Salt City Seven: Expected Wins + Alarming Losses, Team Basketball and More

November 29th, 2021 | by Dan Clayton

Mitchell looks to pass out of trouble during Monday’s loss to Memphis (Leah Hogsten, Salt Lake Tribune)

Every Monday during the regular season, the 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.

A quick dissection of a big-picture topic or burning question relevant to the week in Jazzland.

A whole new generation of Utah Jazz fans is quickly learning that cheering for a contender can honestly be a little bit thankless.

October through April is a fun time for most NBA fans to learn about their teams. But when your team is expected to eviscerate most opponents, the majority of the surprises that can occur in games 1 through 82 are unpleasant ones. It’s a weird, backhanded way of saying that a team is really special, but it’s a situation Utah’s fans haven’t been in for a while — or ever, for younger or more freshly converted Jazz aficionados.

Longtime fans have rooted for many quality teams throughout the years, but you have to go back more than two decades to find a Jazz team entering the season with these expectations. Utah’s +1400 preseason title odds were tied for fifth best. The last time a version of the Jazz started with top-5 title odds, per Basketball Reference, was literally in a different millennium1. Last year’s Jazz eventually established themselves as bona fide contenders, but even they didn’t start with the same lofty expectations; they had +4000 title odds before the season, tied for 12th.

So yeah, this is new territory.

A purported juggernaut like Utah is expected to win most nights, so the upside is honestly pretty minimal most of the time. Per teamrankings.com, Utah is the only team that hasn’t yet played a game in which it was the sports books’ underdog. That’s absolutely crazy. We’re a quarter of the way into the season, and so far the oddsmakers haven’t had a single night where they’ve thought, “Yeah, that team should take the Jazz.” Whoa.

But teams have taken the Jazz, and therein lies the emotional turmoil. It can be a bit joyless to follow a team where every result is either a ho-hum, business-as-usual, totally expected outcome… or a massive letdown. Most wins feel budgeted or even predestined; every loss — and even some tight victories — can feel like an existential crisis relative to the expectations.

To be clear, the Jazz did not have a good week by really any standards. They earned the consternation of their fans with a late collapse against Memphis and then poor execution versus New Orleans. They lost both games by a single point after 3-point shots in the final seconds, but even the missteps that led them to that point were concerning. And while Jazz coach Quin Snyder seemed please with the effort and execution in Oklahoma City, rough shooting outcomes made that game tighter than most would have predicted. They could have easily had a 4-0 week if two shot outcomes had flipped, and a 1-3 week also wasn’t that far off. So this is, as usual, more about effort, execution and focus than about results. The Jazz were not the best version of themselves until a call to repentance sparked Saturday’s dominance.

Saturday also serves as a reminder that THAT version of the Jazz is still available. They didn’t swing any trades, reconstruct their rotation or overhaul their coaching staff before leading the Pels by as many as 40 points. They just… figured their stuff out. Last year’s Bucks had similar questions asked about them after a 16-13 start, and then they accessed the version of themselves that made them elite in order to rip a 30-13 close and win a title. There’s nothing disqualifying about a shaky early stretch. As they have done in each of Snyder’s seasons as coach, it’s likely the Jazz will peel off their own sustained stretch of excellence at some point: 20-1 last season, 19-2 the year before, 17-4 before that. But for a team that has Saturday’s level of dominance available to them on a given night, the Jazz need to figure out how nights like Monday and Friday happen.

They are still an elite team, and as such following them will still be an emotionally complicated endeavor. FiveThirtyEight has them favored in 12 of their next 13 contests, and they give them roughly the same odds as a hand of Blackjack in other one (42% at Philadelphia). That means that even after a wobbly week, the Jazz head right back into that thankless territory where wins are expected and any loss is devastating.

That’s what it means to be a great team with great expectations. Try to savor that greatness and even the pressure that comes with it. Find things to celebrate even in expected victories and be intellectually curious about your team regardless of individual game outcomes.

Mostly, just try to enjoy the ride. Other fan bases get to experience the weird enjoyment that comes from not being favored every time out — more intrigue, more mystery, and a better chance that at some point you get to play with house money. That’s not the Jazz’s lot this time around, which is a compliment even if it sucks some degree of fun out of the night-to-night grind.

In their own words

“Hopefully we grow. Hopefully it hurts enough that we put our egos on the side, we grow and (we) play as a team.”

-Jazz center Rudy Gobert

There were a lot of candid, soul-searching quotes that came from this week’s press sessions, especially after Friday’s 1-point loss to the struggling Pelicans. This Gobert quote, delivered calmly and matter-of-factly, stood out the most. It’s the kind of quote that could potentially stoke any discomfort inside the locker room if any guys chose to read it as a personal indictment. It’s not clear if that’s how Gobert meant it, but Jazz players seemed to agree fairly unanimously that the loss should serve as a wake-up call.

“I mean, y’all see it: it doesn’t look good, it doesn’t feel good,” Donovan Mitchell weighed in.

