Salt City Seven: Let’s Get Ethical, Desperation, Passes Galore

Collier’s passing remains a bright spot for the 15-45 Jazz. (Rick Egan, 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

We’ve known for a while now that the 2024-25 Jazz wouldn’t be playoff-bound, but this is the first time they’ll enter a week in which it could be made official. Their magic/tragic number for elimination is down to one with 5th place Houston, six with 10th place Sacramento, and five for everybody in between. The Jazz play four games in the next seven nights, and so do each of the six teams who would have to win to mathematically rule them out.

But the Jazz are also a respectable 5-9 since February started, and two of those losses went to overtime. They’ve upset five playoff-bound teams in the last 31 days, and there are only three games in this 14-game span where Utah never was within a single-possession margin at some point in the fourth quarter: at Lakers, vs. Thunder and vs. Kings.

Which is all to say that while it’s fairly obvious what outcome the Jazz are headed towards, they’re not a train wreck.

the lottery gods will reward ethical tanking.

— Rob Perez (@WorldWideWob) March 1, 2025

What does that mean exactly? That even though the Jazz have used 20 different players and 35 unique starting lineup combinations, they’re still trying to operate as much like a development ecosystem as a loss factory.

I understand people who pshaw the notion of “ethical tanking,” but the reality is there are levels to everything, and the Jazz have never asked Will Hardy to do anything but coach the hell out of whichever guys are dressed at game time. Whether or not that will satisfy some cosmic forces responsible for ensuring the proper bouncing of ping pong balls is something we won’t know for sure until May 12, but Hardy still preaches adherence to the Jazz’s core principles. And at least for now, the players who are soaking up most of the extra minutes are players they’re invested in, not just anonymous placeholders.

This past week, for example, they were led in minutes played by Keyonte George, KJ Martin, Isaiah Collier, Brice Sensabaugh, Kyle Filipowski, Cody Williams… all under-25 guys who were recent Jazz draftees or (in Martin’s case) an interesting trade acquisition. Those players are on the floor to get better, and they’re given the appropriate feedback when they fail to implement a scheme or lack the right amount of effort. And more often than not, the result is an interesting basketball contest.

The Jazz have kept games closer (-7.02) than of any of this season’s sub-.300 teams. In the past five seasons, only two such teams have finished with better point differentials: the 2020-21 Pistons who picked Cade Cunningham first overall that summer, and the 2023-24 Spurs who jumped into the top 4 to get Stephon Castle. Maybe the lottery gods really do reward teams that try hard along the way. In the weighted lottery era (1990-present), the best point differentials by teams under .300 were ’18 Dallas (fell back in the lottery but then traded up for Luka Doncic), ’07 Boston (fell back in the lottery but traded for Ray Allen and won a ring the next season), and ’20 Minnesota (won the Anthony Edwards lottery). Hmmmm.

Back to this season… heading into Monday’s action, Utah still has max odds at a No. 1 overall pick.

The Jazz’s four picks in the upcoming draft

Toronto could decide a lot here, since they still have three games left against league-worst Washington and two each against the Jazz and Hornets.

As for Minnesota’s pick — owed to the Jazz as part of the 2022 trade involving Rudy Gobert — the 6-10 tier in the West is separated by just a half a game. Minnesota has the easiest remaining schedule in that group, but also hasn’t had Gobert in action since the All-Star break. The Kings and Warriors are surging after making significant changes at the deadline, while the Wolves and Clippers have stumbled of late.

Watch for a pick watch update midweek on the socials.

Telling or interesting words from Jazz people

“Just not enough attention to detail in terms of what we’re trying to execute defensively…

“Everybody wants to play more, and then you get a chance to do it, and you go out there and you don’t execute, and that’s frustrating… You have to be ready when you get it…

“The frustrating part is that there’s so much opportunity on our team right now. All of these young players are getting an opportunity to show us who they are, what they are. And that opportunity needs to be met with the desperation that it deserves.”

-Hardy after the Jazz allowed 76 paint points on Sunday

Despite the Jazz’s record, Hardy usually sounds pretty upbeat in postgame pressers. He recognizes the context for this year’s 15-45 season, and so he usually heads to the podium to articulate why his team is generally on track toward a brighter future.

