Salt City Seven: Streaking Jazz, Room to Improve, Ingles Dissecting, More

There’s a lot of Jingles in this week’s Salt City Seven. (Ned Dishman 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

“I have to really think on that one. We’re really good.”

-Jazz forward Georges Niang, on how the Jazz can improve on their recent hot play

Niang is right, the Jazz are rolling. Utah has won nine straight and 14 of 15. The offense, once thought to be the Jazz’s major liability, has been on a roll, too: they’ve ended 15 straight contests with a 104 ORtg or better, after failing to reach that level in 11 of their first 24. They have the best offense in the NBA since December 10 — a pretty healthy sample size — and that has brought their season ORtg up to 11th in the league.

During that time, they’ve dealt with injuries, illness, roster changes, multiple road trips, and other challenges. Yet the wins just keep rolling it.

Simply put, Utah has been the NBA’s hottest team during an impressive month-long run. 

But we can certainly help Niang out with that burning question. There are still clearly things Utah could do better to more fully ensconse itself in the contender class. Here are a few.

Execute better against elite opponents

Utah’s hot streak has mostly unfolded during a soft stretch of schedule. Only one of the wins during the club’s current 9-game streak (or their larger 14-1 surge) came against a team with a winning record: the December 28 road win against the Clippers.

Before that, they had looked fairly average against the league’s best teams. Against the 10 teams with the best point differential in the league, Utah’s own differential is a perfectly mediocre 15th, per Cleaning the Glass.

Their struggles against good teams have been more acute on the offensive end. They are actually fairly good at slowing down elite offenses (#7 DRtg against top 10 offenses), but they are only 14th at executing their own stuff against the best defenses. Against those teams, they struggle with turnovers and they don’t get to the line as often.

They’ll soon have a chance to credential themselves against those good teams. Starting January 20, eight of their 12 games heading into the All-Star break will be against winning teams.

Put away bad teams

Sure, the Jazz are 14-1 over the last month and change, but they’re not running away from teams. Ten of those 15 games were within five points in the last five minutes. Only the struggling Hawks and Suns have played more close games over that stretch. That’s especially concerning given the opponent quality.

The positive note here is that they’re still winning: they are 9-1 in those close games, taking them to a league-high 18 clutch wins on the year. But there could be a cost to keeping their main guys involved in what could otherwise be blowouts. 

Over the same stretch, other Western contenders have had to sweat fewer close ones. The conference-leading Lakers and the Rockets have played seven clutch games apiece in their last 15. The Clippers and Mavericks have played eight each, while the Nuggets have played nine. Given the difference in opponent quality over that stretch, it’s mildly concerning that the Jazz have been in more close games than their peers.

Improve the big man rotation

There is still a cost every time Rudy Gobert sits down. Tony Bradley has put together some good per-36 numbers since taking over the backup role, but he just doesn’t impact teams defensively. Per CTG, the Jazz give up 6.2% more shots at the rim with Bradley on the court. No center in the NBA has as wide a gap. Opponents also shoot slightly better at the rim when Bradley is in, and way better from midrange.

Some of this is just physics: he’s not as long, mobile or athletic as Gobert. Some of it, though, comes down to instincts. There are times he misses even very basic rotations, simple things that are core to Utah’s defensive identity. Like this:

Note Joe Ingles’ exasperation. This isn’t a play where Bradley, in his third year within the Jazz system, should be confused about his responsbility in the Jazz’s channeling defense.

Ed Davis has not been a viable alternative. His team-worst minus-12.6 Net Rating resulted in him being dropped from the rotation. At least the backup four spot seems steadier now, with Niang being on fire since taking over that rotation role.

The big man rotation may be a priority if the Jazz go shopping for help at the trade deadline or in the subsequent buyout market.

Get better playmaking from rotation guards

The bench play has been far better since Utah reworked its rotation with some moves just before Christmas, and the backup guards have been a huge part of that. Emmanuel Mudiay has hit double figures in four of the last five games, and Jordan Clarkson is averaging just over 15 points in his undefeated Jazz tenure. But neither guy is a natural facilitator, so there are times when the Jazz’s options dry up a bit when Ingles and Donovan Mitchell are off the floor.

Mudiay has been doing a better job of recognizing off-action cuts and making passes in an open court, but too many of his pick-and-roll actions end predictably, with either a corkscrew pull-up or a U-turn away from the paint as the action dead-ends. There’s nothing wrong with those free-throw line faders in principle; in fact, Mudiay has the seventh highest eFG% on pull-ups among players with at least 20 of those shots. The problem is that when Mudiay can’t get to that shot, he often just bails out of the action altogether with a reset to the perimeter.

Again, Mudiay has been much better lately in overall terms, and he sets up his teammates in other ways, so this isn’t an indictment. But an ability to generate offense for others in pick-and-roll play is pretty much bullet #1 in the job description of an NBA point guard circa 2020. Fewer of these possessions need to end in U-turns away from the paint, especially when Mudiay is playing with Gobert, one of the best roll finishers in the league.