For his part, Snyder seemed more concerned about a specific aspect of their execution: trusting in the offense and sharing the ball. “We’ve established an identity on this team, and then we don’t look that team,” the veteran coach said. Later, he’s clarify: “Once (the ball) sticks, the defense loads up and everything’s harder.”

The Jazz had 31 “potential assists” on Friday night — or passes that would have registered as assists had the subsequent player made a shot. They average 43.3 for the season, so Friday was a bit unusual in terms of how much they relied on 1-on-1 play, especially since New Orleans’ defense is mostly fairly traditional and doesn’t invite the same kind of iso-heavy play teams often have to resort to against switch-happy outfits. Utah’s lead ball handlers both shared the rock plenty on an absolute basis — Mitchell had six assists, Mike Conley had five — but overall the offense lacked its usual verve. It was their second-worst overall offensive performance of the season.

“We’re gonna fix it,” Mitchell ultimately promised.

Stats that tell the story of the Jazz’s week.

34

There’s some solid evidence that Mitchell wasn’t the player in Snyder’s sights with all of that talk about playing with a pass, starting with the fact that the star guard was in the middle of a stretch of five straight games with 5+ assists. Over that span, he has averaged 6.2 per game, and has assisted 29.8% of his teammates’ buckets while he’s been on the floor. That’s even higher than Conley’s assist percentage over the same stretch, and his assists-to-used-possessions ratio (21.1%) is also right in Conley’s same territory (23.1%). Assists aren’t a perfect way to exonerate someone’s decision-making entirely, and sure, you could find individual possessions where he could have made a pass instead of taking a difficult shot, but overall he has been distributing quite well. So who else could the coach have been thinking about during his missive on trusting teammates?

1/13

The Jazz broadcast shared a stat the other night that was honestly hard to believe: Devonte’ Graham’s go-ahead 3-pointer on Friday night was New Orleans’ only clutch trey of the entire season. It’s true! Friday was their ninth game meeting “clutch” criteria and they had attempted 12 other triples on those settings. But the Jazz just happened to be unlucky enough to be there the first time the proverbial lightning struck for the Pels. To encapsulate just how weird it is that the Pelicans defeated the Jazz from downtown, here’s another crazy stat: the very same club missed their first 20 attempted threes the very next night in the Jazz’s rematch win.

23%

Just 24 hours apart, Jordan Clarkson’s night looked pretty different from Friday to Saturday. The mercurial guard had numerous plays on Friday where he looked to slow down, back out and overthink. The result was a 3-for-12 night and his third lowest scoring output of the season. On Saturday, by contrast, he was more ready to make quick decisions when the ball arrived. His average seconds and average dribbles per touch both came down significantly overnight, and he shot 8-for-13. This is not unusual for Clarkson to shoot better when he makes quicker decisions with the ball: his outside shooting for the season drops from 32% on 3-pointers with a touch time under two seconds to 23% when he handles it for :02 or more before the shot2. Simply put, he’s at his best and most dynamic when he makes quick decisions to leverage an advantage.

15.8%

Even during an off week for the Jazz, Gobert held all opponents to 27-for-88 shooting last week as the closest defender. That’s a 30.7% shooting percentage, or 15.8 percentage points beneath the expected percentage on those shoots based on shot location. The dude is simply dominating. That includes 8-for-32 (25%) at the rim over the last four games, bringing the Stifle Tower’s rim defense figure for the year to an eye-popping 41.9%.

51-48-96

Bojan Bogdanovic is currently having one of his better offensive stretches in recent memory: 18.4 points per game in his last eight, with 51-48-96 shooting splits. 

Keeping track of the Jazz’s place in the wild, wild West.

The Jazz’s FiveThirtyEight record projection — 54-28 — is exactly where it was prior to the season. That’s because, if you group their games by win odds, they have roughly done what was expected, despite how these recent missteps have felt. When the 538 model says the Jazz have a 90% chance of winning a game, that means it thinks a team like the Jazz will win nine out of every 10 games like that one. It’s something we have a hard time grasping about probabilistic thinking, because 90% sounds high enough that we think: they should definitely win that game. 

All along, 538 has projected the Jazz in the 54 to 59 win range, which means that if there’s a block of games in which they give the Jazz 75% odds, those are games their model predicts even an elite team should win three out of every four — not every one. Recapping the season through that lens can be kind of an interesting way of diagnosing the areas of under or overperformance.

  • The Jazz have played four toss-up games with win odds between 45 and 50%. That means the model assumes that even an elite team would win roughly half those games. The Jazz are 2-2.
  • They have played three games with win odds of 63-70%, where the model would expect two wins in every three games. The Jazz have won, in fact, two of those three.
  • The model would expect Utah to win three of every four games in the 75% range. Utah hasn’t quite played four in this range; they’ve played three with win odds of 76-78% and are 2-1. So if they can win the next game like that (they’re 76% tonight vs. Portland), they’ll be right on budget there, too.
  • The model thinks Utah should win about five of every six games in the 82-89% bucket, of which the Jazz have played nine. That means they “should” have 7.5 wins. Instead they are 6-3.
  • A team should win nearly all games with >90% win odds. Utah has played one such game, and won it.

