Salt City Seven (Late): Environment, 5 Years of JC & More

Jordan Clarkson has been a part of the Jazz for five years. (Carlos Osorio via stlrib.com)

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

It is a fascinating marker of the 2024-25 Jazz that the most consternation this writer has seen in his social media mentions this season didn’t come after any of Utah’s three 35+ point losses or during a 1-9 stretch. The most upset I’ve seen Jazz fans all year was last week, after the Jazz won consecutive games for the first time.

To those concerned that the Jazz aren’t committed enough to maximizing draft lottery odds, one of the key things to remember about the season is this: even in a non-competitive year, environment matters, too.

Young players building confidence matters. Getting reps within a meaningful, logical basketball context matters. Playing next to four other guys who know how to do their job matters. Players not being handed way more than they’re ready for matters.

The Jazz coaching staff and front office know all of that stuff, which is why they’re approaching the season the way they are: it’s a youth movement, but with enough steadying presence to ensure the basketball makes sense. Seven of Utah’s top 11 minute-getters are 23 and younger, and that’s without counting Taylor Hendricks who was poised to start before a season-ending injury. This isn’t any less of a development season for those seven kiddos just because Lauri Markkanen, Collin Sexton, John Collins and Jordan Clarkson are also in the rotation. Much to the contrary: the opportunities the youngsters are getting are going to have helped them more in the long run because they’re playing next to actual NBA players.

Keyonte George running a couple dozen pick-and-rolls per game with John Collins is infinitely more valuable to his long-term growth as a ball-in-hand decision maker than if he were running the same amount of P&R with someone like Day’Ron Sharpe, whom the Jazz saw when they faced the beyond-hapless Nets over the weekend. Walker Kessler rim diving while Markkanen is on the wing is giving him a completely different learning experience than if that were Dalano Banton, whom the Jazz will see on Thursday. 

Not that there’s anything wrong with a rebuilding team taking a look at a guy like Sharpe or Banton. There’s not! And at some point, the Jazz will probably pivot to some more, uh, adventurous lineups. But for now, they’re also interested in letting George and Kessler and others feel what it’s like to play on a Real Basketball Team, and that is pretty damn important. It’s not more important than the Jazz putting themselves in a position to acquire the next franchise player, but it’s important enough that it’s OK to balance that against the desire to just go lose, lose, lose.

Because environment matters.

There are tons of examples of team getting stuck just giving minutes to whoever shows up on time with sneakers on, and Brooklyn and Portland are two good examples of just how uncomfortable that can get. Even their good young players like Nic Claxton, Shaedon Sharpe and Scoot Henderson have plateaued or even backslid, because there’s simply only so much you can learn in the context of a placeholder basketball team with a roster that doesn’t make sense.

The Jazz make sense as a basketball team, and that’s going to be a good thing in the long run, even if it means they might accidentally win 24 games instead of 22 (or whatever) in the immediate term. Young guys have to compete against competent NBA players to earn opportunities. Giving a player a role he hasn’t earned yet doesn’t magically create development, and in fact can undermine it. The Jazz coaches know that more than we do from outside the locker room and the practice facility. They also know that when players do eventually earn those opportunities, they’ll be earning the right to participate in a grown-up game of basketball with teammates who expect them to play a certain way and systems that have some degree of structure.

Along the way, if the minute allocation helps juice the market value of Utah’s veterans, that’s not a bad thing, either.

The Jazz just aren’t going to finish the season on a 55-game losing streak. And that’s OK. Utah’s on a 20.5-win pace right now even after a recent stretch of competence. Even if they continue to win a few games each month, they’ll still finish the season where they probably should from a long-term roster-planning standpoint, and along the way they will have created an environment that doesn’t suck to play and learn basketball in.

Telling or interesting words from Jazz people

“I think the competitiveness, the togetherness that our group is showing has risen a ton in the last two weeks. That’s obviously very important to me and to our staff, but I think it sets the environment up for real improvement to happen. And to play in a game like that is incredible for our entire group.”

-Will Hardy after a competitive loss to Cleveland 

Hardy does a great job of making the point above far more succinctly.

