Salt City Seven: No Lost Sleep Over Lost Leads, Slipped Screens, A More Crowded West

Bogey and Mitchell had solid weeks for the Jazz. (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

“This was a great win.”

-Jazz coach Quin Snyder, dismissing any notion of disappointment about New Orleans’ second-half run that nearly erased a 20-point Jazz lead

In two straight games, Snyder’s Jazz have endured close finishes after building leads of 20-plus. In both games, those big runs came from injury-riddled teams not currently projecting as playoff teams, which could add to the worry about big leads nearly slipping away entirely. But Snyder wasn’t interested in jumping up and down on his team after they survived a furious run by quality Pelicans players like Jrue Holiday and Brandon Ingram.

Asked about his level of concern about the trend of letting teams cut away at big leads, Snyder made it clear with his terse quote above that he had no mixed feelings about surviving the red-hot Pelicans and coming away with a win.

Then he continued: “Am I concerned if we build up leads and lose them? Absolutely. But tonight, I think we built up a lead making shots and playing well. Then in the second half, we were a little tired, but I still think we played well, and New Orleans made a lot of shots and that carved into the lead.”

It’s tempting to view NBA games as primarily being about one’s own team. But just down the sidelines from the Jazz was a team that has been playing better, despite a slew of serious injuries. The Pels had won three straight and five of the last seven heading into Salt Lake City, including a win over the Clippers and one in Phoenix. Ingram has been playing the best basketball of his career, and Holiday’s production jumped from 14.6 points per game in his first eight outings to 24.2 in his last six. In other words, what happened on Saturday night wasn’t all about the Jazz. 

“Tonight, it was more about what they were doing,” Snyder said.

The coach acknowledged that Friday’s game against Golden State — when a 21-point lead was cut all the way to two — was a little different, but insisted there wasn’t a real “let-up” against the Pels, despite what the scoreboard said. “I think we were locked in. I think they played well to come back, let me put it that way. They made a lot of plays.”

The Jazz were also without their starting center (and arguably their most valuable player), Rudy Gobert, another reason Snyder wasn’t about to look sideways at a win, no matter how it came. And regardless of who played and who sat, Snyder has been around the league long enough to know that teams make runs. The lead tracker almost never moves in one direction for all 48 minutes.

Take the week’s other two games, for example. Utah and Minnesota basically volleyed big runs back and forth at each other for 96 minutes to start the week. On Monday, Utah led by seven, trailed by seven, led by five, trailed by eight, led by six again and eventually lost by 10. Then the Jazz build an 11 point lead in Wednesday’s sequel, saw it evaporate into a 6-point deficit, see-sawed through the third quarter to build an 11-point lead again, trailed by six early in the fourth, and then made a 12-0 run to take the lead for good. 

It’s not just a Jazz thing either, it’s the nature of the NBA game. All you have to do is check other scores from that same night: Phoenix led by 12, then won by two. Indiana led by 15, won by five. San Antonio led by 28, won by seven. Chicago led by 14, trailed by 12, then won by a point.

All together, the NBA’s 10 victors on Saturday night won by an average margin of 7.4, but had big leads averaging 18.6 points at some point in the game. Pick just about any night at random and you’ll find a similar story.

Leads fluctuate. NBA players are just too good and too proud to not want to claw back at some point. 

The Jazz do have flaws. Some of them were on display this week. Bench weaknesses, frontcourt depth and inconsistent shooting all almost cost the club games this week. But those shrinking leads are not always evidence of a team’s weaknesses; sometimes they just point to the guts and gumption of a quality opponent who refuses to throw in the proverbial towel. That Utah survived the run of a talented Pelicans lineup on the second night of a back-to-back without Gobert is nothing to shake a stick at. 

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

$11.8 million

Credit Ken Clayton for this find, which made its way onto the Jazz broadcast: Golden State’s players will make a combined $138.5 million . The eight Warriors who were available to play the Jazz on Friday night make a combined $11.8 million, which represents about 8.5% of the team’s total payroll. So despite the missive above, it is fair to be disappointed that Utah’s 21-point lead against Golden State’s second and third units almost vanished entirely. Snyder admitted that he did sense a dip in energy that night, as the starters returned to close out the contest and promptly allowed an 18-6 run. That said, a team with only 53.8% of it’s 2018-19 minutes returning will take November wins however it can get them.

42.9%

A split with Minnesota this week means Gobert’s all-time record against Karl-Anthony Towns stands at 12-4. That’s an interesting rivalry, a battle between offense (KAT) and defense (the Stifle Tower). So far, Gobert’s defense has prevailed. Even in this week’s two contests, KAT shot just 12-for-28 (42.8%) when guarded by Gobert, per NBA.com matchup data. However, that included 8-of-18 (44%) on threes, including the three that helped Minnesota deal the Jazz their only home loss of the season.

