Salt City Seven: Playoff Jockeying, Clutch Mitchell, The End is Nigh & More

Every week during the regular season 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. We put the SC7 on pause along with the rest of the basketball world, but now that the 2019-20 season is officially underway again, it’s time to get back to packaging the quotes, stats, plays and performances that tell the stories from each week in the world of the Jazz.

“That’s the thing about being (in Orlando): everybody’s good. So we just have to be ready to play. We’re going to get adversity in one way, shape or form. More than anything, it’s recognizing it and being mentally tough and handling it.”

-Jazz coach Quin Snyder, on challenges in the “bubble” environment

Snyder delivered this quote about playing against the 21 other teams invited to the NBA’s Restart in Orlando — by definition, good or very good teams, since the league only invited playoff teams and those within sniffing distance of the eighth seed.

But this same sentiment is often applied to the playoff picture. Since only good-to-great teams participate in the postseason, coaches often say, there’s no use hunting for the easier matchup. Just go play as well as you can and get yourself ready to face a challenge. That’s certainly true in the modern Western Conference playoffs, where there are no easy matchups. One way or another, as the sixth-year coach said this week, you’re going to face adversity.

The Jazz are almost surely going to finish with the fourth or fifth seed. That means they will mostly likely open the playoffs against the Denver Nuggets or Houston Rockets, with only a small chance of facing the Clippers or Thunder instead. All of those teams present Utah with challenges, as evidenced by the Jazz’s combined 4-8 record against those four teams.

But would the Jazz prefer one team over the others? That was the question at the center of the Jazz’s universe this past week. Utah, for the first time in Snyder’s tenure at least, *appears* to be openly jockeying for specific matchups. After a 2-2 start in Orlando, the Jazz made the curious decision to rest four starters all at once, citing a variety of injuries and rest as reasons. With Bojan Bogdanovic still rehabilitating his right wrist, the Jazz were left to play that game without any of their starting five from when the season began.

On the surface, the explanation Snyder provided made sense. “Guys during this stretch are going to have nicks,” he said of the injuries listed for Donovan Mitchell, Mike Conley and Royce O’Neale. “Our hope is that they’re back and we’re in a good place as we move forward but it is what it is (against San Antonio).” For Rudy Gobert, also a scratch in Friday’s game against the Spurs, Snyder cited rest as the reason the heavily-used big man wouldn’t go. That makes sense. On the other hand, he didn’t have to buy all four of those guys rest and time to heal up their “nicks” all in the same game.

And if the ulterior motive were simply to give a struggling bench an opportunity to get back on track, we would have seen players like Jordan Clarkson, Emmanuel Mudiay, Tony Bradley and Georges Niang close that game. Instead, it was Utah’s third string lineup finishing a close contest against the Spurs’ main guys. That’s a pretty tell-tale sign that this wasn’t just about rest and recuperation.

Which begs the question: so what? Does it matter if the Jazz want to have some control over their playoff opponent? Will they offend the basketball gods by holding good players out of a winnable game?

There are definitely pros to what the Jazz allegedly did on Friday, aside from the obvious rest benefits for the guys who watched the game in polo shirts. Even if they view, for example, Houston and Denver as roughly equal teams on the macro, they might simply be sick of the Rockets. The Rockets and Jazz have tangled in each of the past two postseasons, and the result has been a 2-8 record and two quick exits. Combine that with the last three regular season series, and Utah is 5-16 against the Rockets in Mitchell’s career, with this year’s lone win coming on a miraculous, double-clutch heave at the buzzer. There’s a chance they just want to face someone else, get a different challenge.

It could have just as much to do with what happens if the Jazz claw their way past the first round. Utah’s drop to No. 6 has put them, at least for now, in a different half of the Western Conference bracket, away from the top-seeded Lakers. And if there was ever a year to be OK sacrificing seeding to get a preferred opponent path, this would be it. There will be no true homecourt advantage in the bubble, so there’s little tangible benefit to being third as opposed to sixth if you’re going to be in the 3-6 matchup.

Of course, there are some ways that messing with the standings could backfire.

If they get their way and land the opponent they seek out, they could motivate that team. “Oh you want to play us, do you?!” That could be part of what inspired Denver to erase an 18-point deficit on Saturday and come up with a statement win to complete the season sweep. And if they don’t get the matchup they’re hunting for, they might undermine their own guys’ confidence. If they’ve been ducking a particular team, it might send a message to the team that they don’t expect to be as competitive if they do eventually come face to face with that opponent.

But more than anything, the pitfall to this plan is just that it’s harder than it sounds in a very fluid Western Conference. The Nuggets could still finish anywhere from second through fifth. Houston could also reach No. 2 (although it would take a near-miraculous confluence of events) or fall as far as sixth. OKC and the Jazz could both bounce around, too. More on that in the next section.

