatever their ratings and momentum looked like, ignore all of that because this team has an entirely new identity the second the Slovenian playmaker steps on the court. That said, Doncic last played on Christmas Day, so there might be a little rust. LeBron James (listed as probably as of this writing) had 42 and 17 his last time out, and Austin Reaves is coming off a career-high 45.
• Wednesday, February 12: Jazz vs. Lakers. The other interesting this about these two Jazz-Lakers game is that as some point the Lakers have to reincorporate prodigal wings Cam Reddish and Dalton Knecht after canceling a trade that send the two away. Concerns over Mark Williams’ physical prompted L.A. to recall the pair, who are sixth and ninth in total minutes played this year. That could be a little awkward reintegrated guys who literally had their bags packed.
• Thursday, February 13: Jazz vs. Clippers. In an alternate reality, the Jazz would already be in Cancun by Thursday night, but due to schedule changes resulting from the Southern California fires, Utah has a little bit more work to do before the break. James Harden delivered a masterclass in the last meeting, with 23 points (despite a cold shooting first half) and 17 assists. Utah didn’t even really have to deal with a fully-deployed Kawhi Leonard (10 points), but Ivica Zubac was pretty close to unstoppable as Utah send extra bodies at Harden. Zubac finished with a season-high 26.

 

We love a good graphic here at SCH… here’s one recapping all of the Jazz’s in-season trade involvement.

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Three more before we reach the All-Star break. Enjoy!