The Triple Team: What might Brice Sensabaugh’s NBA path be? A former Jazzman plays a comparable style

Three thoughts on the Utah Jazz’s 121-110 loss to the Houston Rockets from Salt Lake Tribune Jazz beat writer Andy Larsen.

1. Finding a level of reasonably competitive play

Jazz coach Will Hardy heavily criticized his team on Tuesday night after losing a half of basketball by 38 points, at various points using the words “embarrassing,” “unacceptable,” and “this program stops for no one.”

The level of competition was much, much higher on Thursday night, though. The Jazz played wholly reasonable basketball against the No. 2 seed Rockets, and even had it to a one-possession game midway through the fourth quarter. Yes, the Rockets pulled away at that point, because from top to bottom, they are a significantly better team than the Utah Jazz.

But, as Will Hardy noted, “That type of effort — flying around defensively, competing, sharing the ball on offense, playing with maximum effort for a majority of the game — that is what you can build on."

Stuff like this:

Keyonte George gets screened here, but some great stuff happens after that. Kyle Filipowski is high up on the pick and roll, preventing the shot, KJ Martin is already rotated low to help on the drive, and Cody Williams is covering on the weak side. When Aaron Holiday gets the ball, Williams prevents the pass to the corner for the easier shot, while George gets back to help over to that side. Overall, this is much more like what team defense should look like, with players helping one another.

To be sure, there were plenty of mistakes, and the rebounding efforts were abysmal. But I would — and Hardy would — much rather have an effort like tonight’s game, where the initial hustle and focus is there, and can hopefully be sculpted at some point into actually good defense.

2. Brice Sensabaugh, finding his NBA path

One fun aspect of watching young NBA players like we have all season is witnessing the experimentation they have to do to adapt their games to the rigors of the league.

Brice Sensabaugh, to put it simply, did not play at the caliber of an NBA player in his rookie season. He shot the ball too poorly, he defended too poorly, and his approach to the game (that of an isolation scorer) wasn’t working.

This season, he’s found a niche: 3-point shooting. Through tonight’s game, he’s shooting 42% from deep. He now takes 60% of his overall shots from there, and he is good at making them.

As we all know, being a 3-point sniper is a legitimate NBA career path. There are different versions of it, though: there’s the JJ Redick or Kyle Korver guy who comes off a lot of screens, there’s the corner spacer, there’s the pick-and-pop big.

Sensabaugh’s path to success is pretty similar to that of a former Jazzman: Georges Niang. Like Niang, Sensabaugh is pretty slow. You wouldn’t count on him to make defensive stops. Brice Sensabaugh weighs six more pounds than Niang, while standing an inch shorter.

And their statlines are not dissimilar. Here’s Sensabaugh’s current season compared to Niang’s current season:

Yeah, that’s not too different. Sensabaugh has significantly more turnovers, but fewer fouls. He also takes more shots, and those extra bad 2-point shots probably push his percentages down that extra 4%. But overall, it’s a really similar profile.

I asked Sensabaugh of the idea of making the 3-point shooting his defining NBA characteristic, or whether he’d prefer to go after a more diverse game. And to his credit, he does see himself starting down the 3-point specialist path, then working to showcase his other skills as they improve over time.

After all, the biggest difference in the above Sensabaugh vs. Niang comp is in that first column: age. Sensabaugh has so much more room to grow. He’ll need to maintain this level of shooting, but if he does, he has a definite path in the league.

3. The coach that dunked on the players

You all know the Jazz’s assistant coaches from their in-game profiles: sitting on the bench, maybe yelling to help the Jazz out defensively, or surrounding Will Hardy in a timeout huddle.

But there’s an underrated aspect of assistant coaching that fans don’t usually see: actually playing basketball against the NBA players. Most of the time, this happens in shootarounds, practices, and pregame warmups, a lot of times in one-on-one settings. For example, today, assistant coach Matt Temple warmed up Walker Kessler, as he worked on his rebound positioning and putbacks, and held his own in the physical battle.

There are other times, though, where the coaches scrimmage against the players and play their best; even more times when the assistant coaches play pickup basketball against one another.

And the coaches are pretty good, sometimes even competitive against their younger NBA competition. There were stories about the Jazz’s assistant coaches of the mid 2010s beating Dante Exum one-on-one, for example.

Who is the best basketball player of the Jazz assistant coaches? There are three candidates, Will Hardy said: Chris Jones, who played his collegiate basketball at Pittsburgh, Evan Bradds, who played at Belmont, and Andrew Warren, from Bradley University.

Jones was the most frequent nominee when Jazz players were asked about the issue, though Bradds’ overall offensive talents were frequently noted. Warren is the assistant coaching team’s best shooter, which makes sense — he’s also the team’s lead shooting coach.

Jones, though, can impress even the players with his athleticism. Hardy said that he dunked on an “unnamed player” in a practice this year, which left us media wondering who that player was. After some asking around, Kyle Filipowski spilled the beans: Jones dunked on both himself and Walker Kessler.

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