Utah Jazz preview

 The #1 offense is coming to town, bringing with it the #10 defense and the 2nd best net rating at +9.7 so far this year to smash up against the rocks of the Cavs #3 overall defense, 21st overall offense and 8th overall net rating of +2.8.  9.7 is >> 2.8 so pretty much the Jazz have this thing covered and only a cold shooting night can give the Cavs a hope at winning.  

Well no, not really.  The Cavs are on their 3rd real iteration of a team this season while the Jazz have played one way all year.  Injuries highlight the difference, through 22 games the Jazz have 5 rotation players who have yet to miss a contest while the Cavs have one, the Jazz have 8 rotation pieces that have missed two or fewer games and the Cavs have two.  In fact the Cavs only have 4 players who have in total missed fewer games than the top 8 for the Jazz have missed combined (5!).  Utah has also been feasting on a cake schedule.  I didn’t say cupcake schedule, this is a full on, heavily frosted, multi layered wedding cake of a schedule.  Of their 22 games they have played 11 of them against teams currently with 10 or fewer wins while playing one of the top 4 (Cavs have played 5 games already against this group) by record this season, and that one game against Chicago was a loss. They have played two against a full Heat squad and are 0-2 in a pair of close games, Milwaukee down 4 starters, Philly without Embiid and half of a game against Denver with Jokic on the floor.  

Basketball reference’s strength of schedule meter (which doesn’t include things like Embiid sitting) has their schedule as the easiest in the league by a good margin.  Taking care of business against mediocre to bad teams is good but this is almost certainly inflating their net rating by a substantial chunk.  Rather than treating Utah as a test for the Cavs you could argue that the Cavs are a test for Utah and would represent their strongest win of the season.  

Offensively the Jazz have really had it easy, 10 of 22 games have been played against bottom 8 defenses and 15 of 22 against bottom half defenses while they have played zero top 7 defenses and the 8th ranked defense once.  

Lineup data from Cleaning the Glass shows that the Cavs, in their limited time with this group together, has been as good as the best rotations that the Jazz have put out there.  The Cavs current 9 man rotation (starting 5 plus Rubio, Love, Osman* and Stevens) have a net rating of +12.7 through 675 possessions and the Jazz’s current rotation is at +12.9 in 1531 possessions.  Now I can’t do a strength of schedule adjustment for the Cavs because these mins have been so fragmented but there isn’t much chance that their effective schedule with these rotations has been easier than what the Jazz have faced so far this year.  

This lineup for the Jazz is absolutely ripping it from 3, taking 43% of their shots from behind the arc (92nd percentile) and making 39.3% of them (91st percentile), while this Cavs rotation is doing a solid job limiting 3s (35.7% of shots 68th percentile) and is either running extremely hot or defending closing out extremely well as teams are shooting 29.6% on those 3s (96th percentile).  Utah is generating these looks by playing 4 out around either Gobert or Whiteside, with only 14 non garbage time possessions coming without one of those two at center, and the next 8 men in the rotation are all putting up at least 6.4 3s per 100 (O’Neal) all the way up to 17.5 (Clarkson), with a basic strategy of having their lead guards launch at will (Clarkson 17.5, Mitchell 14.0, Conly 9.9 3pta/100) and then finding or forcing a mismatch on their small 4 around the C with off ball movement.  

The Cavs defensive strategy will be interesting here, you might naturally expect Okoro on Mitchell but I would lean towards using O’Neal to hide Garland which would put Okoro on Conley and Lauri on Mitchell for the starting 5.  This would  mirror how their recent game against the Suns went and their similar guard/wing heavy rotation around a single big man.  Garland spent as much time as he could on off ball shooters like Crowder, Payne and Shamet while we saw Wade, Okoro and Lauri (who even picked up CP3 a few times) taking the bulk of the responsibilities on CP3 and Booker.  

Defensively Utah is elite at denying corner 3 attempts with only 1 out of 15 shots coming from those spots (95th percentile), and good at preventing 3s overall and shots at the rim, with minor issues rebounding (41st percentile) and the second lowest rate of forced turnovers in the league.  

To stop threes and shots at the rim the Jazz open up the mid range shot especially in the PnR when Gobert/Whiteside are backtracking.  This is where Garland has been forcing teams to alter their coverages at times, he is shooting over 50% on mid range shots so far this season from all the spots that Utah is giving up looks.  He will have to take, and hit, those shots if he wants to force Gobert out and open up lobs to Allen out of the roll.  Then the Cavs will need Mobley, Lauri and Love exploiting their size on the offensive glass.  

There also is the opportunity to overcome Utah’s ability to limit 3pt attempts as Lauri and Love will have several inches on their defender virtually the entire night.  

*Osman might still be out but dropping him improves the net rating to +14.5 in 455 possessions.