For the Snyder-era Jazz, this type of maneuvering is a new phenomenon. We’ll know by Thursday’s close to the regular season whether the gambit works — and we’ll know in the weeks to follow whether the Jazz were right to wish for one matchup over another. 

 

Except for the No. 1 seed, everything is still up for grabs in the Western Conference.

This is why hunting for a particular matchup this season could be dangerous; so much is still in flux. If you make a plan to win or lose to line up a certain first-round matchup, it could backfire. Denver is currently the No. 3 seed, and it is widely believed that Utah’s gambit is aimed at making the Nuggets the first-round opponent. But if the Nuggets drop two of their three games against elite teams, they could slide past fourth-place Houston, whose slate includes a lottery team and two Eastern Conference underseeds each missing an All-Star. A lot has to go a certain way for Houston to climb to No. 3, but none of those outcomes are terribly unlikely in a vacuum, and then Utah would be stuck with that familiar Rockets matchups they are purportedly trying to dodge.

On the other hand, Denver also controls its own destiny for the No. 2 seed (since they face the Clippers), so if they run the table, Utah’s reward for slipping into No. 6 could be a date with the reigning Finals MVP.

And in the middle of all this is the team whose motivations could change everything: OKC. If the Thunder are also gunning for No. 6, they can make it happen unless the Jazz get really obvious about wanting to drop both remaining games. On the other hand, Chris Paul might be just vindictive enough to welcome the opportunity to mess with his former team, assuming again that Houston remains in that 4-5 matchup.

We’ll see. The Jazz tip off with Dallas a half hour after the Thunder start their games against the undefeated-at-Disney Suns, so if their competitive energy changes partway through that game, it might have something to do with whatever is happening across the Disney campus as the Jazz score-watch.

Other quick notes: Dallas is all but locked into No. 7. And we’re now mathematically ensured a play-in game; the only thing left to determine is who will play in it. With a single win, Memphis can clinch a spot in the play-in, and with two wins they can ensure they’ll enter that miniseries as the eighth seed, which means they’d only need to win one of two to move on. Only problem: their remaining opponents are both elite Eastern Conference teams. If they falter, Portland could leapfrog them, but at this point any two of Memphis, Portland, San Antonio and Phoenix could face off for the final Western Conference playoff spot. 

35%

Denver was able to rebound exactly 35% of its own missed shots in Saturday’s fourth quarter, a problematic number and a huge part of the reason they were able to erase a double-digit lead and get the game to overtime. Utah also struggled from close range in that game, shooting a combined 17-of-49 on shots at the rim and the short midrange.

19-2

The Jazz actually led the Lakers, 71-67, at the midpoint of Monday’s third quarter after a Gobert dunk. L.A. would score the next 14 points, though, part of a 19-2 run that put them in the driver’s seat for good.

+11.2

Saturday’s loss to Denver marked Utah’s third bubble game that met “clutch” criteria, and their first loss in a game that was within five in the final five minutes. For the season, Denver and OKC (29 each) have both passed Utah’s total for most clutch wins (27), but the Jazz still rank in the top six for clutch Net Rating on the season, at +11.2. The only problem: their three most likely first-round opponents — the Nuggets, Rockets and Thunder — are among the teams ahead of them.

.553

And speaking of clutch, how about Mitchell’s performance against Denver?? The theatrics were tainted a bit by the loss, but he his one miraculous shot after another. In the bubble, Mitchell has hit .605 clutch true shooting on an absolutely bonkers 44.2% usage in those situations. That brings his clutch TS% for the year up to .553. Of the very few guys with his clutch usage, only MVP frontrunner Giannis Antetokounmpo has a higher true shooting figure.

This sideline out-of-bounds (SLOB) play against Memphis jumped out in real time and deserves some dissection.

Ingles mid-post SLOB

The play starts with a direct midpost entry to Joe Ingles. Ingles almost never posts up¹ but Wednesday’s game was his bubble breakout in terms of shooting and playmaking, so they dumped the ball into him and let him watch the 3-man screening action in the middle of the floor and read the defense with his back to the basket.

Mitchell is watching Ingles because he’s supposed to backscreen Royce O’Neale’s man as soon as Ingles has the ball. Since Gobert is inbounding, there is no defensive big man in the paint, and Memphis has to really worry about this backscreen. If Dillon Brooks doesn’t show at least a little bit, Ingles can flip the pass to O’Neale, or if Ja Morant sinks in to deny that pass, Ingles has the option of a skip pass to an open Conley in the weak corner. Plenty of options if Brooks doesn’t slow O’Neale.