The Jazz are right on track in all of those buckets except for one: the 82-89% games where they are heavily (but not prohibitively) favored. That seems to jive with recent comments by Snyder about the Jazz adjusting their level of intensity to the opponent. But if they can make up the 1.5 unbudgeted losses there, they’re roughly on track with where 538 thinks a team of their caliber — destined for a mid-50s win total and 9% title odds — should be.

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

Two game balls to give out this week, along with two consolation prizes after gut-punch clutch losses.

Jazz 110, Thunder 104: Rudy Gobert. The consensus Twitter pick and a pretty easy choice, if we’re being honest. In another game that had a lot to do with Gobert’s ability to guard in space, he and the rest of the Jazz defense were tremendous. Thunder players shot 10/25 with him guarding, including 3/10 in the paint. He had 15 points, 17 boards, 5 blocks and the game’s best plus-minus (+13). Clarkson had an efficient 20-3-5, Bogdanovic and Conley each took turns shouldering the offense, and Mitchell scored the three most important baskets of the night after a 3-for-13 start. But we’ll go with Big Fella here. 

Jazz 127 Pelicans 125: Donovan Mitchell. Conley’s hot start — and similar flurries by Clarkson, Rudy Gay and Joe Ingles — certainly helped, but Mitchell’s convincing first half ensured this game was out of reach before intermission. That was especially fitting since the focus was on Mitchell right from the start. He finished with 21-7-7, and the only reason he didn’t flirt with a triple-double is because he was so good early that the Jazz didn’t need him for a single second of the fourth quarter. Plenty of good runner-up candidates, but check Gay’s 13-7-5 in his season high 24 minutes of play. He was also featured a bit more on defense because of Royce O’Neale’s absence.

Strong in Defeat:

  • Jazz 118, Grizzlies 119: Rudy Gobert. This would have been harder had the Jazz won, because it would likely mean that Mitchell (18-6-8) crept over 20 with his all-around line, or that Bogdanovic’s night (24, season-high 7 threes) was even better than it was. But if we’re honest, Gobert and Conley were the most dominant throughout. Gobert had 23 and 13, and didn’t miss a shot until he was clubbed on a pretty rough no-call. He also held the Grizzlies to 27% shooting as the primary defender, including 15% from three — even if he did choose to stay in perhaps a nanosecond too long on that final Grizzlies possession. He was dominant in every way. Conley was brilliant in pick-and-roll, setting the table for Gobert and others (8 assists) but also doing plenty of damage on his own: 19 points on 12 shots. Gobert and Conley were +10 and +13, respectively, in a game the Jazz lost by one. 
  • Jazz 97, Pelicans 98: Bojan Bogdanovic. There weren’t a ton of positives in this shaky effort, as the quotes above illustrate pretty well. But Bogey was one of them. The Croatian forward had 23 points, five threes and four boards. The Jazz outscored their visitors during Bogey’s minutes, and that’s the only starter for whom that was true. He was aggressive and efficient early, pouring in 13 first-quarter points and converting six straight shots to open the game. Don and Mike both had fairly complete lines even though neither had very efficient nights (16-4-6 on 21 shots for Mitchell, 12-4-5 on 10 shots for Conley).

Looking ahead to the next seven nights of Jazz action.

The Jazz get an unusual three days off in the middle of the week, but first they have affairs to attend to with a division foe.

Monday 11/29, Jazz vs. Blazers: Portland’s main five guys were +14.4 per 100 together after they got everybody healthy and swung the Norm Powell trade, a pretty good sign that improved health would bring some almost automatic improvement. And yet they’re 10-10. Some of that is surely adjusting to a new coach and a new defensive philosophy — they rank second worst in halfcourt defense, third worst overall D. But they have also played a harder schedule than any of the West’s best. That’s why they still rank as one of the conference’s 4-5 best teams by measures like SRS and Raptor projected record. In other words: this is a legit test for the Jazz, and they should treat it as such.

Friday 12/3, Jazz vs. Celtics: December?! How is it December already?!  The Jazz will begin the month by hosting the owners of a fairly elite defense (6th going into the week) and a struggling offense. In particular, Jayson Tatum has been in a season-long funk. His 2-for-16 Sunday tugged his true shooting down to 50% and his 3-point percentage for the year under 32%. As a group, Boston’s offense produces bottom-5 results in 3-point accuracy, and bottom-10 in paint points per contest. That’s a tough way to live in the modern NBA.

Sunday 12/5, Jazz @ Cavs: Former Jazzman Ricky Rubio is having a career-best year in scoring, usage and 3-point percentage, and has had several big games for the surprisingly 10-10 Cavs. The head of the snake, though, has been Darius Garland, who leads Cleveland in points (18.7), assists (7.1) and minutes (34.6). Teams don’t really want to face Cleveland’s set defense, which is sixth best in the league outside of garbage time, thanks in large part to Jarrett Allen’s work as an anchor big. They have lost five of six as the schedule toughened, though, and they don’t yet have a win against a team with a record of .600 or better (0-5). 

Random stuff from the Jazz community.

Just because, hey, you don’t get to see this *in a game* every day:

Another seven days in Jazzland. Enjoy the week!

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