Salt City Seven: Pick Watch, Guards Shine, New Guys & More

Keyonte George and other Jazz guards have been playing well of late. (Frank Franklin II via sltrib.com)

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. Because All-Star weekend gave us two abbreviated weeks, this edition covers five games that took plays over 14 calendar days.

A quick exploration of a big-picture topic

There are still plenty of basketball subplots to monitor over the final 26 games of the Utah Jazz’s season. But with the playoffs now assuredly out of the picture, the next six weeks will largely be focused on information gathering and pick watching.

Every year when we come out of the break, we like to use the Salt City Seven to start monitoring the ramifications of the schedule on the road ahead. Some years, we bust out graphics focused on playoff scenarios. Some years it’s more about draft position. Some years, we’re not quite sure as of mid February but it eventually becomes clearer.

This year, it’s clear: it’s time to pick watch. 

The current positioning of Utah’s two first-round picks.

The Jazz are feeling more ensconced these days in the bottom four. Toronto is 3.5 games ahead and has the easiest remaining schedule in the league. So unless something changes dramatically, Utah is probably looking at a floor of 48% odds at a top-4 pick. (Everyone else has 20 or more wins with still a third of the season to go.)

Washington also has a cupcake schedule and will be integrating some capable veterans, but a 5-game cushion is a lot of ground to cover. That leaves Charlotte and New Orleans as the teams to watch most closely.

The hopes that Utah lands two lottery picks got a little jolt with Minnesota’s recent 1-4 funk. B-Ref still gives them 87.2% odds of making the playoffs, but BPI has them just above coin-toss territory. And regardless, they are currently tracking to the play-in, where a 2-game slump by the wrong player can change fortunes quickly.

The Wolves have somehow already concluded head-to-head series with everyone in this group. They already lost the tiebreaker to a now reloaded Golden State team, but clinched against banged-up Dallas as well as the Clippers. They split against the Kings and Rockets, but have a better conference record than both. Tiebreakers don’t matter for draft order, but could help determine who gets into the solid part of the bracket and who has to mess around in the play-in.

Of course, there are Eastern Conference teams around their draft spot, too, and once they clinch the playoffs we’ll focus more on overall draft jockeying as opposed to obsessing about whether or not they fall out altogether.

Again, there’s plenty to still watch aside from this, and we’ll keep track of all those trends, basketball experiments and player arcs, too. But in keeping with our post-ASB tradition, expect to see this graphic a bunch more times as the season creeps toward game 82.

Telling or interesting words from Jazz people

“Being a part of All-Star Weekend is a big-time blessing. Not a lot of people get that opportunity, so I’ve got to understand what that means and not take it for granted.”

-Keyonte George, via the Salt Lake Tribune

The second-year Jazz guard was rightfully excited to participate in All-Star Weekend at all, but the way things unfolded, he actually got to participate in Sunday’s main event, too.

Because of formatting changes designed to breathe some more life into an event that barely resembles basketball anymore, the winner of Friday night’s rookie-sophomore showcase got to participate against full-fledged NBA All-Stars on Sunday evening. And since George’s team in the Rising Stars game claimed the Friday win, that meant the Jazz guard got to play in the main event of All-Star weekend.

George had 10 points and an assist in the first round of the Rising Stars game, then added three points, two assists and two rebounds as his Team C vanquished the G League entrant for the right to compete against the All-Stars on Sunday. During the main event, the “OG” team led by eventual All-Star MVP Steph Curry then dispatched them in a 42-35 contest in which George had a bucket and three rebounds.

Still, it’s fun for George that he had an opportunity to lace up against Steph and other top NBA figures, even if the idea of getting the Rising Stars winners into the Sunday night game was a little gimmicky.

At this point, the whole All-Star weekend is what it is: a glorified layup line that exists mostly as a vehicle for recognition. That’s fine. We can keep talking about how to revitalize the game and weekend, but in reality none of the league’s ideas to restore the competitive verve have really seemed to work. Maybe it’s OK for it to just be a weekend in February where guys come together to attend a few parties and goof around on national TV.