But a few hours before delivering this quote, he spoke from the same podium about the importance of scheme adherence when playing against Zion Williamson because he’s capable of crushing your help rotations if they’re not executed just right. Maybe that’s why on this particular night he was hypersensitive to his team ignoring elements of the game plan and letting the Pelicans waltz into 76 paint points.

“I’m not disappointed in our team very often,” Hardy added. “But as a whole, I just think that our attention to detail was poor.”

The call for desperation is an interesting way to frame it. Of the 60 players drafted in the first round just 5-6 years ago, only about half are on pace to crack 1,000 NBA minutes this season, and a third of them are out of the league already (or were at some point before re-entering on minimum deals). None of the youngsters who played on Sunday has solidified himself as a surefire rotation player on a good team yet. All have intriguing tools: George’s talent and swagger, Collier’s vision/passing, Sensabaugh’s scoring knack, Filipowski’s court awareness, Johnny Juzang’s movement shooting… but players with NBA-level tools don’t always make it.

Stats that tell the story of the week

≤24

The Jazz’s 33rd starting lineup of the year — used Monday against the Blazers — was also their youngest opening unit. At 24 years, 1 month and 18 days, Martin was the elder statesman in that lineup of exclusively 24-and-under dudes. They used the same lineup again in Sunday’s win, but in between also debuted the 34th and 35th new versions of the opening five.

35

Speaking of starting lineups, the Jazz had more new starting lineups just in the month of February (9) than the New York Knicks have had all season (7). Only Philadelphia (36) has more than the Jazz’s 35 total unique starting fives, followed by Golden State at 34.

23

The Jazz had more assists in the second half against Minnesota (23) than they have had in 12 of their full games. Collier and George also combined for 23 among them. 

32+

The Jazz also had 32 assists in the previous game, and 35 again on Sunday, making it the first time this year they’ve had three straight games with 32 or more.

34.5%, 46.7%

In the category of “encouraging, but tiny sample size”… From February 10 on, Collier is shooting 34.5% from three and Williams is at 46.7%. Both players still have a long way to go before their season-long numbers (24% and 27.5%, respectively) look decent, but you have to start somewhere.

Dissecting a Jazz scoring play from the week

We obviously have to look at Utah’s 23-assist second half, and in particular, at Collier’s uncanny knack for completing gutsy passes that make his teammates chase the ball right into an easy bucket.

These two plays were nearly a quarter apart, but look remarkably similar. 

In both cases, Collier bounces the ball into an area of the court where multiple defenders are, but both times it works out because the angle of his passes actually force his teammates to run toward the ball, and in so doing he puts them right next to the rim. Collier is legitimately great at these “leading” passes. He’s making these reads not based on where his target and multiple defenders are currently standing, but based on where he anticipates they’ll all be when the pass arrives. Anticipating (correctly!) the future movements of that many players at once is ridiculous, and something you can’t really teach. That’s instinct.

I mean, this is what the court looks like at the moment he passes the ball on these two plays. 

Freeze frames

That’s insane! On both plays, his eventual receiver is behind him or even with him in terms of on-court longitude, and yet he puts the ball ahead and in between multiple white shirts.

George also had a ridiculous pass in the mid fourth quarter. This might have been as complex as any of Collier’s 14 assists, just from a physics standpoint.

Not only is it hard to get that kind of accuracy on a left-handed sidearm pass from 50+ feet away, but somehow George actually whips this around two defenders who know the pass is coming.

If you pay attention to the line the ball is on between George’s hand and the point where it bounces, and then the path from the bounce to KJ Martin’s hand, it definitely curls in around the defense because George puts the right amount of “English” on it. Just an insanely difficult pass to execute.

Both guys were phenomenal passers that night.

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

It was a good week for the bigs in our weekly tradition of recognizing the top performers.

