Projecting Utah Jazz Player Rotations And Stats
By Spencer
The 2014-2015 Utah Jazz off-season has seen more turnover and change on the coaching staff and roster than possibly any other Jazz season in history. With a new coaching staff, relatively new GM, new rookies and player, and the growth of current youth, the Utah Jazz are going into a season of unknowns. No doubt you have had many questions thinking of this season. Who will coach Quin play the most minutes? What will the Jazz record be? Who will lead the team in scoring? What about assists? The list could go on and one. So lets take a moment to answer some of these questions you may have.
What will the regular season rotation look like?
There are two ways to look at this. First, we will look at Quin Snyder’s last team, the Atlanta Hawks, and plug Jazz players into those roles. This method is not accurate, as Quin was not the head coach. It is still important to look at as he had a huge part on the offense in Atlanta.
The first thing to note is that Atlanta suffered several injuries through the year. Not a single player played all 82 games. Because of this the minutes per game(MPG) are slightly higher than an average rotation. As you can see, the Hawks played all their starters around the 33 minute mark with a couple players off the bench for high minutes. The Hawks had a rotations that was about nine deep on any given night. We should see the same concept of a tight rotation with Quin Snyder’s Utah Jazz. What that means is that the best players on the team will be the ones that play the most.
The next method is more of an educated guess. I watched every preseason game, multiple Hawks games, and even attended Summer League, using this experience to try and ‘become Quin’. I then went through and built out Snyder’s potential positional rotation based on what I saw.
It’s easy to say “I think Exum should play 30 minutes a night.”, until you begin to lay it out by position. Each position gets 48 minutes of play per night, totaling 240 minutes to be split among players per game. Now overtime minutes played in a year can skew this slightly, but for simplicity sake we are going to ignore OT minutes.
As you can see The Jazz’s projected starters of Hayward, Favors, Burke, and Kanter will all get the lions share of their positions minutes. That is the one thing we are sure of after looking at Atlanta’s rotations. The bench will likely be four deep most nights with Exum, Hood, Booker and Gobert. Because of injury or chance situations were the Jazz need shooters, Novak and Clark will
The thing that makes this roster great for Quin is the crazy versatility the Jazz have! Burke, Gobert, and Booker are only players on the roster than can play only one position. Quin will have the ability to “Go Big” with a Exum, Hood, Hayward, Favors, Gobert line up against big front lines, like Memphis. Or perhaps they are facing a small ball line up at Golden State and Quin decides to match it with Burke, Exum, Burks, Hayward, Favors. He is going to tinker with this roster and at times people will see something that shocks them. Why is Gordon playing the 4? Why is Burks playing point guard? Snyder has been called a “Mad Scientist” because he will explore every option, and it should be fun to watch.
What is the craziest part about this roster?
Age. With Hayward and Favors recently getting lucrative deals, its easy to forget how young this team is. However, of the players projected to crack the rotation, only Trevor Booker(26) and Steve Novak(31) are older than 24. If we dive one step deeper, the team gets even younger. If you weight ever minute player by age, we see that the average age of every minute played by the team is 22.7 years old! This is just goes to show how promising the Jazz future really is.
What will the players stats look like?
This is the part we are all anxious to find out, right? Most players didn’t play anywhere near their full rotation minutes this year. By adjusting the players preseason production to their projected minutes per game, we get a simple projection of the players per game stats. Obviously this is taking a small sample size and spreading it over a much larger period. However, it is all one can do right now. The results are awesome.
There are a couple things that immediately stand out. So lets talk about our starters projected stats.
The most shocking perhaps is that Gordon Hayward is not project to lead the team in scoring. In fact, Hayward is projected to take less shots than all the other starters. There are a couple reasons why this may be popping up. First, it’s the preseason and maybe they wanted to give others more opportunities when it would not be reflected on their record. Second, this new offense requires players to make reads and make the right pass. Hayward is arguably the teams best passer and he will always make the right play. His shooting efficiency makes me think its the latter of the two. Hayward shot a blistering 50% from 3 and 51.4% overall in the preseason, which is hopefully a sign that last years shooting woes were only a fluke. He seems to be taking good shots, and passing up the bad ones. His added muscle is also helping him finish plays like this, what we would have not seen last year.
Besides the FGA and steal rate, Haywards stat line is about what you would guess it to be. 17 points, 5 rebounds, 5 assists. The incredible steal rate that Hayward has had is likely something that cannot be maintained throughout the regular season. However, it is very encouraging to see such a high rate.