Clarkson found a bit of pick-and-roll chemistry with Gobert against Washington, but overall has 12 assists in his nine Jazz games, and only three of those came directly from pick-and-roll action. That’s fine for now, as Clarkson is averaging a pretty elite 1.16 points per possession when he keeps it himself in P&R, but ultimately he’ll need to balance that out a little more.

In the 73 minutes so far when Mudiay and Clarkson have been on the court without another creating guard (Ingles/Mitchell), the Jazz are -7.4 per 100 possessions, and Gobert isn’t getting his usual looks: just 10% usage for the big man with those two guards, and 55% True Shooting.

Get Mike Conley healthy

Of course, a lot of the stuff we’re addressing here will naturally get better when Conley eventually returns from a hamstring injury. He won’t magically make Utah’s backup centers better, but everything else here will improve when the guard is healthy.

Utah will be able to compete more effectively against top teams when they have another consensus top-40 player available. They should be more capable of closing the door earlier on bad teams, and they will naturally have playmaking and creation ability on the court for more of the game’s 48 minutes.

Simply put, Conley getting back represents the Jazz’s most significant upside.

So yeah, Niang is right: Utah has been playing exceptionally well.

But there are plenty of ways they can still take their performance and profile to the next level.

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

1:15

During their four wins this past week, the Jazz mostly played from ahead as games wound down. In all four fourth quarters combined, they only trailed for a total of 1:15 — all against New Orleans. In fact, during their entire 9-game win streak, Utah has only been behind for a total of 3:45 in fourth quarters: 2:30 in Los Angeles and 1:15 in New Orleans. 

6

Before Mitchell’s absence on Sunday forced further rotation changes, the Jazz bench had gone six straight games with a positive +/- in the minutes where at least one Jazz starter sat. That is a significant development for a bench that had wobbled, even in the first couple of games after the Clarkson acquisition. Utah was +14 against Detroit when one to five starters sat, +16 against Chicago, +1 against Orlando, +1 against New Orleans, +12 against New York, and +8 against Charlotte. 

84.2% 

As ESPN’s Tim MacMahon tweeted on Monday, Gobert’s 84.2% clutch field goal percentage leads the league in that category (minimum 10 shots).

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

Ingles directing

The play we’ll highlight this week was actually pretty simple from an X-and-O standpoint. We’re breaking this one down not because of it’s complexity of cleverness, but mostly for what happens right before the actual play.

Watch Ingles stop clear out at midcourt and direct traffic, insisting that corner spacers Niang and Rayjon Tucker switch corners.

There’s a specific basketball reason why having Niang in the right corner made sense. Washington had been doing some switching, so Ingles knew he could force the switch by “snaking” the pick — in other words, curling back around the roll man to take away the hedge angle. He does this often against switching and hedging bigs — here’s another from this week. 

He knew that if he snaked the P&R, Gobert could take the little guy down to the paint.  Most teams send help to the roll man from the weak corner — the right corner, in this case. If Rudy winds up pinning Troy Brown under the basket, help is going to have to come from that corner, which is why Ingles wanted Niang to be on the right side. Niang’s defender is going to have to make a tough decision: he can help Brown deal with Gobert in the paint, but doing so will require leaving a guy who shoots 50% from the right corner this season, and 60% over the last nine games.

You can see Davis Bertans’ indecision if you rewatch this play and focus just on him. Ultimately, he does slide over to help on Gobert, but by then it’s too late.

This is just brilliant direction from Ingles. You’ll notice that the direction to flip corners doesn’t come from the bench — it’s Ingles who calls for it. A lesser facilitator might have just run the play that was called without thinking that far ahead. Not Slo-Mo.

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

The Game Ball department is working overtime to keep up with all these Jazz wins. Here are four more hunks of leather to memorialize Utah’s 4-0 week.

Jazz 128, Pelicans 126: Joe Ingles. Gobert was the hero on the defensive end during the last few minutes, and Bojan Bogdanovic did the heavy lifting on offense with 35 points on 21 shots. But the Jazz played their best basketball with Jingles directing, dishing, defending and just generally being Joe.  When the Pels went up 63-61, Ingles scored eight points in the ensuing 12-6 run the Jazz used to go back up. Then in a tight fourth quarter, Ingles hit a big three, connected with Gobert for a dunk, set up an and-one for Bogey, knocked down two free throws, and then served up another lob to the big fella. At +12, he was the only Jazz player who had better than a +3, and that wasn’t a coincidence. He had 22 points (8-for-12), plus six assists and two steals (one in the clutch).

Jazz 128, Knicks 104: Rudy Gobert. Mudiay played easily his best all-around game as a Jazz man, with a season-high 20 points and some of his best decision-making as he faced his last team. But with apologies to the former Knick, Rudy was just too dominant not to give it to him. Scoring 16 points on just five shots is just insane. He was 5-for-5, had 16 boards, dished four assists and had a ridiculous +59.6 Net Rating. This game was all about Gobert being simply too good for the Knicks, on both ends.

