Every week during the regular season begins here at SCH with the Salt City Seven, a septet of recurring features that let us relive the biggest moments, key performances and hot issues in Jazzland from various angles. Check in every week for the quotes, stats, plays and performances that tell the stories from the last 168 hours in the world of the Jazz.
The Jazz have lost their best overall defensive player for the season, but the impact of this latest injury might be felt even more at the other end of the floor.
Excitement about Utah's auspicious start — two wins and two one-possession losses — largely centered around three returning Jazzmen. Lauri Markkanen, Keyonte George and Walker Kessler were all having awesome early stretches.
But midway through that fifth game, Kessler got bumped and reached for his left shoulder. He did finish that game, but would later return to Salt Lake as his teammates continued a 5-game trip, and imaging would ultimately reveal a torn labrum that will cost Kessler the rest of the season.
Since then, Utah has three losses by 23, 11 and 40 (although they did surprise Boston in a narrow comeback win). It's clear the Jazz are missing their starting center. But perhaps not in the most obvious way.
Actually, the Jazz's defense has kind of held up. Their defensive rating has predictably dipped without the 7-footer, but not as much as one would guess: 116.0 in the first five games, 118.8 since. Somehow, their opponents are shooting sligthly worse at the rim in the last four games than they were over the first five. This makes some sense since the Jazz had been scheming differently for the most part anyway, playing a lot more zone and bringing Kessler higher on pick-and-roll "shows" even before the injury.
But where the bottom has dropped out is, counterintuitively, on the offensive end.
Their non-garbage time offensive efficiency is exactly 100 in the four games Kessler has missed, which is dead last in the NBA over that span. Their true shooting has gone from 58.6% to 51.1%.
It's not just that they're missing Kessler's career-best 14.4 points per game. Defenses react to Kessler as a roll threat in ways that open things up for other guys. Jusuf Nurkic, who has assumed Kessler's role, is a good screener and gutsy passer from the elbows (sometimes overly so), but he just isn't a rim finisher at this point in his career. He's in the 11th percentile this season for efficiency on plays finished directly as the roll man in P&R.
Markkanen himself is a pretty good barometer for how Kessler's presence makes scoring easier for everybody else: the Finn averaged 33.8 points in Kessler's five games and 21.5 since. Teams can afford to be a lot more physical with the 2023 All-Star when they're not sending their big bodies to bang in the paint with a true center.
That's not to say Markkanen won't figure out his little slump, but it's going to be tough on the Jazz from here out. Kessler had a way of magnifying Utah's other good players and personnel combos. The Jazz were +14.7 with the Markkanen-George-Kessler trio on the floor, but all Markkanen-George lineups with no Kessler are -18.3, with an effective field goal percentage of 42.7%. Ouch.
If your primary interest in this Jazz season is lottery positioning, that won't necessarily be bad news. But as Mark Pereira explained, the injury is also a bummer because it makes the development environment somewhat less meaningful for all of the other young guys who needed to use this season to improve.
Utah still has eight recent draftees whose progress we can monitor. But expect things to be harder for this young squad without Kessler, and not just on one end of the court.
"There’s a lot of things that Walker does that nobody can replace... It sucks."
-Markkanen, on Kessler's injury news
Since it will be another year before we see Kessler reject another shot, here's a quick update on his career block list.
He somehow ended last season with exactly 250 unique blockees on his 465 career rejections. This season, he added four more, bringing his victim tally for credited regular season blocks to 254. The most notable addition was former Jazz teammate John Collins, but he also added Cam Christie, Oso Ighodaro and Mark Williams.
Last year's big additions were: All-NBA stars Steph Curry (number 196 on his list), Giannis Antetokounmpo (203) and Jayson Tatum (249); former UNC teammate Day'Ron Sharpe (216); NBA legend LeBron James (234); and the player he supplanted as a starter in his rookie season, Jarred Vanderbilt (233).
The teams he has blocked the most are Memphis (32 times), OKC (28) and a tie between San Antonio and Portland (24).
30.5%
Utah's 3-point percentage is the third worst in the league. Only one of their volume shooters (min. 10 attempts) is shooting over 34%: Svi Mykhailiuk at 37.5%. George, Brice Sensabaugh and Taylor Hendricks are all under 30%. (They also allow the most opponent 3-point attempts per game in the NBA.)
12.1
The only players getting to the line more frequently than George (12.1 attempts per 100 possessions) are Giannis Antetokounmpo, Paolo Banchero and Shai Gilgeous-Alexander.
-28
Utah's 28-point deficit just 12 minutes into Friday's game in Minneapolis was the largest lead after a first quarter of the NBA season thus far.
3-1
The Jazz are 3-1 when they surpass 50 points in the paint, but that has become harder without their primary roll man. They scored just 42 in the paint in Minnesota, and 36 against Detroit. They're 0-5 when they fail to exceed 50.