It has been good to see some players garner some confidence. Utah won two straight, then follwed that up with a game against the league’s best team (record-wise) in which they weren’t out of reach until the final minute. Of course, all of that comes on the heels of another total blowout, but Hardy’s point here is that playing well does in fact set guys up to have a better understanding of how to lay the foundation.

“I’m the first person to tell them when I think they haven’t met their own standard, and I think tonight we did and we came up short. I think if we play that hard, we move the ball like that, there’s a lot of good things coming.”

Stats that tell the story of the week

24-20

How shaky was the Jazz’s first quarter in Inglewood on Monday? Bad enough that after 12 minutes, James Harden himself had outscored the entire Jazz team 24-20. They started 1-of-10 from the field and never got closer than 20 points back after the 5:29 mark in te opening frame. LAC also had the second-highest scoring first half of the NBA season, with 81 at the break.

48

Then it was Utah’s own turn to cook in Detroit, where they score more points in a quarter (48) than any road team this season. Only Boston (51) and Cleveland (49) had more productive quarters this season, and both of them were at home.

17.5%

Neither team could find the basket early in Saturday’s Jazz-Nets affair, but the Jazz eventually calibrated their way to a reasonable 34% from deep. Brooklyn… did not. Their 17.5% from outside was one of the 11 worst outside shooting performances of the year.

27-17

Jazz-Cavs will go in the books as a double-digit loss, but Utah was within three in the final two minutes, before an 8-0 close by Cleveland. Utah had no business being that close in a game that was fairly even from the 3-point line and where Utah gave up a 14-point deficit in paint points and lost 21-5 in fast break points. Their only saving grace was their second best night of the season in second-chance points, a category they won 27-17.

43.5%

Are we talking enough about how Sexton is making a career-best 43.5% on threes this year? On 122 attempts? Including 44% on pull-ups? And taking a bigger chunk of his shots there than ever before? Just checking.

Dissecting a Jazz scoring play from the week

Normally I fish for sexy plays from Jazz wins, but since this week’s edition is coming late anyway, we might as well highlight the playmaking of an ex-Cav against his old team — on the exact anniversary of his move from Cleveland to Utah.

There’s nothing super complex about these, other than that Utah knew exactly how to manipulate the Cavs’ helping schemes. Both times, Jordan Clarkson beats a guy 1-on-1 without a screen (going left in both cases) and that engages some “oh shit” defense from the guy guarding the Jazz player in the dunker spot. In both cases, the dunker guy smartly spaces to the corner as soon as his guy leaves him, and the Jazz are banking that when the pass goes to that guy (Markkanen on the first, Filipowski the second), that’s going to trigger an overhelp that’s going to left the left angle spacer open, either to shoot (Sexton) or to attack a sloppy closeout (Collier).

This one was a little niftier from a design standpoint:

The Jazz run this type of little ram screen (an off ball pick for the guy about to set the ball screen) fairly often. What’s different about this one is that Clarkson’s defender is actually playing to the outside, so the ram screen doesn’t really do anything to give JC any separation from Max Strus. But no problem, thinks JC. Because he’s already thinking about the endgame, and having Strus locked on his left shoulder actually helps with where this play is heading.

The Jazz actually head into this design anticipating that the Cavs have been hedging on this type of guard-guard ball screen. So all along, Clarkson was going to slip out of this pick. Strus’ position up to the side of him makes that easier. He actually gets away with the slightest little push on Sexton’s defender, and both defenders stay with Young Bull. The Jazz now have a 4-on-3 when JC catches the ball on the short roll, and he has tons of good choices here. He can go to work in the midrange, try the lob to Kessler who’s being guarded by a smaller guy, or kick it to Potter since his man has had to follow Kessler in.

Here’s to five years of JC doing JC things in Utah.

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

It’s a two Game Ball kind of week!

Jazz 126, Pistons 119: Lauri Markkanen. I had all but decided this was going to be Sexton (30-6-7 line), but man, 10 turnovers is a lot. Keyonte George also had one of his best two or three games of the year, but to hear Hardy talk about some last-minute scheme changes, you start to realize how important Kessler and Markkanen were. The Jazz had Kessler out in space a lot more and he was pretty great there; tracking stats say the Pistons shot 0-for-11 from three with him defending. That scheme also required Markkanen to be more attentive to helping out on the glass, and he had a season high in rebounds as part of a meaty 27-and-14 double double. Keyonte’s down-the-middle jam and Sexton’s reverse alley-oop were the most memorable plays of the night, though, so any of those four would be the right answer.

