Salt City Seven: Rim Wreckers, 5-on-5 Defense, Mitchell on Fire & More

December 13th, 2021 | by Dan Clayton

The Jazz have are attacking the rim this year. (Stacey Bengs via sltrib.com)

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.

The Jazz’s love for the 3-point shot is well-documented and a huge part of their success. They own the NBA’s best true shooting and effective field goal marks, in part because nobody takes a higher proportion of their shots from deep than that three-happy Jazz, who also happen to convert their triples at a top-5 rate.

Utah may well break history again this year, a year after dropping an NBA record 16.7 shots per game from outside. But they’re also on pace to break records elsewhere, and it’s fueling their potentially historic offensive season almost as much as the long bomb.

The Jazz are absolutely destroying the rim right now.

They’re currently shooting 70.9% in the restricted area, which is better than the best season mark in recorded history1. The bigs in particular are feasting inside; both Rudy Gobert (80.2%) and Hassan Whiteside (75.7%) are having their respective best seasons ever for effectiveness at the rim.

But it’s not just the roll men who are having a boatload of success in deep. Joe Ingles is shooting an unreal 81.8% in the restricted area. Royce O’Neale is at 75.8%, partially the result of his newfound ambidexterity, and Rudy Gay is right behind him at 75.0%. Bojan Bogdanovic (65.3%) is having his best year at the rim since his rookie season, and Donovan Mitchell (64.9%) his best ever, both shooting above league average in that zone.

Leaguewide, players shoot 64.0% in the restricted area, which means that the Jazz’s historic proficiency there is yielding an extra three points per game over the “expected” output on their 22.5 shots there. That’s not nothing. A single point of differential correlates to roughly 2.7 wins, the statheads tell us, so those three extra nightly points at the rim is worth about eight wins over the course of the season, if sustained. But the real boon is the way all that rim pressure is creating opportunities all over the court — and vice versa.

The relationship between Utah’s inside efficiency and the historic 3-point assault is truly symbiotic. We know what it looks like when the threat of the Jazz’s interior attack opens up opportunities for outside shooters. We’ve shown those clips for years and talked about Gobert’s elite “roll gravity” as a key ingredient in Utah’s 3-point feast. Defenses love to collapse around his rim dives — or driving guards — and Utah’s many spot shooters lick their lips as a result. 

But the reverse happens just as often with the prolific outside-shooting Jazz. Multiple times a game, someone gets a layup precisely because opponents fear the Jazz’s league-leading 3-point attack. Utah is getting smarter about leveraging that inside in different ways.

The most obvious way this happens is when hedging defenses lurch out at shooters and leave Gobert or Whiteside a wide open path to the rim.

Another way the Jazz punish that outside pressure with layups is by attacking closeouts. This has become a staple for O’Neale, and Bogdanovic is especially smart about manipulating his own gravity. On this play, he doesn’t even need the ball in his hands to pull a panicked defender all the way outside on an out-of-bounds play. Then, his sharp cut back inside makes the defender literally trip over his own teammate, and Bogey gets his easiest bucket of the week. All because his guy didn’t want to let him fire off a three.

In transition, the Jazz often run to the 3-point line, and that awareness has motivated some defenders to leave the rim completely unguarded on the break.

But perhaps the most encouraging development is the way the Jazz — and especially their offensive star — are attacking off of pressure. Mitchell’s jump in rim accuracy is extremely significant to the Jazz, because it moves the fifth-year pro closer to “unguardable” territory. If you can’t give him space for fear of the shot and you can’t guard him close without letting him carve his way to the rim, what do you do to slow him down?

Two examples of the latter here: watch as he shakes a defender who’s checking him closely even at the center circle, and then he screen denies as a counter to Minnesota’s high pressure that’s designed to deter shooters.

That’s kind of a microcosm of the Jazz right now: they’re approaching unsolvable territory when they’re this using the threat of outside shooting to generate historic proficiency inside, and leverage rim pressure to fuel their 3-point attack. It’s a virtuous circle. And it’s part of the reason they seem unstoppable at the moment.

In their own words

“I told Quin (Snyder), I’m cool with guarding anyone. I trust the game plan. And when you win by 30 points, your game plan is pretty good.”.

-Gobert, on defensive assignments

The Minnesota Timberwolves should probably have spent more time thinking about their own defensive strategies after allowing the Jazz their third best single game ORtg of the year. But that didn’t stop a couple of them from offering the Jazz some, uh, prescriptive commentary.

Anthony Edwards — who has shot 25% in four career meetings when guarded by Gobert — proudly declared that the 3-time DPOY winner is nothing to be afraid of. And then veteran pest Patrick Beverley criticized the Jazz for putting Gobert on Jarred Vanderbilt instead of having him guard the Wolves’ best player, Karl-Anthony Towns. For the Wolves to get all emotional about that is weird, especially since they lost by 32 that night.

