Minnesota Sports Forum

FNG wrote:

AbeVigodaLive wrote:

FNG wrote:

Camden wrote:The 39-13 Utah Jazz currently own the best record in basketball. The Jazz are also complete morons for continuing to play Donovan Mitchell, Jordan Clarkson, and Bojan Bogdanovi? when the team clearly performs better when they're off the court, according to their on/off data. If only Quin Snyder would wake up and realize this.

The Jazz are an interesting team, Cam, because they have three players who may end up being all-NBA defense...Gobert, Conley and O'Neale. Mitchell on the other hand is a disaster on defense, and his defensive deficiencies hurt the Jazz...even in the midst of a nice offensive season. I'm not surprised Utah is so good this year with their lock-down defense, and it's going to be interesting to see what Snyder does in the playoffs where the importance of defense is elevated. O'Neale is extraordinary and is called on to defend the opponent's best player 2-4 every night. I wouldn't be surprised to see Snyder playing a lot of Niang/O'Neale/Ingles 2-4 in the playoffs when they are protecting leads. Mitchell is a great volume scorer but not particularly efficient with his eFG% of only 52%. When inefficient scoring is combined with horrible defense, it's not difficult to see why he's a team-worst -9. Allocating minutes is going to be a challenge for Quin in the playoffs.

If the prior three seasons are an indication... Mitchell will be playing more minutes in the playoffs.

He's averaged 34 mpg in each of the past three regular seasons... and 38 mpg in each of the past three playoffs.

True, but read a few local articles about what Utah fans and analysts are saying about his defense this year...it's fallen off a cliff, and there are a lot of concerns about it. I actually thought he was at least average in previous years, but he's a different player this year. Maybe he's coasting and saving it for the playoffs...if not, there are some reasons for Jazz fans to be concerned.

Maybe. The Jazz are still 4th in the NBA for defense even though the player with the most on-court minutes has fallen off a cliff on defense.

AbeVigodaLive wrote:

FNG wrote:

AbeVigodaLive wrote:

FNG wrote:

Camden wrote:The 39-13 Utah Jazz currently own the best record in basketball. The Jazz are also complete morons for continuing to play Donovan Mitchell, Jordan Clarkson, and Bojan Bogdanovi? when the team clearly performs better when they're off the court, according to their on/off data. If only Quin Snyder would wake up and realize this.

The Jazz are an interesting team, Cam, because they have three players who may end up being all-NBA defense...Gobert, Conley and O'Neale. Mitchell on the other hand is a disaster on defense, and his defensive deficiencies hurt the Jazz...even in the midst of a nice offensive season. I'm not surprised Utah is so good this year with their lock-down defense, and it's going to be interesting to see what Snyder does in the playoffs where the importance of defense is elevated. O'Neale is extraordinary and is called on to defend the opponent's best player 2-4 every night. I wouldn't be surprised to see Snyder playing a lot of Niang/O'Neale/Ingles 2-4 in the playoffs when they are protecting leads. Mitchell is a great volume scorer but not particularly efficient with his eFG% of only 52%. When inefficient scoring is combined with horrible defense, it's not difficult to see why he's a team-worst -9. Allocating minutes is going to be a challenge for Quin in the playoffs.

If the prior three seasons are an indication... Mitchell will be playing more minutes in the playoffs.

He's averaged 34 mpg in each of the past three regular seasons... and 38 mpg in each of the past three playoffs.

True, but read a few local articles about what Utah fans and analysts are saying about his defense this year...it's fallen off a cliff, and there are a lot of concerns about it. I actually thought he was at least average in previous years, but he's a different player this year. Maybe he's coasting and saving it for the playoffs...if not, there are some reasons for Jazz fans to be concerned.

Maybe. The Jazz are still 4th in the NBA for defense even though the player with the most on-court minutes has fallen off a cliff on defense.

True...but with three potential all-defensive players in their starting lineup and especially with a guy like Gobert to clean up messes, they should be a top 5 defense. What we would give as T-wolves fans to have just one guy in the all-defense conversation, and they have three! Meanwhile, we have to be satisfied with "you know, KAT looks better on defense" and "Wow. Jaden is a better defender than the scouts thought coming out of college". That's all we got. The joy of being a Timberwolves fan...

Now that Towns and Russell have both been back for a few games, let's see how the Wolves' on/off numbers stand. I'll just provide just the net number this time, rather than including both offensive and defensive numbers.

Positive players:
KAT 11.6
Rubio 4.7
McDaniels 4.4
Edwards 2.2
Juancho .4
Nowell .1

Negative players:
Beasley (.1)
Vando (1.2)
J-Mac (2.5)
Okogie (3.0)
Reid (5.2)
Russell (6.7)

Some analysis. We were hoping that DLO's team-worst negative number would improve as he got more minutes with KAT, and it has...even better KAT's team-best on/off has also improved, giving some hope to the Rosas hypothesis that the KAT/DLO experiment will be successful. As Kek points out in the GDT, that combo is now 5-4 on the season, and that is an even more hopeful sign. DLO needs to be at least a neutral player for this team to play .500 basketball.

Despite a drop off in his play over the past several games, Rubio has replaced J-McD as the second most overall effective player this season as Jaden seems to have hit a rookie wall. Still, J-McD is third on the team at a +4.4 and that is quite impressive...very few rookies end up with a positive on/off number.

And that brings us to Ant, who is another rookie with a positive on/off...4th best on the team. I believe Q said in the pre-season that rookies seldom had a positive impact on a team, and it certainly is true this season. We're quick to point out Ant's challenges on defense and shot selection, but it's notable that his ROY competitors almost all have negative on/offs. Ball and Haliburton are negative, and Wiseman and Patrick Williams are double digit negative! It takes some time to adjust to the NBA game, and it's impressive that our two rookies rank 3rd and 4th on the team.

Finally, and perhaps because he had such a good game last night, I'll mention that Juancho now ranks 5th on the team in on/off. His defense is still horrible as the Wolves give up 6.5 more points per 100 possessions when he is playing...defensive futility that is only exceeded by DLO But his ability to drive to the basket seems to be improving, and his 3-point shooting is up to 36% since the all-star break. This isn't a popular take on this board, but Juancho seems to be a pretty consistent 15 or 16/9 guy per 36 minutes, and his eFG% is higher than Russell's. Even considering his poor defense, I have no problem with Rosas paying him 5% of our payroll...his stats tell me he's worth it.

I still think this team has one truly really good player in KAT and then a bunch of guys that are somewhere between average and really bad.

We got kind of lucky in the Miami game. A few of our mediocre role players had their random good one-out-of-every-four games all at the same time.