Jazz 105, Nets 94: Collin Sexton. This one we’ll give right to Sexton without too much deliberation. Markkanen scored more, but really had to labor his way to 21. This one really came down to Sexton’s 18-5-4 vs. Clarkson’s 16-8-1 on similar efficiency. Inpredictable says Sexton had more to do with the win, which makes sense since they pulled away in the third quarter while Young Bull went 4-for-5 from the field. Props to Svi Mykhailiuk who had 18 on 7/11 shooting, although he didn’t play down the stretc.

Strong in defeat:

• Jazz 107, Clippers 144: Lauri Markkanen. Clarkson was the max scorer (20), but had a 2-for-7 first half and finished the night with six turnovers. Collins was invisible for a half before finishing at 14 and 5. Walker Kessler shot efficiently but got beasted by Ivica Zubac. Sexton shot well but did not a ton else, and George was the inverse, with a nice night distributing but rough shooting (2-for-11). About the only big contributor without some major asterisk was Markkanen: 17 points (5/9) and five rebounds, which in this one was good enough to earn our fake honor by default.
• Jazz 113, Cavs 124: Jordan Clarkson. Kessler was the first name Hardy mentioned in his postgame remarks, and impacted the game by putting pressure on the offensive glass. But JC’s fingerprints were all over this game, as we just covered in the film review portion. He scored 27, assisted 13 more Jazz points, had a bunch of hockey assists, grabbed six boards, and even ripped a couple of steals — all on the anniversary of his departure from Cleveland. He was +4. Markkanen overcame another bumpy shooting night to land at 26 points, and Sexton had 24, albeit less efficiently than his usual clip. For me, Clarkson edges Kessler partially because of narrative.

Looking ahead to the next seven nights of action

We’re coming at you a little later than usual, so there are only two games left in the current week to quickly preview:

• Thursday, December 26: Jazz @ Blazers. The last time the Jazz visited Moda Center, they won by 42. That game was part of a 1-8 stretch for Portland, including drubbings of 20+ their last two times out. Jerami Grant is having his worst shooting season since his rookie campaign, and Anfernee Simons has connected on just 27% of his threes in his last eight games. This is a struggling basketball team.
• Saturday, December 28: Jazz vs. Sixers. After playing eight of nine of the road, Utah gets to come home and face the two most recent league MVPs before another 3-game road trip out east. Oof. The first of those MVP battles is with Joel Embiid, who had 27 in a Christmas Day win after being ejected on Monday. Philly’s new top scorer is 2024 All-Star Tyrese Maxey, an electric guard who has powered the Sixers’ 8-3 surge with 26-and-6 averages over that span. Paul George is averaging just 11.8 over his last four, on 29% shooting.

Random stuff from the Jazz community

More on Clarkson’s five years with the Jazz:

• A total of 71 players have suited up for the Jazz between December 23, 2019 and December 23, 2024, but nobody has come within 130 games of Clarkson over that span as he has truly bridged eras for the Jazz. Mike Conley Jr. saw 191 Jazz games since the Clarkson trade, Royce O’Neale 190.
• Seeing Donovan Mitchell, Bojan Bogdanovic and Georges Niang this past week was a good reminder that JC is the only person remaining on the roster OR coaching staff that coincided with those players in Utah.
• Clarkson has played three times more games for the Jazz than all three players on the other end of that trade have played total in five years. Dante Exum has played 85 games in addition to some overseason time, while the two draft picks Utah sent have yielded just 15 total games: 15 from the injured Emoni Bates and zero from 2022 draftee Khalifa Diop.
• JC is fourth in franchise threes, eighth in per-minute scoring, 18th in total assists, 19th in total point, and famously tied for fifth in triple-doubles after breaking a historic drought there.
• He’s also the second-leading scorer off the bench in franchise history, behind only Thurl Bailey.

Hope you and yours had the merriest of holiday seasons!