The Salt City Seven Returns: Guard Questions, Game Ball, Historic Streak & More

October 30th, 2023 | by Dan Clayton

The Jazz have a number of good guards but are light on true facilitators. (Rick Bowmer via sltrib.com)

Every week during the regular season begins here at SCH with the Salt City Seven, a septet of recurring 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 look at the big, burning question of the moment in Jazzland

For weeks now, the biggest question about the 2023-24 has had to do with guard play. Three games in, nothing’s quite solved yet.

Talen Horton-Tucker and Kris Dunn have had rough starts, both producing true shooting figures under 39%. THT has at least been distributing the ball well (4.3 assists to 1.0 turnover per game), and Dunn is an indefatigable defensive pest when he can avoid fouling. But it’s been a pretty rough half week for both guys in terms of their own shooting. THT is 0-for-7 on field goal attempts as a driver, and Dunn has yet to make a three. (He’s only attempted four, but they were all “wide open” shots per NBA.com’s tracking, meaning the closest defender was at least six feet away.)

Both guys have redeeming qualities, but a lead ball handler needs to be a bit more of a threat to make things tougher on opposing defenses.

That’s why the ball has been just as likly over the first three games to be in the hands of Jordan Clarkson or Collin Sexton. Not that their shooting has been great either; both are right under 50% true shooting. But historically, the threat in those cases is enough to garner a certain amount of respect.

Clarkson has alternated between electric stretches and protracted struggles. He cooked against Sacramento and was crucial in the final minute on both ends against the Clippers, but then had an off night in Phoenix. This writer still believes not enough is made of Sexton’s unique combination of skills, but he too has yet to draw blood from beyond the 3-point line, and he has had a few too many dead-end plays. But those two probably remain Utah’s best options for raw creation at the moment.

Of course, rookie guard Keyonte George has been the focal point for fans in this conversation. He’s shooting at least decently from everywhere, and his per-minute assist figures trail only THT. If “Key,” generally used as a wing at Baylor, can be fully deployed as a point guard this early in his career, that provides another option for Jazz coach Will Hardy. But he’s not flawless either: the box plus-minus stat estimates that he’s roughly giving back his offensive value (+3.4) at the other end (-3.4).

We’ll see. It’s fair to assume George will get better as his rookie season goes along, and the veteran’s stats will also likely normalize to a degree. The fact that Utah reportedly poked around the Jrue Holiday situation is probably a sign that they’re not against solving this problem from the outside either, but I think all five of these ball handling guards will be given opportunities to improve.

In the meantime, it remains the big question in Jazzland.

Telling or interesting words from Jazz people

“We’ll continue to look (lineups and combinations). We are just as critical of ourselves after we win as we are when we lose. I’m sure there’s four assistants right now that hate 20 of the plays that I called, and, ‘Why did we do this matchup?’ And that’s what we do — we get together, we watch the film, we argue, we try to figure out the best answers, and then we take it to the team.”

Hardy to the Tribune’s Eric Walden, on how the Jazz continue to self-evaluate 

Timely reminder that even though the preseason is over, the Jazz are still far from a finished product. Hardy in particular mentioned that some of what they tried in the season opener didn’t work, and that he and his staff are committed to operating with “humility” as they consider their options.

“That’s our job, is to continue to self-evaluate our team, how we’re operating as a staff, things we’re doing on both sides of the ball, things we need to change.”

Stats that tell the story of the week

72

That’s how many first-half points the Kings hung on the Jazz in the season opener. Not great. The Kings are an awesome offensive team, but the problem with this stat is it meant that Utah was facing a set defense on the vast majority of trips after pulling the ball out of the bottom of the net. A team that (as has been talked about ad nauseum) lacks some halfcourt creation probably needs to defend better than this just for the sake of opening up some better opportunities to score in an open court.

33-8

Utah had a massive +25 advantage in second-chance points as they held on to beat the Clippers. Seven of those 33 came in the 4th, including a key go-ahead tip by Lauri Markkanen in the final minute and the second of Kelly Olynyk’s back-to-back triples. In a game where LAC shot better than the home team from the field and from deep, the only way Utah was getting out of their alive was to generate extra shots. They shot 19 more times than the Clippers.

<11

Of the 10 rotation regulars, six have negative Win Shares per 48 minutes so far. WS/48 is a bit of a dated stat, but that just goes to show how many guys are still searching. The four who are positive are (in ascending order) George, John Collins, Markkanen, and Olynyk, who has made 79% of this shots so far.

