Salt City Seven: Lineup Experimentation, Sexton’s Burst, Ghost Screens

What duos and trios are working for the experimenting Jazz? (Francisco Kjolseth, 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 look at the big, burning question of the moment in Jazzland

If you thought that improved health would yield some clarity as to the Jazz’s rotations and pecking order… think again.

The Jazz are finally back to full strength, but they’re hardly settling back into some prior version of their rotation. In each of their three games since getting all their guys back, they’ve used a unique starting lineup.

In the 12 games since December 8, the Jazz have only repeated starting lineups twice, and Saturday’s matinee game against the Heat featured Utah’s 16th unique starting lineup of the year, and the change was not motivated by player absences; all of the same dudes were available from the prior two.

The realignment was likely about matching up with the smaller, quicker Heat. But it also hints at what might be a new reality for the Jazz: fully healthy, they might spend the coming weeks focused on experimentation.  It’s fair to say that there might be a smaller difference in macro quality throughout the rotation spots, at least after All-Star Lauri Markkanen. And with five and a half weeks left before the deadline on in-season trades, it may behoove Utah to spend January gathering information on how different combinations work together.

There is enough noise in the lineup data to get too obsessed with 5-man lineups. The Jazz only have a single quintet with more than 100 shared minutes anyway. Keyonte George didn’t even come to the starting lineup until Walker Kessler was made inactive with an arm injury. Then Markkanen went out with hamstring soreness, and eary in his first game back, George hurt his foot. Along the way, key veterans like Jordan Clarkson (10), John Collins (4) and others missed games.

So there just isn’t reliable enough samples for evaluating 5-man lineups. But 2-man and 3-man groups might yield some interesting insights around lineup building blocks.

Here are a few things worth noticing, with necessary caveat that lineup data is generally more descriptive than predictive:

• George hasn’t been part of too many successful duos and trios. The rookie battled some shooting woes before his injury absence, but mostly the issue with those groups has been on the defensive end. In particular, the George-Kessler pairing (-19.1 per 100) has been worrisome, but given the importance of both in the long-term, I think they’ll give it more looks. George-Simone Fontecchio lineups (-16.4) and George-Collins (-15.8) have also had rough early results.
• Of the main rotation guys, George’s net rating is best when playing with Markkanen (-2.6) or Kris Dunn (+18.4, but on limited minutes).
• The Jazz’s five best trios with at least 50 minutes all involve Kris Dunn. The top trios also are extremely likely to include Markkanen, Kessler, Ochai Agbaji and Talen Horton-Tucker.
• Kelly Olynyk is also part of a lot of winning trios. Olynyk-THT-Agbaji, Olynyk-THT-Kessler and Olynyk-Markkanen-Clarkson are all double digit positives.
• Collin Sexton’s duos and trios are mostly pretty middling on a season-long basis, but in his last 10 games as a starter, he’s been part of several winning trios, generally with THT and/or Kessler involved.

The Jazz would surely love to keep pulling the thread on some of these, which is why it’s likely we’ll continue to see different combinations and experimentations.

What remains to be seen is whether those insights will lead to change by early February.

Telling or interesting words from Jazz people

“Sometimes I go so fast I don’t hear anything.”

-Sexton, as relayed by Sarah Todd

We clearly need to talk about Sexton.

As a starter, the bouncy guard is averaging 23 points on 50-39-87 shooting spits, along with 4.5 assists per game. He’s capable of playing particularly pesky defense, even if the same exuberance that occasionally pesters opposing ball handlers occasionally leads to mistakes. In short, he’s been a bit of a revelation as a starter.

As one astute writer pointed out during the preseason, Sexton’s ability to get to the line gives him a pretty safe floor from an efficiency stanpoint, and his career per-36 scoring rate has been pretty consistent in the low 20s. So on a certain level, it’s not surprising that given regular minutes, his scoring is essentially pacing with his Cleveland stint. He averaged 22.5 over a 2-season peak as a Cav starter, and now 23.0 as a Jazz starter.

It’s no huge surprise that his pull-up 3-point shooting didn’t quite hold up from last year, but he has moved more of his floater-range attempts to the outside, where he’s taking a career-high 33.7% of his shots as threes (and making a respectable 34.9% of them). Combine that with his 4.4 free-throw attempts per game and his overall true shooting is still .597 for the year.

Stats that tell the story of the week

+/- 8

Saturday’s nail-biter against the Heat was the first game Utah played this season in which neither team ever led by more than 8 points. The whole game was played inside a 14-point swing: the Heat’s max lead was six, and Utah’s biggest margin was eight. In fact, until the 3:42 mark in the fourth — more than 44 minutes into the game — the game was inside a 2-possession margin the whole way.

+12

Utah’s 12-point win in San Antonio was their largest margin of victory on the road this season. Three of their four largest win margins came on their recent road trip: the Spurs, the Pistons (+8) and the Raptors (+7).

12-1

The Jazz remain a long shot in games where they trail after three (2-18), but are 12-1 when they take a lead or a tie into the fourth quarter. All three games this week followed the pattern: they led the Spurs after three, trailed the Pelicans and were tied with Miami.

44.4%

Small sample size, but George is shooting 8-for-18 from the 3-point line since his return. 