But he does show on O’Neale, and that’s good news for Mitchell, who’s already at the perimeter using the Gobert pindown by the time Brooks changes direction to get back to him. The Grizzlies almost exclusively play drop big defense with Valanciunas, so he’s not up and ready to show on the screen for Mitchell, either. With Valanciunas back and Brooks playing catch-up, Mitchell is wide damn open when he catches the ball.

This causes everybody to panic. Brooks is desperate to get over the top of the screen, so he lunges awkwardly and takes himself out of the play. Valanciunas panics, committing hard to the contest. And Kyler Anderson sees all this and commits a basketball no-no, helping from one pass away.

All of this happens because Mitchell was the screener and then the screenee. This is a really smart way to weaponize teams’ schemes against them, something teams have been doing for years with Steph Curry, Kyle Korver and other respected shooters. If a sharpshooter sets the screen first, his defender has to play that the way a screener’s man should, which often gets them off balance when a second screening action follows, this time for the shooter in question.

Because everybody lunges at the wide-open Mitchell — and because he smartly recognizes it and gets the ball back to Ingles — Utah essentially has a 4-on-2 play. Ingles shoots and makes it, but there are tons of options here. Gobert is rolling toward two guards who won’t be able to stop him at the rim, Conley is crosscourt and unguarded, and O’Neale is in the dunker spot in case his guys lift off the baseline in the scramble.

There are no bad options here, although an Ingles right-corner three is probably among the best; Jingles is shooting 42% from that corner this season. 

This play works for a variety of reasons: Mitchell as the screener forces Brooks to make decisions; Gobert inbounding pulls Valanciunas away from the paint; a patient Ingles watches in the catbird seat to see how the defense plays it… and frankly, some bad defensive communication by the Grizzlies.

Jazz 124, Grizzlies 115: Joe Ingles.

Gobert was simply dominant in the second-quarter stretch when Utah turned this game around: he had three dunks, two blocks and a whole lot of stifling defense during the 18-1 run Utah used to close the half, and he finished the afternoon with a monster double-double, 21 points and 16 boards. But this game was mostly about demonstrating the difference it makes to the Jazz when Ingles is plugged in and aggressive. He helped start the aforementioned run by connecting with Gobert on back-to-back pick-and-rolls and then got his own later on as he helped the Jazz pull away with four triples in the final quarter. He finished with a team-high 25 points (and four boards, five assists), by far his best game in the bubble. Conley (23-5-7), Mitchell (18-7-6) and O’Neale (15-7-3) all had very complete nights as well.

The Jazz have just two seeding games left to determine their playoff path.

Monday 8/10, 1:00 p.m. MDT, Jazz vs. Mavericks (NBATV): Dallas would need everything to go their way to climb out of the seventh seed: a perfect finish for them, plus winless closes for both Utah and OKC. They have apparently conceded that such a confluence of luck is too much to ask of the basketball gods, because they have already ruled stars Luka Doncic and Kristaps Porzingis out of Monday’s contest, along with Dorian Finney-Smith. They’ve already ruled out Dwight Powell, Courtney Lee, Willie Cauley-Stein and Jalen Brunson for the year, so if Seth Curry (day-to-day for his leg) takes Monday off, they’ll be missing a combined 98.4 points per game. Wowzer. Expect it to be the Tim Hardaway Jr. show, which is good news if the Jazz are looking for a win; Hardaway is shooting under 33% from the field in Orlando. Former Jazz draftee Trey Burke had a 31-point showing in Dallas’ first bubble game.

Thursday 8/13, time TBD, Jazz vs. Spurs: There’s really no telling what to expect from this game — for either team. San Antonio may already be locked out of the playoff play-in by the time they tip off against Utah, and the Jazz might see the standings and decide it behooves them to stay in sixth with a loss in their regular season finale. If you’ve been jonesing for some nice Quinndary Weatherspoon versus Justin Wright-Foreman matchup minutes, you might be in luck.

Oh, you’ve heard about Mitchell’s recording, have you? Apparently he was caught on a recording doing exciting things. His body twisted, he scored in dramatic fashion, and there were cries of delight. And lucikly, we have the video:

OH?!?!?! @spidadmitchell pic.twitter.com/Wootq8jtUh

— utahjazz (@utahjazz) August 8, 2020

Oh, that’s not what you thought we were referring to? Get your mind out of the gutter. (If you don’t get the reference, head to Twitter and search for “Donovan Mitchell IG live” — but only if you’re not easily scandalized and if innocent ears aren’t around.)

That was just one of Mitchell’s downright amazing shots down the stretch against Denver. He had 22 points just in the final 5:00 of regulation plus the two overtimes. It was special stuff, and without a doubt the most exciting thing he did this week while being recorded… we think.

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That’s it for this week. Down the stretch we go!