Jazz 117, Wolves 116: John Collins. This was ridiculously hard, because under any other circumstances, John’s 29-and-12 would make him a pretty automatic choice, but Collier tallying 14 assists was actually a rarer feat so you have to stop and think it through. Ultimately, John assisted the go-ahead dunk at the end, and then came up with the game-winning defensive stop, and it felt like that’s too much to ignore when combined with his monster stat line. Kessler was also really good: 2-for-10 rim defense, the Wolves shot 6-for-23 overall with him defending, plus he was +23 and made the aforementioned go-ahead dunk. Filipowski had a double-double off the bench, but I think the proper order here is Collins, Collier, then Kessler.

Strong in defeat:

• Jazz 112, Blazers 114: Kyle Filipowski. It was Flip’s turn for one of those superlative stat lines: he was the first rookie with at least those numbers (20-11-5) and 100% from the outside on multiple attempts since Lamar Odom in 2000. Sensabaugh also had something of a redemption game after a bit of a recent funk, and that felt like a big deal narrative-wise, but when you zoom out it’s hard to pass up the 20-11-5 guy to give it to the 21-4-1 guy.
• Jazz 101, Kings 118: Walker Kessler. This was one of the easiest calls in a while. Kessler’s 25-14-5 with perfect shooting (10-for-10) make the only player other than Nikola Jokic to achieve that in a game since Wilt Freaking Chamberlain. Martin got some more buzz (16 points), but nobody else really challenged Kessler here. He dealt with tough matchups and still held the Kings to 39% shooting as the primary defender.
• Jazz 121, Pelicans 128: Keyonte George. Oscar Tshiebwe (16 & 13) was a big story, and Sensabaugh (21 points) was great early. But George’s 23-point second half clearly crossed over into “let’s not be silly about this” territory. He had 28 total, plus six assists and a late deluge that helped make it close. Also, Filipowski was flirting with a double-double until Tshiebwe claimed a bunch of his minutes; he still put together 12-11-7 and had a sequence late with a dunk, a DHO assist on a George three, and then his own triple.

Looking ahead to the next seven nights of action

The Jazz will play their whopping ninth straight home game to start the week, then they head out on the road for five straight.

• Monday, March 3: Jazz vs. Pistons. Detroit is one of the hottest teams in basketball right now, although only two of their wins in this 9-1 stretch came against teams with winning records. Former Jazzman Malik Beasley is averaging more than five threes a game over that span, but Detroit’s turnaround is mostly about first-time All-Star Cade Cunningham, who’s averaging 25-9-6 on career-high shooting and usage.
• Wednesday, March 5: Jazz @ Wizards. The Wiz are randomly 5-7 since the start of February, despite the fact that Jordan Poole is shooting under 30% from outside during that stretch. Khris Middleton (11 ppg) and Marcus Smart (9.3) have looked like they’re in second gear in their four games apiece, Kyle Kuzma got traded, and Jonas Valanciunas finally asked out so he could go help the Kings. 
• Friday, March 7: Jazz @ Raptors. Toronto still has such an easy schedule that every time I see if I assume it’s a typo: their average remaining opponent is .364, which would currently be 8th worst in the league. That means they’re not likely to get back inside the top five lottery odds. That’s especially true if Brandon Ingram winds up playing a role for them, but there’s still no ETA for the 2020 All-Star. RJ Barrett (21.7 ppg) and Scottie Barnes (20 even) are Toronto’s main offensive weapons, though former Jazz guard Ochai Agbaji is averaging 10 a game.
• Sunday, March 9: Jazz @ Sixers. Joel Embiid’s season is officially over, but weirdly their record with him (8-11) wasn’t all that much better than their record so far without him (13-27) because of nagging health woes. Tyrese Maxey, the league leader in minutes per game, is their leading scorer now at 26.7, but his efficiency per shooting trip is back down below the NBA average. Paul George is no longer producing star-level output, and they’re last in the league in both rebounding and defensive eFG%.

Random stuff from the Jazz community

Since February 14, 2008, the Jazz have recorded one regular season triple-double, and the rest of the league has had 1,412.

But there have been some close calls lately, which got me thinking about who is most likely to record the next one. Here is my definitive top 5:

Bold prediction: someone will get one before the season is over.

Another week is in the books.