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

Another week with multiple wins made us convene the Game Ball department a couple more times to end 2023.

Jazz 130, Spurs 118: Lauri Markkanen. Somehow, Markkanen has way too few fake Wilsons this season. Most of the wins he’s been a part of (he’s been healthy for nine), someone else has been a bigger story even when he’s been the game’s MVP in literal terms. But this one was fairly clear: not only did he have the best stat line (31 and 12), but the Jazz played their best when he was on the floor (+20). He also was the primary defender on Victor Wembanyama and held him to 1-for-6 shooting. In fact, all Spurs shot 4/14 with Lauri guarding.

Jazz 117, Heat 109: Kelly Olynyk. Sexton kept things close with his early scoring punch, and George’s 11-point fourth quarter powered the clinching run. But Olynyk was probably even more crucial here. He had four points of his own in the final frame, but just as importantly he assisted 14 more. His total body of work came to 19 points, 10 assists, six rebounds, and a whole bunch of just flat bully-ball that was important to vanquishing the Heat’s switching. George was a close second though, and both he and Sexton had some big defensive moments as well.

Strong in defeat:

• Jazz 105, Pelicans 112: Lauri Markkanen. He finished the night with 24-10-5, but I might have given it to him for the five assists alone. I’ve long said that the next step in his game is to start creating more for others. Even though most of his assists were just reading the help on drives, that’s all it takes to open up a whole new dimension. Sexton (26-5-3) was the only other real challenger here.

Breaking down the Xs and Os behind a Jazz score.

One of the ways the Jazz use Markkanen’s gravity to engineer a ton of open looks is by using the Finnish forward as a “ghost screener.”

A ghost screen is essentially a fake ball screen. A guy makes it look like he’s going to screen but instead sprints into open territory. It can be a real scheme-buster, because depending on how opponents are guarding ball screens, it can lead to a ton of confusion. Like here:

Because no screen is actually set, Lauri’s man thinks his job is to stay close to the All-Star. Yet you clearly see Clarkson’s man expecting a body to be there to help him contain the vet while he works to get back in front. With nobody showing on Clarkson, he’s able to get all the way to the paint before anybody can offer any help, and at that point he has only an insincere contest from Keldon Johnson to overcome.

That confusion is compounded when the ghost screen is just one component in a larger set of actions:

Technically, it looks to the Spurs like Markkanen is the second screener in a “Spain P&R” set here, which is why Kris Dunn’s defender ultimately decides it’s his responsibility to pick up the ball handler. Devin Vassell eventually realizes that means he needs to switch out to Dunn, but the funny thing is that this doesn’t really turn into Spain at all, because Lauri never really sets the second pick. As a result, Wembanyama is caught just kinda hanging out, and the best guy in the gym gets a wide open look at nailing what essentially was the dagger in San Antonio.

Looking ahead to the next seven nights of action

The Jazz will spend the first half of the week wrapping up their current 3-game homestand, then depart for an absolutely brutal trip to visit the three best teams in the Eastern Conference.

• Monday, 1/1: Jazz vs. Mavs. The last time the Jazz faced Dallas, Luka Doncic got whatever he wanted (including a first-half triple double) and the Mavs won by 50. The Jazz, however, were without Markkanen, Olynyk and Jordan Clarkson for that game, so expect the rematch to be somewhat more competitive.
• Wednesday 1/3, Jazz vs. Pistons. The Pistons’ torturous 28-game losing skid finally ended, but they remain the league’s worst team at 3-29, and now Isaiah Stewart is supposed to miss some time. Bojan Bogdanovic had 23 in last year’s trip to Utah, but managed just 8 points last week when the Pistons hosted the Jazz.
• Friday, 1/5: Jazz @ Celtics. From the very bottom to the very top, Boston remains the league’s best team at 27-6. This will be a homecoming for longtime Celtic Olynyk, but also for Will Hardy, who spent a season on Boston’s bench on his way to the head gig in Utah.
• Saturday, 1/6: Jazz @ Sixers. The Celtics might be the best team in basketball, but the best single quintet resides six hours down the I-95. Reigning MVP Joel Embiid, nascent superstar Tyrese Maxey and the other three current Sixer starters have a +33.3 efficiency differential, the best high-minute lineup in the NBA, per Cleaning the Glass.

Random stuff from the Jazz community

What was the single most important thing to happen to the Jazz in 2023?

OK, so what the biggest or most important Jazz plot point in 2023?

— Salt City Hoops (@saltcityhoops) January 1, 2024

My vote agrees with the majority here: Markkanen already claiming All-Star status is a huge deal for the rebuild, and a timeline-shifting development.

Then I’d probably go the ’23 draft, thanks to George’s precocious start, but if the 2027 Lakers pick winds up in the lottery (outside the top 4), that has a sneaky chance at becoming one of the biggest things to have happened this year.

Clarkson’s renegotiation-and-extension probably has more chance of yielding trade value at some point than it does of really impacting the next contending version of the Jazz, but that’s OK. The acquisition of Collins would be the next choice for me, even though the fit so far has generated mixed results.

Now let’s see what 2024 holds.

Hope you all had a happy holiday season! Here’s to an awesome 2024 for all our readers, and of course for this fun little team we follow.