Salt City Seven: Mitchell Draws Praise, Korver Draws Attention & More

Two of a kind? (Oscar Baldizon vis utahjazz.com)

Every week here at SCH begins with the Salt City Seven: a regular feature for each day of the week as we 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 or about Jazz players or personnel during the week.

We’re cheating this week: instead of a quote from a Jazz guy, we’re going to start with a quote about a Jazz guy. From an 8-time All-NBA guard.

“I wish I was that good that young. That kid, he’s special.”

-12-time All-Star Dwyane Wade, about Jazz guard Donovan Mitchell

It was a pretty special week for Mitchell. He averaged 29.5 points in a pair of wins, both signature performances where he took over down the stretch. He and the Jazz came up short in the final game of a three-game trip, but the second-year star still got to go toe-to-toe with one of his idols. And after the game, he even swapped jerseys in an impromptu postgame ceremony at the request of the future Hall-of-Famer. 

“To be honest,” Mitchell told the Deseret News, “that was surreal.”

Wade and Mitchell have often been compared based on their similar bodies and playing styles, and the 16-year vet says that those similarities have made Mitchell one of the young players he spends the most time mentoring. He describes Mitchell as “hungry for greatness.”

So what about Wade’s statement that he wishes he was as good at Mitchell at this early stage of his celebrated career? Both players debuted at the age of 21, and if we compare Mitchell’s career so far to Wade’s first two season’s, they are actually remarkable similar in terms of raw stats: 20.6 points for each guy, on similar shooting splits. Here are their per-36 numbers:

Mitchell is scoring a tad more on a per-possession basis, and his eFG% is slightly higher, although Wade has him on overall scoring efficiency because of his knack for getting to the line. Mitchell is a better 3-point shooter, despite the fact that he’s at 23.6 percent since the start of November.

And that’s just the thing: Mitchell’s game is still taking on new shape, as his coach told us when we caught up with him in Brooklyn on Wednesday.

“I think sometimes we forget Donovan’s in his second year,” Quin Snyder said. “I think he’s focused on trying to play well and get better. His demeanor and his character are such that I think he’s got great perspective. And he’s a heck of a player, and he’s going to keep getting better and better.”

Wade agrees. On both counts.

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

64.2%

We can’t get too far in without acknowledging the big news of the week: Utah’s trade for Kyle Korver. That was the forward’s effective field goal percentage for the portion of the year he spent with Cleveland. If that held up, Utah would have two of the league’s top 13 guys in that stat — Rudy Gobert is second in the Association with 69.7%. So how is Korver doing at maintaining his hot shooting as a Jazzman? Well so far his Jazz eFG is… 116.7%. That’s half facetious, as there’s no way that number (or anything remotely close to it) is going to hold up. But the guy is a threat every instant he’s on the floor, as evidenced by how heavily Miami schemed for him.

41%

That’s Mitchell’s clutch true shooting percentage so far this season. To put that in perspective, no Jazz player who has taken more than a single clutch shot has a lower TS%, and Jae Crowder and Ricky Rubio have clutch TS percentages in the 70s. Also, 41% happens to be figure to which Mitchell’s usage balloons in clutch situations, as well. The team still plays very well with Mitchell in clutch situations — plus-7.8, the best of the main closers. But he does need to improve in some of his late-game decision making and shooting, especially if he’s going to assume such a large chunk of the load down the stretch of close games.

Again, he was brilliant in Brooklyn and Charlotte, although very few of those minutes qualified as clutch because of the margin. In Miami, he was aggressive in getting to his spots, but he didn’t score in the game’s final 4:00, after nailing a three that put Utah up 94-92. 

17,776

The number of miles the Jazz have traveled by air so far while playing a league-leading 16 road games. Check out Ken Clayton’s latest for more stats on just how crazy the recent travel schedule has been.

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

The Korver Effect

Let’s look at two quick ones that demonstrate the value of Korver’s constant 3-point threat.

First, the play you’ve seen a good dozen times by now: Korver’s first three in his second Jazz stint. Yet as many times as this has been shown on the telecasts, you may have missed the little X-and-O juice that got him so wide open.

The Jazz have been running this particular DHO — dribble hand-off — play since the Hayward years, with the shooter coming up to get the ball on a route perpendicular to the baseline, then flipping a U-turn to shoot. But the real weapon here is the fake backscreen. Watch how Korver’s man literally stops on his tracks because he thinks Korver’s going to screen for Jae Crowder. And the thing is, this is a no-win for the defender: if he hadn’t stopped, Jae might have slipped to the rim for an open look off the Korver screen. But this time it was just a decoy, and it bought Korver a ton of space. When he gets the handoff from Gobert, his defender is clear back at the free-throw line. 

Korver’s presence helped others get shots, too.

I joked on Friday night that Kyle had brought some weird contagion with him that improved the team’s 3-point shooting. Well that wasn’t far off. Normally on this stagger pick-and-roll for Raul Neto, the weakside corner defender would come in to show on the roll. But the Hornets know they can’t leave Korver, so they scheme differently. The big mean instead have to both drop back and wall off the paint, but that leaves Crowder open. Neto pitches it back, and two defenders overreact, leaving Neto open for a three.

But Korver’s man stays with him the whole time, even though he’s 20+ feet from the action. This is an example of how the Jazz bench guys will benefit from cleaner looks just by sharing the court with a guy who constantly needs to be guarded. 

