SC7: Healthy Conley Could Shake Up Lineup, Tough Road Ahead, Royce & More

The Jazz are excited to welcome Conley (middle) back, even if it means a rotation shuffle is in order. (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

“I was obviously comfortable (starting). Like, do I think I’m a starter in the NBA? Yeah. Was I happy to take a (reserve) role and accept it and try to be really good at the sixth man? Of course. I wanted to win with the Jazz. A part of that was the offseason (player acquisitions), and doing what we did with our team, someone’s going to come off the bench. Of course I was fine with it…

Going back into the starting lineup when Mike (Conley) went down, it was I guess good timing for myself because I started to play better. But it was just a natural, it was just what I was used to. I didn’t have to think about what am I going to do now, how do I get involved.”

-The Jazz’s Joe Ingles, on ESPN Zach Lowe’s podcast

In his wide-ranging and hour-long discussion with Lowe over at the mothership, Ingles touched on precisely the topic that is keeping Jazz Nation up at night: how do the Jazz organize their rotation now that Conley is back from a 19-game injury absence?

After Utah acquired a couple of gifted perimeter scorers last summer, it had an abundance of wing creators to fill a finite number of rotation spots. The answer at first, was to slide Ingles to the second unit and repurpose Royce O’Neale as a combo forward. Ultimately Utah had six starter-caliber players, and those pesky NBA refs only allow teams to start five. So someone had to take a stab at figuring out the role of super sub, and Ingles was the guy.

It didn’t work out terribly well, partially because the early schedule was much harder, but also because Ingles struggled to find a rhythm coming off the bench and playing without an obvious pick-and-roll partner.

Ingles’ True Shooting efficiency was a career-worst .496 while he was coming off the bench, and was dishing just 3.5 assists per game.

“It’s very different,” Ingles said of the sixth man role.

The Australian forward swears he would have eventually figured it out — “I would have been able to adjust,” he told Lowe — but he didn’t have to. Conley got hurt, and suddenly the answer was obvious.

Ingles moved back into the starting five, and both he and the team took off. His TS jumped from .496 to .665, and his assists per game nearly doubled (3.5 to 6.1) as he rediscovered his pick-and-roll chemistry with Rudy Gobert. Meanwhile, the Jazz had a similar resurgence, going 16-3 during the 19 (full or partial) games that Conley missed, although the opponent quality over that stretch was far softer.

Plot twist: Conley’s back now, which presents Jazz coach Quin Snyder with the same quandary he had back in October. He has six guys who should start, but only five can.

For now, it’s not a major dilemma. Conley’s minutes will be limited for a few games — he played just 15 minutes in Saturday’s win over Sacramento. Snyder can keep everybody in their current roles as Mike works his way back to full strength.

But eventually, Conley will be ready to take the reins back. And when that happens, there are only so many ways Snyder can structure the starting unit. Gobert will start, that one’s easy. But one of the club’s five high-quality perimeter players has to enter the game later than the other four.

It won’t be star guard and leading scorer Donovan Mitchell. Bojan Bogdanovic has been a revelation for Utah and seems like a solid starter, too. They could keep Conley in a reserve role, but then they have a $32.5 million bench player. Truth be told, that’s not the real reason; the Jazz don’t make basketball decisions based on paystubs. They acquired Mike, though, based on what they think his presence can unlock in Utah’s other starters, particularly the star duo of Mitchell and Gobert. Sooner or later, he’ll be back in the starting five.

That leaves Ingles and the newly extended O’Neale. 

One way or another, somebody who has been starting and playing well is going to have a new role. The good news is that the Jazz have also reworked their bench lineups since Conley got hurt. The Jazz have acquired Jordan Clarkson, moved Georges Niang back to his natural position, and reallocated the backup center minutes to Tony Bradley, all moves that have helped stabilize bench play. So whoever rejoins that reserve platoon will ostensibly have a better unit around him.

“If it’s me, I’ll accept it, and I think I’ll be a lot better,” Ingles said. “Playing the way I’ve been playing recently, it would be a lot easier to just go in there and hopefully just continue.”

