2015-16 NBA Preview: Utah Jazz

UTAH JAZZ

The Western Conference finally has some openings for the Playoffs with the dismantling of the LaMarcus Aldridge-era TrailBlazers and a possible lottery appearance upcoming for Dallas. The Jazz are the trendy pick to fill this void, and with a breakout player and a young unheralded scorer they may finally get the attention they deserve.

2015 in review:

Utah was the typical lottery team for most of the season, losing a large portion of their games and struggling to fill some positions with adequate talent. But then the team improved a little and made a trade, sending off one of their young starters. This sparked a fire and the team was off, winning 19 of their 29 games after the all-star break. Of particular note was their defensive rating after the break, which was first in the league by a huge distance, over five points per 100 possessions better than the second ranked Grizzlies. Their surprising close to the season was led by Rudy Gobert, who was the prototypical raw international with jaw-dropping length, but he became the league’s premier rim protector with enough overall skills to warrant justified enthusiasm from the league and the team itself.

Rotation players in: Raul Neto.

Rotation players out: Dante Exum*, Enes Kanter.

Dante Exum won’t likely play this season, and he’s one of the largest changes Utah will have from last season to this one. With his injury, Raul Neto was called into duty from Spain. He’s a small pass-first guard who likely won’t be able to hit NBA three-pointers consistently, but the team is so devoid of playmakers he could receive extensive court time. Enes Kanter is one of the other few changes when he was sold for a first round pick. But his minutes obviously weren’t needed by the team.

2016 Projected

The most obvious discussion point, and the most common argument for why the Jazz will be a much better team, is how they did after the All-Star break, specifically on defense. They defended like one of the best defenses of all-time, and that’s obviously gotta be an unsustainable rate. The most obvious cause is Rudy Gobert, who started the rest of the season and played exceptional defense, but Utah actually played great defense without him. According to NBAWOWY.com, Utah’s defensive rating was almost exactly the same after the all-star break with and without him.

Digging further into the numbers, opponents shot 32.2% from behind the line without Rudy Gobert, and only a little over a point better with him. That’s an unsustainably low number in both situations. Opponents also shot a below average percentage from the free throw line, and it’s unlikely the team was just selectively fouling better. Opposing teams shot poorly at the rim and, again, while Gobert seems like the culprit it happened when he was on the bench too, though teams shot less often at the rim when he was in the game. Teams went to the free throw line more without Gobert, but they turned the ball less often and the Jazz rebounded better too.

More tellingly, the Jazz without Kanter before the break defended at a league average rate with Gobert and like one of the worst without him. That makes more sense; they won’t be one of the greatest defensive teams ever. There’s a lot of weird, conflicting data here, and one may note Gobert’s disappointingly lukewarm plus/minus stats — it’s because they did so well on defense without him during the last part of the season. But the most sensible way to synthesize this information is to conclude 1) Enes Kanter was an extremely negative force for their defense 2) their defense performed at an unsustainable rate overall and should regress and 3) the rate was more unsustainable without Gobert and they should do better with him on the court this year due to his skillset.

The other fringe star on the team, Gordon Hayward, would be a worthy All-Star in the Eastern Conference. He had a breakout season, becoming one of the league’s bargains, with a great combination of scoring and playmaking. He’s a varied scorer too, able to hit from outside or drive to the basket, where he’s very good at drawing fouls. With his athleticism and tenacity, he’s a pretty decent defender too. His statistical comparisons are stars like Brandon Roy, Chris Mullin, and Andre Iguodala for a reason; he just doesn’t have that kind of reputation yet, perhaps because of his young looking face and Utah being off the map for most NBA fans.

Outside of their two best players, there are some keepers but there are definitely still holes. Derrick Favors is a great defender and Utah doesn’t need him to be a floor spacer as long as their defense outweighs that. Rodney Hood could be a valuable role player for a while, able to hit outside shots well and defend adequately. Conversely, Alec Burks is a better slasher than a shooter and has defensive potential. But point guard is a morass because Trey Burke has been a liability and losing Dante Exum for the year is a major setback despite his rough rookie season.

Quick statistic/graph

Rudy Gobert is known as a rim protector, but he’s good at defending outside of that five foot arc radius around the rim too. In fact, although he was second to Anthony Davis in total blocks, he was first in blocks in the five to ten foot range. Anything remotely near the rim was his territory and he was surprisingly nimble for his size. Note that the second column in the table below is the proportion of those blocks compared to total overall blocks. Guys like Roy Hibbert and Tim Duncan had the tendency and foot speed to stay closer to the basket. Al Jefferson’s proportion is an oddity, but he may have had more blocks there from low post defense.

Table: 2015 blocks from 5 to 10 feet (source: stats.NBA.com)

Summary

With a full season without Enes Kanter and with Rudy Gobert, the Jazz could have a fairly good defense, but don’t expand their post All-Star break results to a full season — that isn’t likely. But there’s a good core here, and with a high quality guard added to the roster they’re a definite playoff team. For now, they’ll be battling for one of the last spots with a small number of other teams, and it’s quite likely they just make the cut.

PBP-Metric[1. This is the initial version of my own metric, which uses a full range of stats collected from play-by-play logs and tested extensively to avoid overfitting.]: 41.5

PT-PM: 37

Nick‘s[2. For a short description, the predictions use regression models and neural networks to apply various stats like BPM, RAPM, and Win Shares to 10,000 simulations of the season game-by-game to select the “best” result.]: 43

Nathan Walker: 42