SC7: Playoff Race Visualized, All-Star Dreams Realized, Clarkson On Fire & More

Two Jazz stars were on display in Chicago (Joe Murphy 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.

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

Here we go.

NBA players will soon be headed back from Chicago, the beach, or wherever they spent their All-Star weekends. That means that, with every squad having played 50-something games, we’re heading down the playoff home stretch.

If you’ve been following this column for a while now, you know that right around this time every year we debut the playoff race graphic that essentially shows the status of affairs in the West. It’s back again for the 2020 stretch run. Here’s the first one.

How the Western Confierence race looks coming out of All-Star weekend.

The Jazz have a perfectly average finish in terms of opponent strength (.503 is their average opponent record), but they are a little home-heavy since they resume a 6-game home stand this Friday. They have a comparatively high number of back-to-backs left (only LAL has more), but they’re mostly done traveling to play elite teams in their gyms. Nobody currently in position of a playoff spot has fewer than Utah’s three remaining road contests against a top-10 team. FiveThirtyEight gives Utah less than a 30% chance of winning each of those three¹. 

The Jazz do, however, have a lot of home games left against elite teams (6), as well as away dates with the middle 10 (also 6). Those are essentially the 50-50 games², so those dozen games will probably largely determine Utah’s playoff seeding.

Another quick note: Utah has two games left against Denver, whom they trail by a single loss, and one game left (plus tiebreaker control) against LAC, with whom they’re tied in the loss column. That means they technically control their own destiny for the No. 2 seed. Not that it will play out that way — they won’t win 28 straight after the break — but they’ve put themselves in a position where they can climb further if they win.

A few other thoughts on the current WC race:

• The Lakers have 18 games left against the top two-thirds of the league, and 12 of those are on their turf. (Technically 13 since one is a “road” game in their own arena.) That and their 5-game cushion in the loss column should allow them to hold onto No. 1. They do have a lot of games, though — they have six back-to-backs left if we assume that the rescheduled Lakers-Clips showdown will result in consecutive nights.
• Denver has a rough road ahead, starting with the fact that five of their next six games against teams in this 1-through-9 group are road games. That adds up to a lot of chances for teams to try to bump them off the No. 2 spot. At this point, they’re as close to seventh as they are to first, at least in the loss column.
• Nobody has fewer than the Clippers’ seven games left against elite squads. On the flip side, though, they’re currently trailing the tiebreaker count against the three teams most likely to tie them.
• Houston has the inside track on the division title, a big help in tiebreaker situations. They also have the easiest remaining schedule of anybody currently in the top eight.
• OKC has 11 games left against top-10 teams, but they’re as hot as anybody in this bunch right now. 
• Dallas also has a perfectly average schedule remaining. They’ve been wobbly lately, but just got Luka Doncic back right before the break.
• Memphis has serious work cut out for it to hold onto that last playoff spot. A whopping 12 games left against top-10 squads, and the hardest average opponent by a mile. They also have an unfavorable home-road disparity.
• The Blazers are five losses out, but have to like that they have all three games remaining against the team they’re chasing. That said…
• …the Spurs are nipping at their heels, and I would fully expect New Orleans to work their way into the conversation at some point too. 

This should be fun. I’ll update this every Monday in the Salt City Seven, plus I usually tweet an updated version out on Thursdays or Fridays. When we get really close, I usually tweet updates even more often that that, because I just can’t help myself.

An important quote from Jazz players or personnel from the week

Back to our usual order now, as we turn to a couple of quotes to tell the week’s biggest story.

“When I first got drafted here, All-Star was a thought. But it wasn’t like, the third year I’ll be here. For me to go out and put (a jersey on) for Utah, it is truly special… For us to be out here and make a name for ourselves is really cool, and hopefully do this for many years to come.”

-Donovan Mitchell on his selection to the 2020 All-Star team

“It was great to be here and to be a part of this. I want to be one of the best players in the world, so it was great to be here and talk to people and be a part of it all…  I don’t think you can prove something in an All-Star Game. You prove something by winning championships.”

-Rudy Gobert, via The Athletic, after the game

For the first time since February 2000, the Jazz had two players participate in the main event of All-Star weekend. Mitchell and Gobert became the first Jazz tandem in an All-Star game since John Stockton and Karl Malone at the turn of the century.

Mitchell came into his own far ahead of schedule. If you look at the list of players to make an All-Star team in their third season, it’s pretty reassuring. There aren’t a lot of flukes or bums there, so for Mitchell to earn the recognition that fast is another indication that he’s on a special path. (Interestingly, this year’s All-Star featured six players in their first three seasons, the most since the 1986 All-Star game featured seven youngsters. Some of that is a result of high-profile injuries opening the door, to be sure; but the league is also in pretty good hands going forward.)

The Jazz guard scored seven points, grabbed five rebounds and dished four assists. Full highlights here, including his contortionist act at :57 for a bucket.

His selection — and really, the double dose of Jazz at All-Star Sunday — is an important signal to him and other NBA stars that acclaim will find you, even in small markets. “We’re kind of overlooked in a lot of different things,” Mitchell said at Saturday’s media session.

Gobert was, honestly, overdue as an All-Star. He earned all-league honors — given to just 15 players — in two of the past three seasons, but didn’t get selected as one of the 24³ All-Stars in either year. Only 40-odd players have ever made All-NBA in the same season they missed out on an All-Star selection, in many cases because they missed games in the early part of the season. Gobert joins DeAndre Jordan, Carmelo Anthony and Kevin Johnson as the only players to experience that in multiple seasons⁴. 