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

Two game balls this week, and they were both excruciating calls to make.

Jazz 101, Nets 91: Rudy Gobert

Utah’s stars just took over down the stretch. It was 84-all before Mitchell went on his 12-points-in-6-minutes spree, scoring from the paint, the outside, midrange and the line. And over the same span, Gobert scared drivers into bad shots, protected the paint and scored five of his own. (He and Mitchell scored all of the Jazz’s points in their final 17-7 push.) In the last six minutes, Brooklyn was 1-for-8 in the paint and committed five turnovers. I’m going with Gobert by a nose since most of the postgame chatter was around just how completely Gobert dominated the paint on both ends. But this was razor thin. Gobert’s line was 23 & 16 (10-for-14 shooting) with four blocks, Mitchell had 29 to go with four steals. Flip a coin. Royce O’Neale also had his best game in ages.

Jazz 119, Hornets 111: Jae Crowder

Another brutally tough one. Mitchell was once again a walking bucket, with 10 points in the game’s first five minutes and 30 by night’s end. Then Crowder took over, scoring or assisting on 13 of the final 16 Jazz points in the period to put them up 33-19. The cushion those two created meant Utah could weather several Hornet runs without ever trailing for a nanosecond. I went back and forth between the two and here’s what clinched it for Crowder: when Charlotte pulled even at 64-64, Crowder had another stretch where he scored or assisted 16 of the Jazz points in a 20-11 run to restore distance. It never got closer than six after that. Gobert was dominant (20 & 17, 5 blocks), and Korver showed up and effortlessly notched 14 in his debut despite getting a crash course on the offense just hours earlier.

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

Just three on Utah’s schedule this week, and relatively spread out. Maybe they’ll make up for a crazy three weeks of travel. 

Monday: San Antonio at Utah, 7:00 p.m. MT

• State of the Spurs: Gregg Popovich’s team is 5-10 since their hot start. They’re also without Pau Gasol for a while, and Marco Belinelli is day-to-day.
• Jazz-Spurs: Utah hasn’t faced the Spurs yet this season, but took three of the four contests last year. 
• Key for the Jazz: Run them off the line: San Antonio is the best 3-point shooting team in the league, but an average overall offense. The Jazz will have to make the Spurs beat them in other ways.

Thursday: Houston at Utah, 8;30 p.m. MT **TNT televised**

• State of the Rockets: Houston is 10-5 when both Chris Paul and James Harden play, 1-7 when either or both sit out. Both appear healthy right as the Rockets embark on a 3-game trip of which Utah is the middle stop.
• Jazz-Rox: Utah’s part of that 1-7 record above, after having beat a CP3-less squad back in October. The broader history, though, favors Houston, including a 4-0 season sweep last year and a 4-1 playoff series victory.
• Key for the Jazz: The Jazz will likely try to get the ball out of Harden’s hands like they did in their 11-point win, but that’s a little “out of the pan and into the fire” when Paul is there to pick up the slack.

Sunday: Utah at San Antonio, 5:00 p.m. MT

• State of the Spurs: The Spurs are better (7-4) at home, including a 13-point win against the Blazers in their latest game.
• Jazz-Spurs: Once again Utah gets the weird luck of seeing a team in quick succession. And since they only have one more game coming, the season series could be decided by bedtime on Sunday.
• Key for the Jazz: The other thing about the Spurs, in addition to the above: SA has the second worst eFG defense, so Utah can have a good night offensively if they execute with force.

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

The travel might be starting to calm down, but this is still a vital stretch in terms of the playoff picture.

Nine of Utah’s next 11 games — including all three of this week’s contests — come against teams who made the Western Conference playoffs last season. By Christmas day, the Jazz will have already seen the Rockets three times, and the Warriors, Blazers, Spurs and Thunder twice. The only 2017-18 WC playoff teams they won’t have faced at least twice yet are the Nuggets, Wolves and Pelicans.  

Those tiebreakers WILL matter again, so this is an important stretch for Utah to scrape out some tough wins. 

Because after all, we’re here to have fun.

Some quick jersey speculation before we wrap up. A while back, Twitter’s @5kl found a description on a City Edition jersey that was likely meant to accompany the new 2018-19 design. City Edition gear was supposed to cycle out after one season, but the Jazz had asked for a special exception. Since the description on the Nike website didn’t match the jersey it was purportedly describing, Kris safely assumed that maybe those details actually had to do with the uniforms that would have replaced the gradient jerseys. Interesting.

Well, here’s my brother’s and my contribution to the speculation: Ken and I considered taking new gear to road games in Boston and Sacramento, and he found this shirt on the NBA’s online store.

Found it. pic.twitter.com/pAC0fsBzZF

— dan clayton (@danclayt0n) December 2, 2018

Some reasons why I think this might be a hint at what next year’s City Edition jersey will look like:

• The description Kris found mentioned the granite coloring and the SLC skyline, both things featured here.
• Since this blends the gradient color scheme, it would allow Utah to continue using the alternate court, which cannot have been cheap to create.
• This item has now completely disappeared from the NBA/Fanatics store. Not like it’s out of stock — it’s like it never existed. 

If this is a sneak peek at next year’s City Edition concept, I’m intrigued. The Jazz haven’t had a black jersey since the early 2000s, and something that is mainly black but trimmed with both granite and the bold reds and oranges of the current City jersey could be really sharp. Color me interested.

That’s it for this week. Another seven bits of Jazz fun coming next Monday.