That matchup is going to stay interesting for years.

.392

There’s no way around it at this point: Joe Ingles is in a season-long slump. His shooting percentages of 33% from the field and 29% from three give him a True Shooting of .460, worst of any Jazz player with 100 minutes. And somehow the slump got deeper this past week, as his True Shooting dipped to .392 for the Jazz’s four games since our last SC7. That doesn’t even take into account the shots he has passed up.

Of course, there’s an optimistic version of that last paragraph: the Jazz are 11-5 despite their best bench scorer not really being plugged in yet.

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

Guard-to-guard slips

Last week we used this space to talk about guard-to-guard screening actions and how the Jazz leverage them to create advantages and mismatches.

As with any screen, there are a lot of different ways you can execute the same play to generate the advantage. And sometimes the Jazz set up these actions but then fake or slip the pick instead. That can be equally devastating on these guard-to-guard plays out front. Here’s one.

The play had actually dead-ended, so Donovan Mitchell comes up to set a ball screen for Mike Conley. But because he peels off before even setting it, the defenders are confused as to whether this calls for a switch. Originally they both try to go with Mitchell, then both pause, and that gives the guard enough space to start his attack early. He starts dribbling toward the outside so that Towns has to be mindful of his dribble, and that means Gobert is able to slip behind without having set a real screen himself.

Later in the same game, they run another guard-to-guard slip that throws the whole defense off.

Royce O’Neale fakes another ball screen for Conley, but also slips it, so both perimeter defenders stay with Mike. And this time, because Gobert is also involve in the play, O’Neale is able to sneak behind three defenders.

He gets the ball and everybody panics. All five defenders run toward him, and so by the time he delivers the ball to Mitchell, every defender is in the paint below the FT circle, while three shooters who convert 45%, 39% and 36% of their 3-point attempts wait with their feet set. 

This isn’t particularly well-defended, but just about any way Minny plays it after the initial slip doesn’t end well for them. KAT could have recognized the slip and switched onto O’Neale, but then Gobert could just roll wide or punish a mismatch. The two weakside guys don’t have to come all the way in, but if neither one had come to “tag” the rolling Gobert, it’s a dunk. Had only one come in, one of Mitchell or Bojan Bogdanovic is still open. The second Royce slips that guard-to-guard pick, the Jazz are playing advantage basketball.

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

Utah’s 3-1 week gives us a lot of work here in the Game Ball department: three orbs are about to be delivered to key guys’ mantles.

Jazz 103, Wolves 95: Bojan Bogdanovic. Gobert dominated the defensive paint with five blocks and also had a 12-and-15 double-double while dealing with Towns. But Bogey helped the Jazz pull away for good. Utah’s final 18 points, all came from behind the arc: three triples by Bogey, two by Mitchell and one from Conley. He got the Jazz going early (10 in the first), and his late flurry helped erase the home team’s hope. The Jazz are now 5-0 when he passes the quarter-century mark, and he had 30 in this one. 

Jazz 113, Warriors 109: Rudy Gobert. This should have been an easy win: Conley finally got it going and the Jazz were up big,, so everything was on track for a pretty easy Game Ball decision. But then the lead eroded more and more, and it became a game the Jazz had to win with defense. That included a wild closing sequence where Gobert had to block at attempt by Alec Burks — and Quin Snyder followed that up by blocking an erroneous foul call via the coach’s challenge. The swat was one of Rudy’s seven, making him just the 31st player this century¹ to amass 19 boards and seven blocks in a game. He also won the bragging rights battle with Burks, holding him to 2-for-8 when directly contesting, part of a 6-for-21 defensive effort all combined. Conley was spectacular, too, with 27 points including six of the last seven Jazz points as they held off the run. Mitchell had his fourth 30-point game.

Jazz 128, Pelicans 120: Donovan Mitchell. Mitchell and Bogey combined for 24 of the Jazz’s first 28 points as they built an early lead that should have kept them out of trouble for the night. But as detailed above, they weren’t quite out of the woods. When the Pels made it close late, it was once again the same pair of heroes who put the game on ice. A Mitchell jumper and a Bojan free-throw trip put the nail in the coffin. Mitchell edges Bogey for this one, mostly because 37-7-5 is too special a line not to win it, but Bogey’s 28-5-5 (on just 17 shots) was as important. There were also several honorable mentions for cute storylines and guys who helped: Tony Bradley had 14 & 9 as he stepped in for Gobert and proved the Tony Bradley Theory, and Jeff Green and Emmanuel Mudiay both did nice things off the bench.