Look, this shouldn’t have to be said, but the goal of an NBA defense is to make it harder for five guys to score. And having a Gobert-like force on your team gives you a lot of interesting choices you can make. The Jazz have leveraged that ace in the hole in a lot of different ways. Gobert spends plenty of nights guarding the other team’s offensive engine — including the very next night in Philly.  Because Gobert is who he is, the Jazz can guard certain guys straight-up instead of bringing help, and that too has an impact on the opponent’s offense. Other times, they leverage Gobert’s impact in a specific scheme. And yes, sometimes a team decides to start a non-threat, which allows the big dude to be a more aggressive helper. If that bothers an opposing team, then maybe play different guys.

Sometimes the Jazz get a little too cute; in a Jazz-Nuggets game last year, they tried Bogdanovic and O’Neale on Nikola Jokic so that Gobert could help more. The MVP absolutely carved up the smaller defenders, and the next time the teams saw each other, Utah went back to a more conventional setup. But they made that decision because the Nuggets — and Jokic specifically — made that strategy untenable. In a Jazz-Mavs game, Dorian Finney-Smith punished the Jazz for their scheme by canning a bunch of corner threes while Gobert sagged off and essentially played free safety. And then of course there’s playoff legend Terance Mann.

And that’s the thing: if the Wolves don’t like that the Jazz are guarding them a certain way, then it’s their responsibility/opportunity to force them out of it or make them pay. Or they can just kvetch about it after they lose by 32, but that’s decidedly less productive.

In their own words

Wait, another “Quotable” section?! That’s right. There were two quotes this week that were simply too good to ignore, so instead of the Playoff Picture section — which this early in the season is a little contrived anyway — you get a bonus Jazz quote this week.

“If you don’t want to talk about our team and the way we play or Donovan and Rudy and what they do on a nightly basis, it’s like: f— you all.”

-Ingles, on J.J. Redick’s Old Man & the Three podcast

It has become very en vogue even among some smart folks to jump to the “yeah, but playoffs” shortcut when discussing the Jazz. Between that and the fact that two conference competitors have also been red hot, Utah’s not getting all the same chatter that you might expect about a team on a 60-win pace. No matter, Ingles insists.

“Only the guys that are in the room matter,” the veteran said on a very entertaining podcast appearance. “It doesn’t matter to us what (…) whoever else is saying about Rudy, or not saying about Rudy or Donovan or what they achieve. You just go on about your business.”

Ingles does concede that the team gets “way more” attention than it did eight years ago when he arrived, but says it’s something the team laughs about as opposed to getting really annoyed.

“We’ll just keep doing what we do and we’ll do it on the down low.”

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

54-45-92

Mitchell is completely on fire right now, with 54-45-92 shooting splits during the Jazz’s 7-game winning streak. He is shooting 61% on drives since November 27, and 55% on the season. Of volume drivers, only Malcolm Brogdon and Luka Doncic are as good as Mitchell is this season2.

7th/8th

Mitchell and Gobert are 7th and 8th in Estimated Plus Minus, respectively. If RAPTOR is your advanced stat of choice, Gobert is 4th and Mitchell is 18th, or 4th and 10th (respectively) in LEBRON. In Total Points Added, 8th and 16th. Gobert leads the league in Win Shares and is 8th in both Box Plus Minus and VORP, while Mitchell is top 20 in all three.

42.7%

Mike Conley is deadly this year on pull-up threes. His 42.7% on that shot type is the best in the league among guys with 50 attempts or more. (Bogdanovic is shooting 43.2% on threes off the bounce, but on just 44 attempts). Powered by those two, the Jazz have the best eFG% on pull-ups in the entire league at 51.6%, nearly four percentage points better than the second-place Bulls.

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

Another perfect week. Let’s get to work handing out game balls.

Jazz 136, Timberwolves 104: Donovan Mitchell. Some nights it’s an easy call. Bogdanovic deserves credit for an efficient 21, and for defense on KAT that freed Gobert up to be a full-time helper. Jordan Clarkson got hot late and Ingles had an all-around impact. But this one clearly belongs to Spida. His 17-point opening frame was dazzling and he had another dozen in the third, when the Jazz busted the game open with a 35-22 advantage. The total damage was an efficient 36 (on 23 shots) as well as five rebounds and pretty good defense.

Jazz 118, Timberwolves 96: Rudy Gobert. Since the start of last season, no player has had as many 15-point, 20-board performances as Gobert, who turned in 17 and 21 in Philly. But more than that, it was the way the narratives swirled around the big fella for 21 hours heading into this game after some chatty Wolves got all in their feelings following a 32-point Jazz win on Wednesday. Gobert’s response was to hold an MVP candidate — granted, a tired, banged-up version of Joel Embiid — to 5-for-12 shooting and to outscore the Sixers by a game-best +17 while on the court. Whiteside also got some votes for his 14-and-10 double-double in just 15 minutes of play, and I thought Ingles (11 points, 7 assists) and Mitchell (22 and 6) were huge as Utah flipped the scoreboard in the second quarter (and never looked back from there).