Better late than never, though, and Gobert made it clear that he belonged.

The Stifle Tower scored 21 points in just under 19 minutes. He hit 10 of 11 shots from the field, grabbed 11 rebounds, and even threw an around the back pass on a drive. He honestly probably had three of game’s best five or so dunks. His full highlights are here. Check out his bench-clearing dunk at the :57 mark and the ridiculous alley-oop finish at 1:37. The quarter-ending, double-clutch dunk at 2:07 is pretty great, too.

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

OK, let’s get back to analyzing the current state of the Utah Jazz, with numbers that highlight recent themes.

91.3%

The Jazz shot 21-of-23 at the rim in Monday’s win over Dallas. Cleaning the Glass says that’s the best shooting performance at the rim in any game by any team this season (excluding garbage time). The only problem is that they let Dallas shoot nearly half (46%) of their shots from deep, so the Mavs were able to make it close despite a fairly pedestrian outside shooting night.

40%+

Jordan Clarkson (48%), Bojan Bogdanovic (40%) and Mitchell (40%) are all shooting at least 40% on six or more shot attempts per night during the team’s current win streak. Clarkson in particular has been on fire of late; he’s one of just six players this season to score 21 or more off the bench in three straight games.

27%

On the other end of the spectrum, Joe Ingles’ slump continues. The forward is down to 27.1% from three in his last 14 games. As we covered in last week’s SC7, slumps in this part of the calendar are not a new thing for Jingles. We’ll see if some time off gave him a chance to recharge.

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

Screening & Running Against the Zone

Let’s try something different this week; instead of a lengthy playbook section that describes a silent video, this week I’ve moved the explanation into the video itself. You’ll want the SOUND ON for this examination of how Utah did a great job picking apart Miami’s zone.

(Let me know if you like this more or less than the typical written breakdown.)

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

The Jazz’s 2-0 week means a pair of game balls need new homes.

Jazz 123, Mavs 119: Jordan Clarkson. Gobert (17 points, 16 rebounds, 7-for-7 shooting) and Bogdanovic (23 points) both dominated early. They’re the primary reasons Utah led by 23, and then they brought the win home down the stretch; Bogey’s face-up three followed by Gobert’s spinning dunk at 2:22 all but ensured the win. But this one had to go to the bench. When the Mavs nearly erased Utah’s big lead and cut it to 83-80, it was the Clarkson led bench that got the Jazz out of trouble.  The ensuing 19-4 run included seven apiece from Clarkson and Emmanuel Mudiay. The former would finish the night with 25 points, 8 assists, 5 boards, +17… and a Game Ball.

Jazz 116, Heat 101: Donovan Mitchell. This one was really close between Gobert (the people’s choice) and Mitchell. Gobert was the narrative pick for how he dealt with the matchup of fellow All-Star Bam Adebayo, on his way to 16 points, 20 boards, and two blocks. But Spida was probably this game’s MVP. When he has that combination of usage (27%) and efficiency (.732 TS), it completely changes the Jazz. He had 26-5-4, and I think his points just weighed on this game more. His 3-pointers at 6:56 and 4:03 in the fourth helped put the game away. Then Bogdanovic added two triples of his own, and Gobert added the exclamation point with a dunk at 1:31. You could go either way, but when Mitchell plays that smart AND aggressive, the Jazz are hard to beat. Clarkson (21 points on 12 shots) was once again a microwave, and he also hit back-to-back fourth-quarter threes when the game was still in the balance.

Quick look at the Jazz’s next seven nights of action

The Jazz don’t get back to action until Friday, when they continue a 6-game homestand with a weekend back-to-back.

Friday 2/21, Jazz vs. Spurs: DeMar DeRozan put on a midrange clinic when the Jazz and Spurs faced off in Texas late last month. He had 38 points on 19 shots — without even attempting a three. And Utah didn’t even have to deal with LaMarcus Aldridge, who just dropped 58 in his final two games before the All-Star break. In other words: don’t take this team lightly. They’re smart, they take care of the ball, and they have guys who excel at exactly the types of shots Utah tries to force its opponents to take. They aren’t very good defensively, though, so if the Jazz come out of the break sharp, they should be able to generate good offense.

Saturday 2/22, Jazz vs. Rockets: The Jazz’s thrilling road upset of the Rockets last week actually puts them in position to clinch the season series tiebreaker with a win at The Viv. Utah and Houston will only face each other three times this year, with this one being the finale. That magnifies the importance here, which is why it’s a rough turn of fate that the Jazz have to face them on a rest disadvantage. That could mean no Conley — as the Jazz have been keeping him out of back-to-backs — which would hurt. Conley was huge down in Houston, helping to orchestrate the comeback with great game management and fourth quarter scoring.

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

Hopefully you made it a special day for your valentine last Friday — I know a lot of Jazz fans did with the help of tweeter @UtahJazz6Man.

For a couple of years now, “Dennis Windsey” has been sharing Jazz-themed valentines. Here was my favorite, but if you click though to the thread, you can see them all.

.@PrinceOni13 pic.twitter.com/uw4jZwCbnf

— Dennis WINdsey (@UtahJazz6Man) February 13, 2020

Here we go… 28 left!