Jazz 109, Hornets 92: Rudy Gobert. Game ball can be a tough decision when garbage time arrives as early as it did in this game. With abbreviated minutes, nobody piles up the types of lines we associate with Game Ball-worthy performances. But the reason this one was out of reach early was, once again, Gobert. He was +16 in the first quarter alone, on the way to a game-best +25. He had 15 & 13, plus five blocks (there was a sixth that I thought they should have counted), and threw in three assists for good measure. He held the Hornets to 2-for-10 at the rim, and you could just see the way his presence demoralized the visitors. Honorable mention to Bogey, and Clarkson (20 points) was also very good.

Jazz 127, Wizards 116: Bojan Bogdanovic. Gobert turned it on in the second half after getting just a single shot off before intermission. He finished with 21 & 14 on 8-for-10 shooting. But he was, by his own admission, off in the first half, and foul trouble throughout made him less of a defensive force in the game’s final minutes as he tried to avoid a disqualifying sixth foul. But mostly, Bogey was just really good throughout, and the reason Utah was in the game at all. How could we stiff him in the Game Ball department after multiple games with 30-plus? He went for 31 in this one, but with a more complete line (3 ast + 3 reb) than the one that accompanied Monday’s 35. Ultimately, Gobert might have been the reason the Jazz won this one, but Bogey is the reason they even had a chance.

Clarkson was also very good; he got rolling in the fourth quarter on the way to his third 20-plus game as a Jazz (23 this time), and then used that momentum to set the table for a couple of Gobert’s clutch jams. Ingles had 20 points and nine assists.

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

The Jazz rode their nine-game winning streak all the way up to the No. 2 spot in the Western Conference — for a few hours.

Their matinee win in Washington put them at 27-12, which right at that moment meant they were ahead of the 27-12 Clippers by virtue of a head-to-head tiebreaker, and a half game ahead of the 26-12 Denver Nuggets.

A few hours later, though, the Nuggets and Clippers would face off, and no matter the outcome of that one, the winner would end Utah’s brief tenure in the second spot. An L.A. win would break the Jazz-Clippers tie, while a Denver victory would knot them up with the Jazz, and the Nuggets currently own the division record tiebreaker. The latter outcome is the one that eventually occurred, but in the meantime, the Jazz enjoyed a few glorious hours at the top of that tight 2-through-6 pack.

Those three teams, along with the Rockets and Mavercks, are all clustered together within three games of each other. Even the Lakers, five games ahead of the Jazz and Nuggets, aren’t totally safe yet, with more than half the season to go.

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

Utah’s first order of business is to complete this current Eastern trip, but then they’ll finish the week inside their mountain abode.

Tuesday 1/14, Jazz @ Nets: The Jazz’s yearly visit to my neighborhood just got a lot tougher: Kyrie Irvin, after missing 26 straight games with a shoulder injury, was back on Sunday. He wasted no time getting back into the flow, with a 21-point performance on 10-for-11 shooting as the Nets blew out Atlanta. It’s worth noting that the Nets were just 4-7 with Irving before his injury. Those early struggles included a loss in Salt Lake City where Gobert helped shut down the All-NBA guard and his Nets. (I compiled a video thread of all those clutch stops if you need a refresher.)

Thursday 1/16, Jazz at Pelicans: If it seems like the Jazz just made a stop in New Orleans, it’s because they did. They had to sweat a close one against the Pels last week, but came away with a two-point win after a late Mitchell pull-up and then a Gobert stop at the rim. But that’s one of the Pelicans’ only blemishes during an impressive 8-4 stretch. They’ve been playing better, especially before Jrue Holiday (elbow) got hurt and missed the last four. We’ll see if Holiday, who is listed day-to-day, is healthy for Thursday’s matchup.

Saturday 1/18, Jazz vs. Kings: Both the Jazz and Kings were down a couple of starters their last time out: Mitchell and Conley for the Jazz, and Bogdan Bogdanovic and Marvin Bagley Jr. for the Kings. The availability of any of those four could change the complexion of this one, but either way, Utah will be favored here. The Jazz have the hottest offense in the league over the last two weeks — adjusted for heaves and garbage time — while the Kings are the second coldest in the Western Conference over the same span.

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

More Ingles: the versatile forward is on pace to make some pretty special history, possibly as early as this season.

If Joe Ingles keeps making threes at his average rate of 2.16 per game, he will end the season with 846. pic.twitter.com/bJlgYvXWGS

— Ken Clayton (@k_clayt) January 11, 2020

And Ingles is actually ahead of schedule, since in the game that followed this tweet by our own Ken Clayton, Ingles drilled four more triples.

It speaks volumes about Ingles’ amazing story that he might unseat a franchise legend’s record just six seasons after being picked up on a waiver claim. (Frankly, it also speaks to the nature of the modern game that it will have taken Ingles six seasons to do what Stockton did in 19.)

We’ll see if Ingles gets there this season. Conley’s return will probably result in a slight dip in Joe’s minutes and in his possessions as a lead ball handler. On the other hand, it might give Joe more looks as a spot-up shooter. 

But sooner or later, Ingles will claim the crown as the franchise’s most prolific long-bomber.

Thanks for reliving another week with us. Now on to seven more days!