-11%
Hendricks hasn't looked quite as assertive offensively as fans had hoped, but opponents are shooting 11% worse than their expected FG% when Hendricks is the primary defender. He's followed closely in that regard by Cody Williams (-10.9%).
This writer is not at all concerned by the stats of fifth pick Ace Bailey just nine games into his pro career.
In fact, there are a lot of really promising signs about how mentally aware Bailey is early on. Here are a couple of scoring plays that start with the exact same setup, but unfold differently as the 19-year-old reacts to different defensive choices.
On both plays, Bailey flows from a pindown into a hand-off and then a flare cut. The idea behind this scripted setup is to give him a chance to catch on the move and attack going downhill.
That's exactly how it goes on the first one. The Celtics are switching the screens, so Bailey catches with momentum going against a slower-footed defender. He takes his last dribble at free throw line extended, but doesn't gather until after the next step. This enables him to fly right by the defender for a finish that requires an impressive amount of body control.
They run the same action for him in Detroit, but this time the defensive big is in drop coverage, so the angle isn't there for the pass. Bailey uses a change of pace on his cut to get wide open, but since he doesn't get the pass, he instead turns and seals Caris LeVert, then goes to work on him in the midrange.
I featured these and a bunch more plays in a Sunday thread about how Bailey looks really mentally engaged on both ends. Check it out if you're needing to be encouraged after the rook's 5.9-ppg start with 41.8% true shooting.
Jazz 105, Celtics 103: Keyonte George. George took over both emotionally and statistically during Utah's 38-26 third-quarter turnraound. He poured in 16 points on 5-of-6 shooting with three assists, part of an overall 31-5-4 night. It might have been the most spiritually "in charge" he's ever looked, and the Jazz needed it as Markkanen was busy getting grabbed, pushed and hit all night. Somehow the Finn managed 20 and 9 (he also had 10 in the third-quarter comeback). Aside from those two, Kyle Filipowski had his best night of the season with 13 and 8, and Nurkic of course hit the game-winning putback. But Key was an obvious choice.
Strong in defeat:
- Jazz 103, Pistons 114: Svi Mykhailiuk. Without Svi's early explosion, things could have gotten a lot worse in Detroit. He had 18 of his career-high 28 before halftime, which helped the Jazz deal with tons of ball pressure against George (who finished with 19 points but on 18 shots) and physical defense on Markkanen (25 on 22 shots). Nurkic had 17 rebounds, 4 assists and 4 steals, but shot just 2-for-8 from the field.
- Jazz 97, Wolves 137: Keyonte George. Obviously nobody played super great since this was a 28-point blowout before the first quarter ended. But Key was the best Jazzman by a wide margin on this bad night in Minny. He had 18 on 60.5% true shooting. There were some cute storylines (career-best 12 for Bailey, Isaiah Collier had double digits in his season debut), but nobody really challenged George on this one.
The Jazz play nine of their next 11 inside Delta Center, including four home games in the next seven nights:
Monday 11/10 vs. Wolves: Just 72 hours after Friday's massacre, the Jazz get to see if they can handle the Wolves any better at Delta Center. Minnesota will be on the second night of a back-to-back, but they also didn't have to exert too much energy to dominate the Kings by 27 in Sacramento. Rudy Gobert had his best statistical game of the young season, with 19 & 12 (and five blocks).
Tuesday 11/11 vs. Pacers: The Eastern Conference champs are having a rough go of it without Tyrese Haliburton. They're 1-9, and have also played most of their games without one or all of Andrew Nembhard, Bennedict Mathurin and Obi Toppin. That has left quite the load on Pascal Siakam (averaging 24-8-6) and Aaron Nesmith (15.9 points on career-high 20% usage).
Thursday 11/13 vs. Hawks: Here's another team coming in without an All-NBA guard, but Atlanta is finding ways to survive without Trae Young. They're 4-2 since he got hurt, including the Brooklyn game where he left just seven minutes in. Young was enduring a shooting slump anyway (37-19-82 splits to start the year), and former Jazz coach Quin Snyder is getting star-level production out of Jalen Johnson. The fifth-year forward is averaging 21-8-5.
Sunday 11/15 vs. Bulls: The Jazz play at home on each of the next four Sundays, and then don't host another Sunday game all season. This one comes against one of the surprising teams of the early NBA season; Chicago is 6-3 behind a near triple-double average from Josh Giddey, a career shooting year from Nikola Vucevic, and a breakout second season for 2024 lottery pick Matas Buzelis. They have, however, lost three of four after a 5-0 start.
Given the number of former Jazzmen currently plying their trade for Minnesota, the interlude between Jazz-Wolves games is a good time to check in on where the 20 active Jazz alumni are employed this NBA season.
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That wraps up another week of the SC7!
