At 8-5, it might be premature to call the 2021-22 Utah Jazz a disappointment to-date. At the same time, nobody could claim that this team has surpassed expectations either. There is too much talent on this squad to forgive losses against sub .500 teams like the Orlando Magic and the Indiana Pacers. On the bright side, this team sits 5th in the Western Conference with ample room for improvement. This NBA season is still young, and a savvy, veteran-heavy outfit like the Utah Jazz stand more likely to progress than regress as it advances.
Here are 3 areas in which the team could stand to improve as that happens.
Utah Jazz three-point efficiency
This is a point we’ve been forced to hammer home repeatedly. Maybe we’re beating a dead horse, but we’d be remiss not to identify three-point efficiency as an area in which the Utah Jazz could use improvement.
As it stands, this team’s 42.2 three-point attempts per game rank third in the NBA, while their 32.1% conversion rank places them 27th. That, to say the least, is a wide berth.
Counterintuitively, Their Offensive Rating of 113.65 ranks second in the NBA anyway. It lends significant credence to the validity of the three-point revolution: volume evidently leads to efficiency, regardless of accuracy.
Fine. Call us crazy, but we think it would be better if the Utah Jazz hit more of their threes anyway.
Three-point dominant offensive strategies lend themselves to a wider range of outcomes than other plans of attack. That feels like an appropriate explanation for how the Jazz managed to score a mere 100 points in their game against the Orlando Magic. The Jazzmen shot 8/42 from three-point range in that contest, good for 19%.
Shooting 19% on 42 three-point attempts might not get you a victory over the G-League Ignite. Either the Jazz need more of those attempts to start finding nylon, or they need to develop a plan for shifting gears when that’s simply not happening.
Utah Jazz ball movement
When the Utah Jazz are on offense, the ball is like Kevin Bacon after a bad day in Footloose: it’s got to move.
The Jazz’s lack of ball movement may have a direct correlation with their three-point inefficiency. Currently, the Jazz’s 20.4 assists per game rank 28th in the NBA, while their 266.2 passes per game rank 26th. It’s largely a function of design: Quin Snyder prefers to generate efficient offense by maximizing spacing in a pick-and-spread system. More passes lead to more turnovers, and the Jazz prefer to protect the rock while relying on unassisted threes.
Only, the rock isn’t exactly being well-protected, either. The Jazz’s 15.2 turnovers per game rank 21st in the NBA: not an atrocious mark, but surely not a strong enough one to justify the trade-off they’d hope for in their lack of passing.
Again, with the league’s second-best Offensive Rating, it’s not hard to make the case that the Utah Jazz don’t need to change a thing on the offensive end. On the other hand, this offensive strategy may contribute to the overall streakiness of this squad. This offense may be capable of reaching staggeringly high heights, but it’s also completely unreliable.
Analogously, the Jazz play like a ball-hogging volume scorer. Sure, he may drop 50 on occasion, but on those nights that he goes for 13 points on 5/20 shooting from the field, you just wish he’d pass the ball.
The suggestion here is not for Quin Snyder to overhaul the entire offense, but perhaps he doesn’t need to be so steadfastly devoted to his plan of attack either. A few wrinkles in his pick-and-spread offense may generate more open looks. Maybe Gobert keeps an eye out for corner shooters more regularly as the roll man, or astute passer Joe Ingles is granted a larger role in the offense.
It’s hard to prescribe an exact solution, but when your team is averaging 0.1 more assists per game than the 1-12 Houston Rockets, there’s a decent chance that a change of plans may be in order.
Utah Jazz defense
Of every area the Utah Jazz have struggled in to begin the 2021-22 season, this has to be the most surprising. Despite rostering 3x Defensive Player of the Year Rudy Gobert, the Jazz’s Defensive Rating of 106.78 ranks just 11th in the NBA.
Again, that’s not a terrible figure, but it falls significantly short of anybody’s expectations for this team. Given their high risk, high reward, high variance offensive strategy, it is imperative for this team to field a top 5 defense if it wishes to contend for the NBA championship.
It’s hard to know exactly where to point the blame. Gobert’s Defensive Box Plus/Minus (DBPM) of 1.7 would be his lowest since his rookie season, but DBPM is closely related to who a player is sharing the floor with. The eye test suggests that Gobert’s defense is in line with the elite levels we’ve come to expect from him.
Joe Ingles’ performance on that end is a little more troubling. His -0.7 DBPM falls considerably short of his career 1.2 mark. At 34, it feels possible that his slow feet have finally gotten slow enough to make it impossible for him to compensate for them with his high IQ.
Out of the rest of the regular rotation members, only Royce O’Neale joins Gobert in posting an even reasonably impressive DBPM at 2.3. Otherwise, Eric Paschall is -1.4, Bojan Bogdanovic is -2.0, and Jordan Clarkson is -2.1.
If the Jazz can’t start to demonstrate some growth in this area, a midseason trade may begin to look appealing to the front office. Without a top 5 defense, this team will let something besides opposing players blow right by it: the Larry O’Brien Trophy.
On the plus side, the Utah Jazz are 8-5 in spite of these problems. They haven’t given up nearly enough ground for a hot streak not to cover. Hopefully, they can start on one against the Philadelphia 76ers tomorrow night.