In a recent article outlining every NBA team’s most critical weakness, Bleacher Report’s Dan Favale referred to the Utah Jazz as “one wing short”. In fairness to Favale, the spirit of his article was to find a weakness with every NBA team. That’s a difficult proposition when it comes to the Jazz, as one of the deeper, more well-rounded teams across the Association.
Nonetheless, his article begged the question: Are the Utah Jazz short a wing?
To elaborate, Favale’s position was that, out of the wings that currently populate Utah’s rotation, only Royce O’Neale is a viable option to guard the NBA’s elite wing players. He made no efforts to deny the overall value of Joe Ingles and Bojan Bogdanovic: he simply claimed that the Utah Jazz were short a wing stopper.
To put his claim to the test, we took the top 3 wing defenders on each of the four teams below the Jazz in last season’s standings, found their Defensive Box Plus/Minus’ (DBPM) from 2020-21, and ranked each alongside the Utah Jazz based on their average DBPM.
Two caveats apply to this exercise. First, the players considered had to play at least 30 games last season, a number somewhat arbitrarily selected to ensure that each player was a mostly regular part of their team’s rotation. Second, “wing” is not an official position: for this exercise, we’re defining a wing as “a player who saw minutes at the Small Forward position in 2020-21”.
With those parameters established, let’s look at the five best regular teams in the NBA last season, and how their top 3 wings stacked up against one another in terms of DBPM.
Brooklyn Nets top 3 wing defenders: Kevin Durant, Bruce Brown, Timothe Luwawu-Cabarrot
Average DBPM: -1.0
If you’re surprised to see the Brooklyn Nets at the bottom of these rankings, ask yourself why you’re reading this article if you don’t follow basketball.
These Nets are the offspring of a long line of NBA players/coaches/thinkers who believe that defense ought to be sacrificed in favor of more offense. If this approach (hereafter referred to as “The D’Antoni theorem”) has any validity, these Nets are certainly built to prove it. They paced the Association in Offensive Rating last season at a tectonic plate-shifting 117.3.
In direct contrast to an Utah Jazz team that prominently features a 2x Defensive Player of the Year in Rudy Gobert, all of Brooklyn’s highest paid players are primarily about a bucket. In fact, these two teams are about as close to a direct apples-to-orange comparison as you’ll find among the NBA’s contenders. With that said, apples and oranges are both fruits, and we intend to compare them anyway.
The Brookyn Nets’ best wing defender by DBPM last season was Kevin Durant with a score of 0.6. That alone is an inherent problem: the most capable perimeter defender on this roster is also, arguably, their most effective offensive player. This uneven distribution of labor stands in direct contrast to the Utah Jazz’s roster makeup. Coach Snyder’s best perimeter defender last season was Royce O’Neale, with a DBPM of 1.7.
Let’s just say O’Neale isn’t what most would call an offensive hub.
The Nets don’t have a competent defense because they’d rather double-down on the offensive side. That’s perfectly fair, and with good health, they’re widely regarded as overwhelming favorites to win the 2021-22 NBA championship. Just don’t expect them to do it by grinding it out on the less glamorous end of the floor.
Denver Nuggets top 3 wing defenders: Vlatko Cancar, Aaron Gordon, Michael Porter Jr.
Average DBPM: -0.5
As with any statistic, it’s worth noting that DBPM is not infallible. Having said that, Aaron Gordon’s -0.5 mark feels like it might be a little noisy. After all, Gordon is a 6’9 forward with solid lateral mobility, quick instincts and a jump-out-of-the-gym vertical leap. His reputation also suggests that he’s a positive on the defensive end.
Nonetheless, we can only work with the numbers, so we’re trusting them not to lie. Furthermore, Gordon might be the least wing-like player on this list: last season, he spent 89% of his minutes at the power forward position. Still, the 11% he spent at small forward forced us to qualify him here.
Perhaps the Denver Nuggets are “a wing short”.
On the defensive end, it’s not a difficult case to make: Vlatko Cancar had this wing rotation’ highest DBPM at -0.1. That’s a passable figure, but nonetheless, the Nuggets were one of two of the five best teams in the NBA last season not to roster a plus defensive wing.
Michael Porter Jr. has more offensive talent than any player to suit up at small forward for the Utah Jazz in 2020-21. In fact, the Nuggets, when healthy, host the league’s MVP and a cadre of talented players deep enough to challenge Utah’s regular season supremacy.
Nonetheless, tell a Nuggets fan that the Utah Jazz are short one defensive wing, and they might respond like a friend of Jeff Bezos listening to him complain about tax brackets.
Utah Jazz top 3 wing defenders: Royce O’Neale, Joe Ingles, Bojan Bogdanovic
Average DBPM: 0.5
The Utah Jazz, the team allegedly short a defensive wing, provide two bench marks in this exercise. They’re the first team with two plus wing defenders, in O’Neale (DBPM: 1.7) and Ingles (0.7). They’re also the first team with a positive average between their top 3 wing defenders.
Still, if Dan Favale was right, it’s because he was directly referring to Bojan Bogdanovic and his -0.9 rating.