But regardless of the state of the All-Star festivities on the whole, this was still a cool opportunity for George.

Stats that tell the story of the week

4/6

After his first 45 minutes in a Jazz uniform, KJ Martin’s athleticism has been on full display: of his six buckets so far, four have been dunk. The Jazz also got a brief look at new 10-day contract signee Jaden Springer, who’s perfect so far from the field: a run-out, a corner three, and an up-and-under layup. The addition of those two to the rotation meant Brice Sensabaugh and Johnny Juzang registered DNPs on Friday night, but both were back on the floor Saturday due to Utah’s other absences.

8

Saturday’s win over Houston included several superlatives: the second biggest paint point advantage of the Jazz’s season (66-36), the sixth time three separate players logged double-doubles… but perhaps most important is that it was a season-low in turnovers (8) for the usually oh-so-generous Jazz.

44-34-78

Those are Keyonte George’s shooting splits since moving to the role of bench gunner in late January. That’s still not wildly different from his career numbers, but it’s good enough for .589 true shooting, which is slightly better than league average. In his last 11 games, his true shooting is .635.

44.3%

Jordan Clarkson is averaging 20, 4 and 4 since the trade deadline passed. He’s now up to 44.3% shooting from deep (only nearly nine attempts per game) since returning from his extended absence.

30th

Utah remains last in terms of the percentage of opponent possessions that begin with a transition play, per Cleaning the Glass. The Jazz’s 18.8% is two full percentage points more than the next team.

Dissecting a Jazz scoring play from the week

It was kind of fun that the Jazz opened the second half vs. the Clips with two straight inverted pick-and-roll plays: Kyle Filipowski participating in P&R action not as the screener but as the ball handler:

But guess who else did a whole lot of ball-in-hands creation this week? Lauri Markkanen did a whole bunch of attacking the paint himself.

Awesome. More of that, please! Markkanen remains in a weird 3-point slump (just under 30% in his last 13 games), but seeing him find other ways to score is pretty damn important in a long-term sense. Just in the five games since our last SC7 installment, he has 12 dunks — including five that were self-created.

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

We have two half-weeks of games to cover.

Jazz 131, Lakers 119: Lauri Markkanen. Walker Kessler was a beast with a six-block, 8-for-8 performance, and three players flirted meaningfully with triple doubles. (21-9-7 for Clarkson, 20-7-10 for George, and 10-7-9 for Collier.) But I don’t know how we could go anywhere but the All-Star after a 60-60-100 shooting night, 32 points, +35 in his 32 minutes, and three steals to boot. He was also pretty good defensively: he and Kessler had the best DRtgs in the game, partially because he held his matchups to 5-for-13 shooting, and Kessler held his to 5-for-18… in a game largely decided by paint defense.

Jazz 124, Rockets 115: Keyonte George. One of the easier game ball calls of the season, precisely because it also might have been Key’s best all-around game this year. He had gone for 30 or more just once previously, but never with anything approaching the completeness of his 30-8-6 line (and +7 too!). Kessler had 36 rebounds in a little under 27 hours, and he’d probably be the most logical second choice here, although Markkanen did recover from a sluggish start to post a double-double (23 and 10).

Strong in defeat:

• Jazz 113, Lakers 132: Isaiah Collier. This is a tough one. Kessler put up numbers, but was minus-26 and struggled with the Lake Show’s smaller lineups. Isaiah Collier had yet another double-double, but mostly in garbage time. Markkanen and Collins were leading scorers, but Markkanen’s 17 came on less than a point per shot, and Collins had 5 TOs plus some head-scratching defensive moments. George was +1, best among the big minute guys, but shot 2-for-9 and had 5 TOs. I guess on this one we almost have to go Collier for his 13-10-4 night or to Johnny Juzang even though I don’t generally dole this out for quick-spurt performances (Juzang had an efficient 14 in just 18 minutes.)
• Jazz 116, Clippers 120: Kyle Filipowski. We’ll go with the young fella here after he held down the fort in Kessler’s starting spot. A tidy 20-and-10 double double for the rookie, and he did decent work both at slowing Ivica Zubac and at dealing with the Clippers’ small lineups. He even got to do some fun on-ball creation, as outlined above. Fellow rookie Collier was the other candidate here on a do-it-all night: 16 points, 8 assists, 4 rebounds and 4 steals, although he did also have seven turnovers. Lauri also had an efficient 20.
• Jazz 107, Thunder 130: Keyonte George. George and Collins were the only two Jazzmen who really had it going offensively, although Kessler grabbed an obscene quantity of rebounds (19). George’s 20-6-3 came a lot more efficiently than Collins’ 26-3-1, so we’ll give him the flowers on this one. Clarkson also contributed 19 on a 4-triple night.

Looking ahead to the next seven nights of action

The Jazz will spend a few more days relaxing before getting back after it with a tough back-to-back against two of the best teams in the West:

• Monday, February 24: Jazz vs. Blazers. The last time the Jazz faced a team with a sub-.500 record at tip-off was February 1. Of course, Portland looked even worse than that until a 10-1 surge, but since then announced a medium-term injury for DeAndre Ayton, who’s nearly halfway through his 4-week reevaluation period. Anfernee Simons is shooting 40% from deep during this turnaround, but it’s young guys Scoot Henderson (+12.1) and Toumani Camara (+11.3) who have been playing winning minutes of late.
• Wednesday, February 26: Jazz vs. Kings. The Kings are just 3-4 with their new-look lineup of Zach LaVine at guard, after trading De’Aaron Fox. But they are uniquely equipped to neutralize one of the Jazz’s biggest strengths: they’re 4th in defensive rebound rate and employ the league’s top rebounder in Domantas Sabonis. The bellwether for them thus far has been perimeter defnese: they’re 13-4 when opponents shoot under 35% from outside, 15-24 otherwise.
• Friday, February 28: Jazz vs. Wolves. ESPN reports that there’s “optimism” Julius Randle and Donte DiVincenzo could rejoin the Wolves’ lineup soon, and they could use the help: they’re 4-5 before OKC. Rudy Gobert has also missed the last three. They make a ton of above-the-break threes, which makes sense considering that Anthony Edwards leads the league in pull-up threes by 40-ish triples over the next guy. He’s likely to repeat as an All-NBA second teamer.
• Sunday, March 2: Jazz vs. Pelicans. The Pels have separate losing streaks of 6, 9, 11 and most recently 10, but they’ve also won two out of their last three games, despite missing Dejounte Murray and Herb Jones for the rest of the year. Weirdly, they’re 1-9 in Zion Williamson’s top scoring games this season, which seems counterintuitive except that they’ve been such a M*A*S*H unit that nothing makes much sense. Which is precisely why they’re jockeying for lottery odds with teams like the Jazz, whom they’ve beat twice.

Random stuff from the Jazz community

Collier now has nine games with 10+ assists, the most by any Jazz rookie in club history. Only 14 players who entered the league this century have more such games, and Collier still has 26 opportunities to catch them.

Here are the players Collier has assisted the most in his rookie season:

• Markkanen 49 (for 127 points)
• John Collins 36 (77)
• Filipowski 28 (66)
• George 27 (72)
• Juzang 24 (65)
• Sensabaugh 22 (59)
• Clarkson 20 (54)
• Drew Eubanks 19 (39)
• Collin Sexton 16 (37)
• Kessler 16 (32)
• Svi Mykhailiuk 13 (36)
• Micah Potter 5 (14)
• Cody Williams 4 (11)
• Patty Mills 3 (9)
• Elijah Harkless 3 (9)
• Martin 3 (7)
• Oscar Tshiebwe 2 (4)

Twenty-six to go!