Three thoughts on the Utah Jazz’s 111-110 win over the San Antonio Spurs.
The second unit is thriving
The Jazz bench has been pretty good at scoring the ball. So much so that the Jazz broadcast team has often emphasized that the team is second in bench scoring in the entire NBA. I think this is a little overblown – they’re still net-negative to the team’s point differential while on the court this season, but it does feel like there’s a bit more cohesion to the second unit than there was last year.
I’d like to point to a few things that are going well for Utah right now. First, Kyle Filipowski has a feel for the game similar to Kelly Olynyk’s, but is filling space that seems to work significantly better for what the coaching staff is trying to do with both John Collins and Walker Kessler. While Olynyk would spend the bulk of his time on the court on the shoulder of the three-point line initiating offense for the team from the outside-in, Filipowski tends to occupy the interior-to-corner area more. This enables more of a straight-line drive for Collins in a pick-and-roll from the top of the key, with space to pop out to the three-point line. It’s working so well that Filipowski took minutes away from Kessler to end the game — the offensive swings from the duo were more difficult for the Spurs to deal with than the defensive protection that the starting lineup had given.
I still worry about the defensive fit between Filipowski and Collins, but things tended to work well enough today as they stressed quick rotations and a more switchable 4-5 combo. This made things more difficult on a stretch-5 like Victor Wembanyama.
Will Hardy reinvents how he’s using John Collins
Speaking of the bench unit, John Collins is leading the team in total scoring and averaging the second most points per game. Perhaps the biggest change from last season to this season regarding any player’s usage is how John Collins has been utilized.
Collins attempted just 5% of his shot attempts from the corner in his first four seasons in the NBA, but that’s been 12% in the last 3 years. His minutes next to Filipowski have been monumental, as Flip slides more naturally into the corner than a player like Olynyk did. But it’s the minutes Collins and Kessler have shared the court that have been the most interesting.
As a reminder, the Jazz attempted to start Collins with Kessler at the beginning of the 2023-24 season and it was … disastrous. Their minutes together were seventh worst (out of 1452) in the NBA among 2-man lineups with 250+ minutes. The lineup was essentially scrapped 20 games in as the two only played 75 minutes together after mid-December. It seemed cut-and-clear that the coaching staff viewed Collins as a small-ball center, one who they’d eat the poor defensive minutes from in exchange for an open court for Collin Sexton and others who thrive at the rim.
This year though? The team seems to want to retry the experiment with a different flavor. They still seem to be adamantly against starting the two together – they were starting Filipowski just days after dishing him DNP-CD’s because of a Lauri Markkannen injury – but have started attempting to allow Collins to play a more centric role in the offense as opposed to deploying him as a secondary catch-and-shoot corner three weapon.
Notice the spacing on Collins’ first offensive possession of the game. He’s immediately used as an offensive engine, spotting up at the top of the three point line with the rest of the team spacing to the weak side. If we continue to see an offensive resurgence from Collins this year, it’s likely going to happen by continuing to open things up for him and use others as complementary pieces.
A game of runs and other cliches
Aside from typical changes to the team’s game plan, a major point of emphasis for the Jazz during halftime was to ride the waves and maintain focus on the current possession. Assistant coach Scott Morrison brought it up during the broadcast’s halftime interview: “With a young team we tend to lose our minds a little bit when things go poorly. The cliche is that basketball is a game of runs — we’ve gotta stay level headed”. Here’s the thing, cliches can run stale in certain environments — I tend to believe that a young team is not one of them. Whether that’s repeating to the team to “take what the defense gives you” or to keep a level head during the “game of runs”, it’s important information that can stick in a young player’s mind.
A look at the runs in the Utah Jazz's win over the San Antonio Spurs.
The Jazz’s first half tonight was full of swings. These swings unsurprisingly seemed to coincide with whether or not Wembanyama was on the floor, but the team reacted well — they only gave up the lead for a total of two possessions in the second half.
This idea of keeping a level head seems to be ultra-important to the coaching staff. The same concept came up in a recent interview with coach Will Hardy when talking about Keyonte George’s shooting slump to open the season: “The games are way too long, and the season is way too long to overreact to everything that doesn’t go our way”.
I find a ton of value in pointing out the similarity in momentum between the season and individual games. The Jazz started this season poorly, but things will get better. It was important to understand that the Jazz were not the 0-6 team that started the season, they were never going 0-82. However, when they eventually string together multiple wins, the team must remain diligent, tough, and continue building on what’s already working.
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