Bogey is comfortably a rotation-level player: in fact, that statement undersells his value to the Utah Jazz. His 0.7 Value Over Replacement Player (VORP) from 2020-21 tells us part of that story, and his 17.0 points per game on a 58.8 True Shooting % (TS%) tells the rest. Nonetheless, that DBPM is consistent with the marks he’s posted throughout his career. He is simply not a presence on the defensive end.
Still, it’s hard to justify the position that the Jazz are a short a defensive wing when at least two of the NBA’s top 5 teams roster exactly zero positive wing defenders according to DBPM, and they host two. Furthermore (spoiler alert), the next team on this list didn’t exactly blow Utah out of the water, with an average DBPM of 0.6. For those who struggle with math, that’s 0.1 more than the Utah Jazz.
That’s as close to nothing as something can get.
Maybe the Utah Jazz could use a third defensive-minded wing behind Royce O’Neale and Joe Ingles, but they’d have to be comfortable with a small piece of Quin Snyder’s rotational pie. Bojan Bogdanovic offers too much spacing and secondary shot creating to sacrifice his spot in favor of ramping up wing defense. The Jazz are probably better off living with his (relatively modest) defensive deficiencies and keeping the quality wing rotation they already have.
Phoenix Suns top 3 wing defenders: Mikal Bridges, Jae Crowder, Torrey Craig
Average DBPM: 0.6
As previously mentioned, the Suns’ average DBPM among their 3 best wing defenders outscored the Utah Jazz’s by a paltry 0.6 to 0.5. Calling the Suns’ defensive wing depth better than the Jazz’s feels trite. On the other hand, observing the differences between the two is a little more fruitful.
The Suns are the first team on this list to boast three positive DBPM figures among their 3 best defensive wings. On the other hand, Mikal Bridges, their best wing defender, posted a vastly inferior score to the Jazz’s Royce O’Neale, at 0.8 to his 1.7. In other words, Phoenix has better defensive wing depth, but the Utah Jazz have the best wing defender between the two teams. In fact, even Joe Ingles and his 0.7 DBPM is extremely close to Bridges’ 0.8 figure.
Nonetheless, if you’re looking to make the case that the Utah Jazz are a defensive wing short compared to their Western Conference brethren, you need not look any further than the Arizona desert. Although, it’s worth noting that the Jazz were third in the Association in team defensive rating last season at 108.9, while the Suns were not far behind, finishing the regular season tenth with a rating of 112.1.
A perfectly reasonable question arises: how, then, is there any case that the third best defensive team in the league last season is in need of an extra defensive wing? Well firstly, there isn’t, and they aren’t. However, in comparing these two Western Conference powerhouses, one would be remiss to exclude a comparison of their big men. Rudy Gobert, 2x Defensive Player of the Year, posted a 2.5 DBPM last season. Deandre Ayton posted a neutral 0.0 mark.
How you interpret this data is subjective: you could argue that the Utah Jazz don’t need an extra defensive wing because they have the best rim protector in the NBA to compensate for wing mistakes. Or, you could argue that the Jazz’s wing defense is demonstrably bolstered by his presence, and is clearly lacking in depth compared to the Phoenix Suns, who roster three quality defensive wings in the absence of such elite rim protection.
However you slice it, the Utah Jazz and the Phoenix Suns boast extremely similar caliber wing defenses, and neither team has much to complain about in that department.
Philadelphia 76ers top 3 wing defenders: Matisse Thybulle, Danny Green, Tobias Harris
Average DBPM: 2.0
A heavily considered alternative title for this piece was “Defense: An Ode to Matisse Thybulle”. His DBPM of 4.3 more than doubles that of Utah Jazz wing Royce O’Neale, who contributed the second highest figure on this list.
The Philadelphia 76ers top the competition in this exercise by a healthy margin. They had the second best team defensive rating in the NBA last season at 108.5, behind only the Los Angeles Lakers, who didn’t win enough games to qualify.
Obviously, Thybulle’s robust figure boosts Philly’s overall average. However, it’s also worth noting that Ben Simmons, the 76ers’ Defensive Player of the Year candidate, did not meet the qualifications for a wing. He spent 98% of his minutes running point last season, and the other 2% came, ironically, at the shooting guard position.
Call Simmons a shooting guard at your own peril, but the numbers suggest that he’s not a wing either.
Danny Green posted an also-impressive 1.2 DBPM for the team of brotherly love last season, meaning that Philly’s second-best wing defender bested 2 of the Utah Jazz’s 3 finest. Tobias Harris rounded out Philly’s group at 0.5: not a tremendous figure, but given the figures posted by Philly’s top two contributors, and his own offensive abilities, it’s one Head Coach Doc Rivers will live with.
Identifying a single flaw in the Utah Jazz is a difficult exercise. They are one of the NBA’s deepest and most well-rounded teams. Their biggest obstacle to contention may, in fact, be the absence of a top 5 player. Nonetheless, when compared and contrasted with the NBA’s other top squads from last season, it seems apparent that the Jazz are sitting comfortably as far as defensive wing depth is concerned.