It has been surprising how little people have talked about Favors’ preseason. This guy absolutely dominated. Favors projects to be the leading scorer of the Utah Jazz with nearly 19 points a game. Derrick’s offensive game has been scrutinized by the media. People didn’t think he improved his post game enough last year. What they failed to mention is that he increased his shooting percentages in the paint for a below average level to an average rate. That is a great feat while adding 3 more FGA a game. We are seeing that Favors’ improvements on offense will only continue
Favors is no longer being asked to simply create points off post moves. The Jazz have been creating wonderful shots for him. As you have commonly heard, Coach Snyder wants players to “attack at the 45″(Clint Peterson explained this here). Attacking at the 45 allows Favors to do two things. After he sets the pick he can dive to the basket. With him insane athleticism and size, few can defend a rolling Derrick Favors. Secondly, we have seen that he will often cut to the basket when he is not setting the pick. His defender often steps up to defend the ball handler, who immediately hit Favors for an easy dunk. He was fouled multiple times on this very play all season long. Hopefully Favors will continue to go to the hoop strong to get to the line, like this.
This isn’t to say that Favors will average the 18 points his projections suggest, but you are crazy if you don’t think his PPG will increase from 13.3 last year.
The other things to note on his stat line are his blocks and rebounds are back up to an elite level. Both of these stats dropped off last year. It appeared that the drop off was not because of talent, but rather a lack of motivation. Quin seems to be keeping Favors motivated, and if he can continue to do so, 10+ rebounds at 1.5 blocks per game are not unrealistic.
Trey showed huge stride of improvement in the preseason. His shooting percentages were much higher than they were last year, and shooting is something the Jazz desperately need. If he can keep that up, its not unrealistic to think he could average 15 points a game, up from his 12.8 last year.
The part of Trey’s line that excites me the most is his 3.3 rebounds per game. That number would have made him the 14th best rebounding point guard in the NBA. This is a great sign so a player that was called undersized during the draft. He clearly added some strength this off-season, allowing him get fight for the ball. That added strength also has led to Trey feeling more confident to drive to the basket. Trey was one of the worst driving point guards in the NBA last year, and we need him to drive. As mentioned before this driving has led to open lanes for Favors. Trey driving to the basket is something we need to monitor this year.
Some may be stunned that Burke is only projected to average 5.5 assists per game, down from 5.7 last year. The main reason for this is the new offensive system. This offense requires players to pass at a high rate. So recipients of his passes are shooting less than they did last year. The offense also doesn’t use primary ball handlers the way last year’s offense did. More than ever we will see the rebounder carry the ball up, or kick to the nearest handler. The main reason for the decrease in assists, is likely the decrease in assist opportunities.
This stat line is what fans have salivated about for years. 18 points per game on 10 free throw attempts? Sign me up! We know Burks can score, and this is his year to prove it. The biggest concern with have with Burks’ scoring, is he seemed to force looks and take unwanted shots. He needs to stick to the offensive game plan. He may not get as many shots, but they will be much more efficient shots. Everyone hates hearing it, but its required that his lack of 3-point shooting is mentioned. Going 2-9 from 3 in 5 games isn’t great. Let’s hope he can increase his 3P%. Either way, this is something people can look forward to seeing all year long.
Burks 4.3 rebounds per game would have ranked 10th among shooting guards last year. He has always shown to be a pretty decent rebounder. This is a huge asset and will get him minutes. He was asked to carry the ball much more than he every has this preseason. This lead to 3.9 TOV a game. Because this is a new offense, there is bound to be lots of turnovers from the team at the beginning of the year. Alec should be able to tone the turnovers down as he gets more time in the offensive system.
If I had to bet on which of these 5 players projections were spot on, I would pick Kanter. 13.3 points per game with 7.4 rebounds just sounds right for the guy. He has not been the elite rebounder we drafted him to be, but he has shown he is a terrific back to the basket player. Unfortunately, Quin’s system of constant passing won’t give Kanter those looks on the left block. Kanter spent all summer working on his jump shot, and that seemed to be the only thing he did in the preseason. Enes really needs to attack the hoop more to be an effective offensive player. His 1.6 FTA in preseason would have been the worst in the league last year among all qualified big men.
Kanter has shown some improvement though. He is rebounding better on the defensive end than he ever has. He has cut his turnovers down by becoming a willing passer. In fact, Kanters passing may be the single most improved aspect of anyone on the Utah Jazz. His average of 1.5 assists per game may only be a 0.6 increase from last years average, but his willingness to pass out of a double team is much improved. In fact he even created a couple buckets for players. He will never be a ‘point-forward’, but this improvement is wonderful.
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