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

9th

The Jazz have finally done it: they are in the top 10 for both offensive and defensive efficiency, actually ranking ninth in both. This is important because nearly every legitimate title contender is in the top third of the league in both regular season offense and defense. For example, the last nine NBA Champions have all shared that distinction, with the exception of one Warriors team that was just outside the top 10 on defense: ’19 Raptors (5th/5th), ’18 Warriors (3rd/11th), ’17 Warriors (1st/2nd), ’16 Cavs (3rd/10th), ’15 Warrios (2nd/1st), ’14 Spurs (5th/4th), ’13 Heat (1st/9th), ’12 Heat (6th/4th), ’11 Mavs (9th/8th).

Now it’s time to see how the Jazz’s rankings hold up against a stiffer schedule. They’ve climbed to 9th/9th during a month-long stretch during which they only faced two winning teams. Starting this week, they have to pay the piper back for their cushy stretch. More on that down below.

+4

The Jazz went up by four, 120-116, with 1:34 left in New Orleans on Thursday night, and then didn’t score another field goal. They had the Pels one foul away from the penalty for the final 5:25 of regulation, but their average shot distance for that time was 18.5 feet from the basket.

They had an even bigger lead with 2:28 remaining in overtime, 132-127, but then had seven empty offensive possessions to close the extra period.

20+

For the second time in less than a week, four Jazz players ended Saturday’s win with 20 or more points: Bogey’s 30, Gobert’s 28, 22 for Mitchell and 20 for Clarkson. It was the 17th time in Jazz history that four or more players have had 20+ in a single game, including just six days prior in Washington when Bogey, Gobert, Ingles and Clarkson did it. To find another example of the Jazz getting two such games within the same seven-day period, you’d have to go clear back to December 1988. (Ken Clayton did the digging on this one.)

47.2%

O’Neale has turned himself into one of the game’s best catch-and-shoot 3-point shooters, at 47.2% this season. He is also a physical and mobile defender, and that combination is part of why he has a +9.3 Net Rating after 42 games. Of the regulars, only Gobert and Bogdanovic are better. That’s all why the Jazz wanted to lock O’Neale up on an extension while they could. They knew he’d command some interest this offseason as a restricted free agent, so instead they got him at a price that’s lower than the Mid-Level Exception. Solid snag for the Jazz, and it’s cool that Royce got the security and the vote of confidence.  

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

Reinventing Spain

Sometimes even your pet play needs a little bit of tinkering to yield the right outcomes. That was the case this week when the Jazz ran a familiar play in an unfamiliar way.

The Jazz run “Spain pick-and-roll” a lot. The usual ingredients of Spain are pretty standard: a ball handler out front, a high screener (usually a big man), a second screener setting a backpick on the first screener’s man and then popping out to the 3-point line, and two corner spacers. We’ve used this space to show you Spain P&R a couple of different times. 

But when they ran it in Brooklyn on Tuesday night, it didn’t look quite the same.

Nets Center Jarrett Allen had been playing way back on the pick-and-roll. Like… WAY back. That made it hard for the Jazz to get the most out of some of their actions involving Gobert as a screener. So they came up with this wrinkle: Spain P&R, but without Gobert involved.

Bogdanovic is the high screener, only instead of rolling like Gobert does, he starts the roll and then fades out to the elbow. This is because the spacing would be tight if he made the same roll Gobert usually makes here, plus he has to allow Ingles room to make his usual backscreen-then-pop route to the above-the-break three.

Gobert essentially plays the role of weakside corner spacer here, except that he’s in the “dunker” area instead of camping out all the way in the corner. This still requires Allen to make the same tough decision that weakside helpers have to make: go help on the drive, or stay home on his man. He of course has to help because the core “Spain” combined with Mitchell’s nasty spin move left the guard open in the paint. Ingles’ guy actually does an OK job here: he recognizes that it’s Spain and he correctly switches onto Mitchell. Mitchell’s man doesn’t recognize the switch, so Ingles is wide open at the top, and then Mitchell’s spin move shakes the defender and gives him plenty of options.

It’s a really smart way to get the same “juice” out of one of Utah’s trusted plays, even though the way Allen was playing Gobert screens made it tougher to run the traditional version. 