59

There’s starting to be some amount of noise about Walker Kessler’s counting stats and defensive impact being less impressive through three games, but consider this: 59 of his first 67 minutes have come with at least one of spacing-challenged guards THT and Dunn on the floor. As Jazz fans learned in the Rudy Gobert era, a traditional diving big can still be at the center of a very good offense, but the geometry starts to get harder when you also have non-shooters on the court. So far, the Kessler-THT combo is producing a 108.7 offense and getting outscored by 19.3 points per 100 possessions.  

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

Game Ball is back! After every win, I ask Jazz Twitter whose performance earned them the fake Wilson. Usually it’s a question of who the game’s MVP was, but occasionally we award narrative points and give it to the person whose night we’ll remember the longest when we hearken back to a particular night of basketball.

I also hand out consolation prizes for top/memorable performances from losses.

Jazz 120, Clippers 118: Lauri Markkanen. I agree with the voting public here that this is one of those times we shouldn’t overthink it (35-12-3 for Markkanen, including 20 points after halftime), but a few other guys deserve credit. Clarkson hit the eventual game-winner and more than held his own on some tough late defensive switches. Kelly Olynyk knocked down back-to-back threes at a point when the offense had stagnated. And Collin Sexton shifted the energy with some big defensive stops of his own, and had 13.

Strong in defeat:

  • Jazz 114, Kings 130: Jordan Clarkson. The flamethrower’s second-half explosion at least kept things semi-interesting, and he finished with 24-4-6 and the best +/- of the rotation guys. The other JC — John Collins — was quietly pretty impressive in his Jazz debut, with 15 and 11.
  • Jazz 104, Suns 126: Collin Sexton. Markkanen couldn’t miss early on, and Simone Fontecchio made the most of garbage time (13 points in 18 minutes). But let’s throw some flowers Sexton’s way after 14 points (on eight shots) to go with six assists. Keyonte’s George’s line (12-7-6) might have been a bigger story, but Sexton was far more efficient.

Xs and Os behind a Jazz scoring play

This was a fun little way of getting Ochai Agbaji a wide open dunk on Friday: 

Sexton brings it across and gives to Olynyk near the sideline, in a little “Pistol” action wrinkle. In fact, Clarkson’s weakside down-cut is a textbook Pistol variation — except that it turns out to be just a decoy.

By cutting off the Agbaji backscreen, Clarkson forces the switch. At this point, Paul George has freshly switched onto Agbaji and is more concerned with preventing the youngster from coming to the ball off a Collins pindown, so he top-locks him, meaning guarding him by standing between him and the screen instead of between him and the basket. This would be fine, except that Clarkson’s real intention is to engage Kawhi Leonard and then pull him out of the paint.

Agbaji times the start of his cut with exactly the moment Clarkson starts to vacate the lane. PG’s head is still turned watching Clarkson, so Agbaji is below FT-line extended before PG realizes, “Oops, he’s my guy.” Collins adds to the Clippers’ confusion by also cutting in, but when he gets about eight feet from the basket, he slams on the brakes to essentially screen both PG and Robert Covington from having any chance at contesting the second-year wing’s dunk.

Great bit of clipboard artistry there, taking the familiar Pistol set-up and reengineering it to the point where the Clippers had no idea they were guarding a very different version of the play.

Hopefully Agbaji’s knee contusion is nothing too serious and he’ll be flying to rim again soon.

Looking ahead to the next seven nights of action

Here’s a sentence or two about each of the Jazz’s upcoming games as part of a 4-in-6-night stretch.

  • Monday, 10/30: Jazz @ Nuggets. The Jazz’s reward for enduring a Kings-Clips-Suns opening slate? Oh, just the reigning league champs. Utah split the season series last year, and they catch the Nuggets on a back-to-back: Denver had to play Sunday night and then travel home from Oklahoma City.
  • Wednesday, 11/1: Jazz vs. Grizzlies. Utah’s lucky to draw these guys three times early on, while superstar Ja Morant is serving his league-mandated suspension. Desmond Bane is leading Memphis with 24 points per game, but so far the Grizz are 0-3.
  • Thursday, 11/2: Jazz vs. Magic. Get the Kleenex ready: this will be Joe Ingles’ first game back in Salt Lake City after an 8-year stint as a Jazz fan favorite. Ingles has played 31 minutes in Orlando’s first two games but hasn’t scored yet.
  • Saturday, 11/4: Jazz @ Wolves. Former Jazzmen Gobert, Mike Conley and Nickeil Alexander-Walker are all playing big roles for Minnesota, who sit at 1-1 after a close loss in Toronto and a convincing home win over Miami.

Random stuff from the Jazz community

The first week of season 50 is in the books!

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