Jazz 123, Wizards 98: Hassan Whiteside. Mitchell (28 points, 4 assists) and Gobert (20 points, 11 boards) were probably the most valuable players of this contest, but Whiteside was absolutely the story of the game. Despite a rough start, he put up absoultely eye-popping per-minute numbers: 18 points (8/9 shooting), 14 boards and four blocks in under 20 minutes — the first player with that line in 38 years, per Ben Anderson. He was crucial to slowing down both Montrezl Harrell and Raul Neto, who had been bothering the Jazz. Even if we take out his stats after the garbage time sub at 2:51, he still had 14-11-4 in 17 minutes up to that point in the game, compared to Gobert’s 20-11-1 in 28 minutes, both with near-perfect shooting. Hell of a tandem. Mitchell continues to play cheat-code basketball, and Clarkson and Conley doled out a combined 13 of Utah’s 24 assists despite an off shooting night (they each had 11 points on 11 shots.)  

So where does that leave the Game Ball count after 19 wins? (Click to enlarge)

This probably underrepresents guys like Conley, O’Neale and Ingles, but the fact of the matter is that Mitchell and Gobert have been so damn good that by “game MVP” standards, one or both of them almost always have an extremely compelling case.

Looking ahead to the next seven nights of Jazz action.

Here comes a season high-tying SIX-game homestand.

Wednesday 12/15, Jazz vs. Clippers: The Jazz finally get to face the team that knocked them out of last year’s playoffs, although said club is still playing without the injured Kawhi Leonard. The Clippers had an impressive 7-game winning streak in early November, but since then they are 7-8, and four of those seven wins have been by 2-possession margins or less. Paul George is having another All-Star year (25-7-5), but Marcus Morris and Nic Batum have been in and out of the lineup. The real bellwether here might be Luke Kennard; when the bench gunner has a dozen or more points, the Clips are 8-2, and otherwise they’re 7-10.

Friday 12/17, Jazz vs. Spurs: The Spurs are hard to figure out. They’re 9-16 overall, but capable of winning in Golden State, boatracing the Blazers (sans Dame Lillard) in Portland, and outlasting a mostly-healthy version of the Bucks in Milwaukee. They shoot fewer threes than anybody, and they’re one of the worst teams in the league at generating and making free throws, so they’re just simply at a math disadvantage most nights. But they run a bunch (especially off live misses) and they don’t let their opponents run back at them, and it turns out that’s enough to give yourself a chance on certain nights. They have won six of their last nine, but that came right on the heels of a 6-game skid.

Saturday 12/18, Jazz vs. Wizards: The Jazz and Wiz get a rematch just a week removed from their last tilt, one which saw Utah pull away with a dominant second half. If you want to beat Washington, it’s a good idea to get it done early, because they are a remarkable (and probably unsustainable) 12-1 in games that are within five points at the end. That means they’re just 3-11 in game that don’t meet “clutch” criteria. Their loss to the Jazz on Saturday was the fifth loss in their last seven games, and before they square off in Salt Lake City this weekend, they’ll first go through Denver, Sacramento and Phoenix. The Jazz will be on a back-to-back, but the Wizards will be playing their fourth in sixth nights, all in different cities.

Random stuff from the Jazz community.

There’s apparently a superhero theme going on this week…

This got me thinking about who the right superhero equivalent is for the rest of the Jazz’s rotation guys. I stayed in the Marvel Universe for this, but there are probably other versions.

Let’s go Dr. Strange for Conley: not as flashy as the other big stars, but quietly one of the most powerful of the group because he can manipulate time, space and reality. Both Ingles and Bucky Barnes are 100 years old, are really strong with the left arm, and spent the early part of their careers in Europe. O’Neale might be an Iron Man/Black Panther type, because unlike their supernatural friends, those are guys who make great use of cool tools and technology, and Royce is similarly resourceful.

Hawkeye feels like the best fit for Bogdanovic; both are incredible marksmen with tight haircuts who often go under the radar. Whiteside might actually make a better Hulk because he can look mild-mannered/unthreatening at times, but then unleash the chest-pounding, screaming, smashing version.

Clarkson’s a tough one. Is there anyone who just oozes cool as much as the Vibe Tribe captain? Maybe Star-Lord, and hey, they both joke constantly and have a penchant for ’80s music. Otherwise, you could say Falcon because he does nearly everything that the big stars do, but in more of a reserve role. For that same reason, War Machine is a nice metaphor for Gay: essentially the same powers as Iron Man but less bombastic and doesn’t get as much screen time. Plus both Gay and James Rhodes bounced back from leg injuries.

Does that make Quin Snyder Vision? And Justin Zanik is Nick Fury? Your mileage may vary. Tell me what I got wrong.

Things are heating up now. See you next Monday.

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