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

After three consecutive wins, the Jazz’s FiveThirtyEight win projection… dropped?

After splitting a home-and-home set with the Wolves and before nabbing two more wins against the Warriors and Pelicans, Utah’s win projection at the prominent forecasting site sat at 53 wins. Yet heading into Sunday evening’s NBA games, the forecast had them at 51, despite having beat two more opponents. How does that make sense?

For one thing: other teams. There are 1,230 wins available this NBA season, so as other teams like the Mavs and Wolves look increasingly legitimate, they’re going to pick up wins in a zero-sum environment.

During the offseason, I slotted Dallas as a frisky, still-improving team in the non-playoff tier, mostly because I thought Luka Doncic would need more time to make his mega=leap. Guess what: he didn’t. Doncic is averaging just over 30 points per game on unreal .632 True Shooting and having a top-five impact by various metrics, including the RAPTOR one that powers the 538 forecast.

Thanks largely to his jump from promising rookie to legitimate MVP candidate, 538 has the Mavs slotted at 50 wins — essentially bordering on the elite tier along with the five Western Conference teams the model has favored all along.

In other words, the contender class just got bigger by one, and that means there are more mouths to feed at the top of the West.

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

The Jazz are about to embark on their longest and toughest road trip of the season. This will be their only 5-game journey of the year, and it includes three of the top teams in the Eastern Conference.

It starts with this week’s four games:

Monday 11/25, Jazz @ Bucks: Utah’s defensive approach for keeping reigning MVP Giannis Antetokounmpo in check has involved a heavy dose of centers guarding him. So if Gobert misses this game in Milwaukee, they’ll have to come up with a new approach. O’Neale will certainly figure prominently into the game plan, but the reality is that beating the Bucks in Milwaukee on the third game in four nights is going to be challenging regardless of who plays. They’ve won seven in a row and 11 of 12, and they lead the league in schedule-adjusted point differential.

Wednesday 11/27, Jazz @ Pacers: Indiana just keeps finding ways to be solid. Paul George left and Victor Oladipo turned into an All-Star. Last year it was Bogdanovic who helped keep their offense afloat after Oladipo got hurt. As the dynamic guard continues his rehab into this season, and they’re getting career years from Malcolm Brogdon and Domantas Sabonis. They’re 9-6 (albeit against the softest schedule in the league) and they have a top-10 defense. Still, this is one of the Jazz’s best chances for a win on this trip. Plus, Bogey’s return to Indy should be fun.

Friday 11/29, Jazz @ Grizzlies: The Jazz have already experienced how frisky the 5-10 Grizzlies can be. Rookie Ja Morant had one of his best games of the season in the Jazz’s first visit to Memphis, and Utah came away with a loss in Conley’s first trip back to Beale Street. Can lightning strike twice? Or will Conley’s second game in FedEx Forum as a visitor go better than the first? An understandably emotional Conley shot 5-for-19 in that November 15 loss.

Sunday 12/1, Jazz @ Raptors: The reigning champs are… hardly the reigning champs anymore. Kawhi Leonard left, Kyle Lowry is hurt, and Marc Gasol’s production has fallen off a cliff. But this new version of “We the North” is pretty fun, and also good. Pascal Siakam and Fred VanVleet are having career years, and the Raptors are 11-4. They’re one of just three teams (along with both LA squads) to be top-10 in offensive and defensive efficiency. That will be another tough stop on the journey.

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

Gobert and Burks were teammates for parts of six seasons, so they definitely developed a relationship. Anybody who spent any time around the Jazz locker room knows that their friendship was of the, um, competitive sort. Many of their conversations revolved around who dunked better, who was more athletic, who had better style.

So all of the chatter before Jazz-Warriors about Burks taking on the Defensive Player of the Year — and how it would go if he did — had six years of friendly rivalry behind it.

That’s why Gobert, who had already blocked Burks twice in the game, really wanted to get credit for this game-saving block. So much so that he called for a challenge to ensure it would stand. And judging from Burks’ smurk after the review, he knew exactly what was up. For anybody who knows the relationship between these two, this video is a minute of high comedy.

For what it’s worth, Gobert had already blocked Burks during a blowout win in Cleveland last season, which means he’s now gotten his former teammate four separate times. 

Burks is now the former teammate he has blocked the most, just passing Enes Kanter’s three. In terms of current teammates, he blocked Conley three times, Bogey four times, Mudiay five times and Green once. No wonder they were all anxious to get the French Rejection on their side.

Another week in the books. Seven more things coming next Monday!