Salt City Seven: It’s the Defense, Standings Watch, World-USA Jazzmen & 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. 

The Jazz finally halted a 5-game skid with a Sunday evening win, but haven’t exactly played their best basketball over the last six weeks — even before some February trades.

The Jazz season can now be quite cleanly divided into three distinct tranches of games: their uneven start, their mid-winter surge, and now the disappointing 5-11 stumble that has them firmly outside the play-in range. Looking under the hood as Utah’s offensive and defensive outputs in those segments makes it fairly obvious where things went wrong, and then right, and then wrong again.

The Jazz were a bottom-5 team on both ends for the first month and a half of the season. They were also playing a tough opponent slate, and had key players out for stretches, playing hurt, or finding their way. Their 7-16 record wasn’t utterly shocking for those reasons. The vultures circled, with this being roughly the time rival execs started talking to the media about their curiosity around poaching even Utah’s stars.

But then the schedule turned, guys got healthy, and Will Hardy tinkered with the rotation. The result was Utah’s best stretch, a 15-4 spell with offensive and defensive production in the top third of the league. The opponents were also weaker as a whole, and even some of the tougher foes were without superstars in their games against the Jazz, but this is when the Jazz were clicking.

In this latest little malaise, the Jazz’s opponent slate has actually been the mildest yet. What’s kind of remarkable about this 5-11 stretch (against mediocre competition) is that the offense has actually carried over from Utah’s hot stretch. Instead it’s the defense that’s failing them — they literally have the worst D in the league from January 17 forward.

This isn’t the result of the trades. This little regression to the mean started before the Jazz dealt three rotation players away, and even otherwise, it’s not like Kelly Olynyk was holding the Jazz defense together. Simone Fontecchio likely helped the Jazz’s defensive rating just by virtue of his size on the wing, but Ochai Agbaji was a net zero by most defensive ranking systems (like EPM or Defensive BPM). None of those three account for a drop from the 10th best defense over a 19-game stretch to literally the worst in the league over the past five weeks.

So what is responsible for Utah’s defensive freefall? Weirdly enough, the offense has something to do with it. Even though the overall offensive output is similar, the Jazz have the third worst turnover ratio in the league over that same 1/17-forward stretch, and they’ve allowed their opponents to score 19.3 points per game off their turnovers, second most during that span. In short: offensive decision-making is making the job harder at the other end.

Not surprisingly, the guards are the primary culprits, with seven turnovers per game coming from Collin Sexton (2.6), Jordan Clarkson (2.3) and Keyonte George (2.1). That’s pretty standard: most teams’ primary sources of miscues are the guys who handle the ball most often, but obviously some turnovers (and even some misses) are more likely to create transition defense challenges. Opponents’ transition frequency off steals is 7.5% higher when George is on court versus when he’s off, and it’s 5.3% higher with Clarkson playing. Off of misses, opponents are most often running against lineups involving Kris Dunn (+5.2%). For whatever reason, teams are less likely to run in both scenarios when Sexton is playing.

There’s no hard-and-fast solution here, other than “play better.” Or perhaps more precisely: “make fewer weird offensive plays so you give the defense a chance.”

But it is interesting to look past the win-loss record and find that the offense is still producing roughly what it was during Utah’s best stretch. The Jazz have made their lives harder — and their record worse — primarily on the defensive end of the floor.

 

Heading into Monday’s NBA slate, the Jazz are three full games out of a play-in spot and 1.5 games in the other direction from keeping their top-10 protected pick.

Utah has literally the toughest opponent slate of all teams within 5.5 games of them. That makes catching the Warriors (easy opponent slate, but road heavy) or Lakers (home-heavy but tougher teams on average) that much tougher. But Trae Young’s injury and Houston’s continued slump makes it unclear if any team will have the juice to knock the Jazz backwards and enable them to keep their pick.

The Jazz play three of these teams this week, all on the road. Those could be consequential games in the pick race, since they’re all Eastern Conference squads.

 

“Seasons are long, it’s 82 games. We don’t need to have a meeting every day. Sometimes things don’t go your way, sometimes you have a tough game, sometimes decisions are made from a lineup standpoint that are outside of your control.”

-Will Hardy, on talking guys through changes and challenges 

This answer was specifically in regards to lineup changes, and more specifically, to a question by Sarah Todd about Walker Kessler coming off the bench again. A bump in playing time for the second-year center was ostensibly part of the reason behind the Jazz’s midseason trades. He averaged 26.5 minutes in the first four games after Utah’s midseason trades, but hasn’t cracked 19 minutes in either of the last two contests as the Jazz have instead wanted to give Taylor Hendricks more run with the main guys.

But Hardy hopes the big guy knows it’s not at all personal.

“We’ve changed the lineup a lot since I’ve been here,” the coach said somewhat wryly. He added that whenever they do, it’s with the same goal in mind: “Let’s look at who’s in the locker room tonight and let’s try to make that group function as best as we can for 48 minutes.”

 

-19

The Jazz were outscored by 19 in turnover points in their loss to the Hornets. It was the fourth worst deficit in this department, and the worst since before Utah’s season turnaround started in early December. In all, they’ve had 12 games where they’ve lost the turnover points battle by a dozen or more, and they’ve lost all 12.