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

At 2-1 since our last installment, the Jazz have two games balls coming.

Jazz 118, Brooklyn 107: Joe Ingles. This game was one of those that mostly came down to Gobert’s dominance. But it’s hard to ignore a performance like Joe’s, especially when the words “career high” are involved. Ingles had an unreal .935 True Shooting to get his 27, and he was huge during the late second quarter when the Jazz were pulling away from the Nets, at one point scoring nine straight Jazz points on his own. He was also a really important part of the defensive game plan: guys guarded by Ingles only got six shots off all game, even though he spent most of the night guarding Spencer Dinwiddie and Caris Levert, both scorers. Gobert was dominant too (22 points, 18 boards, plenty of examples of him terrifying Nets players in the paint). Mitchell had 25 after missing a game to illness, 

Jazz 123, Kings 101: Rudy Gobert. Easy one. Eleven shots to get 28 points — are you kidding me? Plus he had 15 boards, three blocks, two steals and was just very much in charge of this game from the get-go. He had 10 points in the game’s first five minutes as the Jazz opened up a 21-10 lead, and he had a team-best +32 for the night. No need to overthink this one, even though Bogey was great in his ninth 30-point game of the season.

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

The Jazz are currently tied for third place in the competitive Western Conference, a half game behind the Clippers and even with the Nuggets and their identical 29-13 record. Prominent forecasting site FiveThirtyEight now projects the Jazz to finish third, at 54-28. Basketball Reference’s model has them fourth at 52 wins.

But Utah’s lofty forecasts are about to be tested: eight of the 12 opponents they’ll face before the All-Star break are teams projected to win 49 games or more. 

Current projected wins of Utah’s next 12 opponents:

• Indiana: 49 (50 per B-Ref)
• @Golden State: 25 (21)
• Dallas: 52 (54)
• Houston: 53 (50)
• @San Antonio: 33 (38)
• @Denver (b2b): 52 (50)
• @Portland: 37 (36)
• Denver: 52 (50)
• Portland: 37 (36)
• @Houston: 53 (50)
• @Dallas (b2b): 52 (54)
• Miami: 51 (53)

Oof. Two against Houston, two against Dallas, two against Denver, and their average opponent over the next dozen games is a projected 44-win outfit. 

Those six games against the teams in the top six could also impact final seedings quite a bit.

A quick look at the Jazz’s next seven nights of action

If you haven’t heard it by now, let me be the one to tell you: things are about to get tougher for the Jazz, starting with two of this week’s three games coming against very good clubs.

Monday 1/20, Jazz vs. Pacers: Bogey’s former team blew the Jazz out in Indianaoplis earlier this season, but now makes its first extended trip west. The Pacers beat Denver on Sunday night, their fifth straight win, and then hopped on a plane to get to Utah for the second half of a back-to-back. Indiana does a lot of things well, but the one thing they do at an elite level is defend transition: they are #1 in reducing transition opportunities AND at limiting their opponents’ effectiveness on such plays, per Cleaning the Glass.

Wednesday 1/22, Jazz @ Warriors: The Dubs had lost 10 in a row before surprising Orlando on Saturday night. Frankly, they’re just still a mess, with literally the worst offense in the NBA. Draymond Green has been day-to-day recently as well, in addition to injured stars Steph Curry and Klay Thompson.

Saturday 1/25, Jazz vs. Mavs: Somehow, the Jazz have gotten this far into the season without running into the new-look Mavs, a sudden Western contender behind the starry play of Luka Doncic and the newly acquired (and finally healthy) Kristaps Porzingis. Dallas has won four straight and has the league’s best offense by a pretty wide margin. Their defense is solidly average, although they do let teams turn their misses into transition opportunities a little too often: sixth-worst at limiting transition off misses, per Cleaning the Glass.

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

Let’s end with a note of celebration.

Appreciate you my brother!! And nahh dinner still on you 🙏🏾💚🤞🏾 https://t.co/hFUORf5SHo

— Royce O’Neale (@BucketsONeale00) January 19, 2020

That’s another week in Jazz Nation. Here come another seven days!