33

The Jazz are also 0-10 when they get outscored by 20 or more (so really 21 or more, mathematically) at the 3-point line. That also includes Thursday’s game; Charlotte hit 20 threes to Utah’s nine, and that 33-point different is pretty difficult to overcome.

30

Not only were the Jazz on the right end of a turnover point battle for a change against San Antonio (34-14), but they also tied a season high with 30 fast break points. Not surprisingly, they’re 9-4 when they generate at least 18 points in transition.

44%

Sexton is up to 44% on catch-and-shoot threes, narrowly edging Lauri Markkanen and Dunn for the best mark on the team.

 

The Game Ball department got back to work this week after a little sabbatical.

Jazz 128, Spurs 109: Lauri Markkanen. Multiple names came up in the postgame Game Ball discussion, but few brought up the guy who was, for me at least, the obvious choice. Inpredictable.com thought he was the easy call, too: Markkanen added to Utah’s win likelihood well more than any other player. That started with his hot first quarter, but he also had a pair of threes and an exclamation-point dunk down the stretch. Markkanen’s final line was 26 points (56-63-100 shooting splits), 7 boards, 4 assists and 2 steals. He also had to close the game on Victor Wembanyama defensively, and the generational rookie didn’t attempt a shot in the final eight minutes. Inpredictable also concluded that John Collins (20 & 8, including a 3-for-3 fourth) influenced the outcome second most, but Clarkson (22 points, 10 assists) was Markkanen’s closest contender in these eyes. Sexton also had a double-double (16 and 10, with four steals). Several folks mentioned Dunn’s four timely steals.

Strong in defeat:

• Jazz 107, Hornets 115: Lauri Markkanen. Despite a slow shooting start, Markkanen wound up at 21 points on 14 shots — largely because he kept getting to the line. But this is more in recognition of his career high-tying six assists, the most he’s ever had in a Jazz uniform and an ingredient this writer has been saying for a while now the Finn should build on. He also had 9 boards. Sexton was Utah’s only hyper efficient scorer, with 17 points and five assists. George (16 overall) had a nice third quarter, as did Taylor Hendricks, who finished with a 12-and-9 line in his first NBA start. Collins also had 18 boards.

 

The Jazz cross the continent for their next three. Set the DVR, as these East Coast games start a little earlier than you might be used to.

• Tuesday 2/27: Jazz @ Hawks. This will be Utah’s first ever game against a team with Quin Snyder as its head coach, since the former Jazz basketball boss was hired after both Jazz-Hawks game last season. Collins’ former team had lost five of seven before coming back to defeat the very next Jazz foe, the Orlando Magic.
• Thursday 2/29: Jazz @ Magic. The Jazz will spend Leap Day in Orlando, against a team that physically overwhelmed them in a 113-115 loss early on. Orlando has a real chance to get above the play-in range, and has won seven of its last ten.
• Saturday 3/2: Jazz @ Heat. The Jazz then take their talents to South Beach, where the Heat are also fighting to get to sixth or better. They’ve been dealing with a litany of injuries and absences, but somehow have still won seven of nine, and overall their have a defense in the top quartile of the league.

 

All the talk of reviving the All-Star game with a USA vs. World reboot got me wondering: who would be on Utah’s all-time list in those categories, and what would the resulting basketball game look like?

	Jazz-USA	Jazz-World
C	Eaton	Gobert
F	Malone	Boozer
F	Dantley	Markkanen
G	Williams	Kirilenko
G	Stockton	Rubio
Bench	Mitchell, Maravich Hornacek, Hayward	Okur, Clarkson Bogdanovic, Ingles

Carlos Boozer played for Team USA, but was technically born in Germany, so I cheated and moved him to the Jazz-World team to make the teams a little more balanced. I also let the World team keep USA-born Clarkson, who participated with the Philippines in the FIBA World Cup.

It was hard filling out the guard spots with actuall All-Stars, which is why I slid Andrei Kirilenko to the two. The other guards listed here — Ricky Rubio, Joe Ingles and Clarkson — never made All-Star teams. Neither did Bojan Bogdanovic, but he has the 12th highest career Jazz scoring average. Mehmet Okur’s cumulative Jazz achievements surpass Markkanen’s, but the latter made more sense positionally, plus his scoring average so far (24.7) is fourth best.

All nine of the Jazz-USA All-Stars were actual All-Stars, although Jeff Hornacek’s lone selection was before his Jazz days. Deron Williams’ two All-NBA selections as a Jazzman helped him edge ahead of Donovan Mitchell for other starting guard spot next to John Stockton. This team is guard and wing heavy, so they’re probably playing small (with Karl Malone and four outside players) anyway.

Honestly, these teams illustrate the same problem that would exist if the league goes to a USA-World format: there’s still just not the same star depth. The rosters can compete at the top, but you wind up talking yourself into some reaches as you fill the back part of the international roster. In fact, I stopped at nine because the next guy on the international squad would have been someone who felt like quite a reach, like Carlos Arroyo (Puerto Rico) or Olynyk (Canada) who possess the next highest WAR seasons among international guys. Instead, if I had to go to 10 I’d probably reward the Jazz longevity of someone like Raja Bell (Virgin Islands) or Gordan Giricek (Croatia) on Team World. The tenth USA guy would surely be real-life All-Star Rickey Green.

At first I foresaw a USA win, but the more I look at this, the more I realize that the Americans are going to have a hard time with the size of the imports. World wins a close one. Thoughts?

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Twenty-four games to go!